Some of you may be a little confused when you see a football player pop on screen for a site writing about the Indiana Pacers. There are so few comparisons to make between the two sports. I guess they both use hands to propel a ball to each other, and they are both certainly team sports, but the comparisons are few and far between.
However, despite that, the Indianapolis Colts are a great example of how poorly this next era of Pacers basketball can go if the Pacers do not accurately and intelligently assess their team.
The Colts have given Daniel Jones nearly 90 million dollars over the next two years while he returns from an Achilles tear, after they also traded two first-round picks to the New York Jets for cornerback Sauce Gardner.
The NBA and NFL value picks far differently, and two firsts in the NFL are likely the equivalent of four in the NBA, so that leaves the Colts firmly and securely in the "all-in" category. There's only one problem.
The Colts are simply not good enough to justify their trust in the roster
The Colts are nowhere near good enough to be all-in right now. Their quarterback had 19 touchdowns in 13 games and fell apart as the team did down the stretch. They missed the playoffs despite starting 8-2. Their defense is aging while their offense is unproven.
This is the equivalent of the current Atlanta Hawks having minimal future picks and having just committed 30 million per year to a recently injured Ja Morant with the personality of a cereal box.
They are in a bad place to be because they took a strong start to their season last year and used bad injury luck to justify the idea that they could be contenders. Now, they have the strongest strength of schedule and no first-round pick to reload on a QB of the future if Jones struggles.
Comparatively, the Pacers just won 19 games without claiming their draft pick at the end of the year. Instead, they used that pick to upgrade a major position of need (similarly to the Colts trading for Gardner).
However, Indiana is not nearly as down the drain as their cross-sport equals. They still have choices to be made.
Instead of going hard to extend Haliburton now, they can wait. Instead of looking for options to spend their three tradeable first-round picks on, they can retain them whether the team shows its previous strength or necessitates a rebuild. They have not committed any of their future to save their present.
That's how it should stay.
It seems like the Pacers could follow the Colts and go all in before they know what they have in this current version of this team, but they have something far more valuable right now: optionality.
If the team is bad, you can cash out on some of your amazing veterans and rebuild/retool around whoever you'd like. If it's good, you push more chips in.
The Colts are stuck. The Pacers aren't.
Outside of that, they're pretty similar.
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