Optionality is the name of the game when it comes to the playoffs. The Indiana Pacers, in that way, are somehow being prepared by going through the darkest possible timeline to start their season. With injury seemingly becoming a constant for this team, it seems like an absurd silver lining that the Pacers are making the best of it.
Head coach Rick Carlisle has long been known as one of the best coaches in the league at adjusting over the course of a playoff series. While it certainly isn't ideal to be forced to try all of these different lineups this early in the season, this will be incredibly valuable data when Indiana is stuck in a rut against an Eastern Conference foe come May.
Maybe that will mean trusting an untested player who has had more opportunities to play, like Quenton Jackson. Maybe it'll mean trying to play a small-ball lineup in which Pascal Siakam plays center only because he had to do so in the absence of Ivica Zubac. Maybe that adjustment is yet to come entirely.
The only thing that we know for sure is that good teams have an identity, but great teams have multiple different identities they can change to when certain things aren't working. The Pacers have had a different starting lineup in all four of their games so far. That certainly means testing some different identities.
The Pacers clearly hope to be a great team with the return of Tyrese Haliburton going just about as well as it possibly could to this point in the year.
Fastballs get you to the later innings; off-speed pitches win them
The Pacers already know what they can do well in their current basketball ecosystem. What they don't know is what they can do well outside of it.
That was supposed to be a huge part of the focus of the gap year Indiana underwent last year. Instead, those same injuries robbed the team of any chance to develop beyond the scope of what the roster had been asked to do in the past.
Now, while the Pacers cannot afford anything close to their 17-win season from a year ago, they have a little bit of time to experiment.
It's true that Indiana sits at only 2-2 despite facing only lottery teams across four games, but seasons are not defined by their first handful of matchups. There is a reason sample size is important, and the Pacers have been proven to be a good team beyond the four games this year has provided.
The Pacers will need to be better, but this setback is also an important experiment in figuring out just how the Pacers' rotation stacks up if another injury derails what they have been building.
After all, it is better to be over-prepared than underprepared.
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