The Indiana Pacers have not been a good team to start this NBA season. They are 3-8 and have had an extraordinarily easy schedule to start the year. Instead of being a comeback season, it's rapidly looking like this year will be a repeat of the 2025-26 season. That's not a good place to be.
Additionally, due to the Pacers schedule, things are about to get a whole lot worse. They face multiple contenders across seven games in the next 14 days. There is a real possibility that they could enter Thanksgiving with nearly 10 games under 500.
If that doesn't set the stage for how important this game is, I don't know what will.
This game against the Washington Wizards is the Pacers' last chance to have a relatively easy game before they find themselves fighting uphill battle after uphill battle against their schedule and the NBA Gods alike.
Everyone has injuries, but not everyone has Pacers injury luck
It's easy to blame this bad start to the year on injuries. The Pacers have lost Tyrese Haliburton, Ivica Zubac, TJ McConnell, and Aaron Nesmith for multiple games, including one game where they only had six active players, three of whom were on two-way contracts.
To this point, all of those players except Haliburton have returned from their absences, but the lackluster play still continues. It's fair to question if this team can excel without its superstar point guard, but at this point it seems like the roster cannot fully function if he is not playing. The offense is lacking and struggles to find any flow or rim pressure without him, and the defense has been incredibly disappointing.
However, maybe it's worth wondering if the team is really built up as well as so many people thought.
Ivica Zubac has been mediocre at best, and certainly not worth the price Indiana gave up for him. Pascal Siakam has been consistently good, but unable to increase his load to drag the Pacers to wins. Jarace Walker continues to be one of the worst players in the league by every advanced analytic.
It's hard to look at this team and to think back to where they were as contenders just two years ago, but that team just doesn't exist right now. Everyone thought Indiana would settle back into being great, but it seems like the combination of rust and being overrated has hit them hard.
If the Pacers want to return to where they once were, they need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and start that Journey back to being great by absolutely demolishing an uninspiring Washington Wizards team.
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