The Indiana Pacers are set to enter the season with all but two of their rotation on contracts of less than three years. That may be a weird sentence to read, but what it basically means is that after the next two seasons, all but two players will be free agents.
This summer's class is far less important, as only Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard headline it, two missed first-round picks who could still prove to be useful somewhere else.
However, the year after that, Ivica Zubac, Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard, T.J. McConnell, Obi Toppin, and Kelly Oubre Jr. are all set to be free agents.
The Pacers have a ticking time bomb!
Many fans have chosen to ignore this fact entirely, claiming that the pursuit of a title over the next two seasons is far more important and will lay to rest any contract disputes. If the team is winning, everyone will be happy, or so they say. Among the people echoing that logic is Pacers GM Chad Buchanan.
Buchanan gave a media availability from Gainbridge Fieldhouse recently, in which he claimed that none of the extension talks were worth focusing on right now.
He has a point.
The bank is out of money: what can Indiana pay everyone?
Each of the Pacers' best players, set to be free agents, is a player whose value is unclear to date. Andrew Nembhard could well earn a massive raise just as easily as he could fall off. Shot creators are paradoxically not easy to replace and hard to pay in the current NBA.
Simultaneously, Pascal Siakam is currently 32 and will be 34 by the time he is available to be an unrestricted free agent. It's fair to wonder whether the max deal he will clearly want on his extension is even attainable in the summer of 2028-29.
Beyond those two, there's Ivica Zubac, who has played five games as a Pacer, none of which came with the actual core of the team. While he is a massive talent upgrade from Myles Turner, and may well be an excellent Pacer if he can fit in with the roster, there are no doubt questions about whether he could be shipped out just as easily as he was brought in.
With so many questions up in the air, it seems foolish for the Pacers GM to be so flippant with extension talks when teams have shown they fall apart the second they don't have security in their pocket.
The Indiana Pacers have never been a free agent target. No player has gone out of their way to join Indiana, despite the slew of good teams that have had the money to bring someone in. In fact, one could argue that C.J. Miles may just be the best Pacers free agent acquisition over the past 15 years.
No, Indiana is not a market that people seek out. However, the truth remains that playing with Tyrese Halliburton is very fun, that Rick Carlisle is one of the best coaches in the NBA, and that the Pacers organization will have shooting surrounding their best players that could make an acquisition of any star near seamless.
While that 28-29 summer has many Pacers question marks, it also offers the opportunity to do something Indiana has never done: to bring in a star free agent.
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