Indiana has never been a free agency destination. It simply hasn't been. That's not something the state or the city that houses the Indiana Pacers can change. While NFL franchises are allowed to exist in any number of places without considerable damage to their negotiations with unsigned players, the NBA expects that players will only ever want to play in cities that are among the five biggest in the United States.
For decades, teams have treated cap space as a simple resource. For the metropolitan centers – your New Yorks, Los Angeleses, Miamis, and, yes, Chicagos (they will be upset if they're not included) – cap space can be used to bring in real difference-makers. The LA Lakers got three big signings this summer alongside a sign-and-trade for a good player. The Chicago Bulls got an all-star for cheap!
Conversely, the other 25 odd teams have two options. They can A) hope to sign a good player, usually by overpaying them to come to a terrible smaller city, or they can B) use the space to take on bad contracts from other teams for the low price of additional assets, usually in the form of draft picks.
However, there is an exception to these rules. If your team is good enough, if your star players incite enough excitement across the league not just from fans but from their peers, and if, just maybe, you still have just enough space to make an interesting offer, you could maybe – MAYBE – sign a star in the open market.
Oakland/San Francisco is by no means a small market, but this is what the Golden State Warriors pulled off in 2017 by signing Kevin Durant. It's what the Denver Nuggets managed when they got Paul Millsap.
It's rare, but it's certainly possible.
So, as the Pacers look at an offseason in which they will have neither space nor free agents worth keeping, they can start building a plan for the summer of 2028, when they can either pull off the unlikely or risk the foundations of the team they've built.
To fall or to fly beyond the limits
It should be worth noting that if Indiana does truly want to guarantee a star before that quickly approaching summer, they could just trade for a star they hope to retain before that cutoff. However, in front of them are two potential paths to max contract space in a summer that will feature Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić, and any number of other superstar players.
The Pacers could either let their internal free agents – Pascal Siakam, Ivica Zubac, Andrew Nembhard chief among them – walk and use their abandoned cap holds to create space under the cap. This approach is aggressive, but certainly possible. It's an approach the Boston Celtics used most recently in 2016.
The other path to this same solution is to hold off on signing your own players until you bring in your external acquisition, using Bird rights to go over the cap to sign the players already in your organization. This quickly results in going over the second apron, but with how few draft picks the Pacers have, this could genuinely work out.
Alternatively, Indiana can do something utterly insane. They could make deals trading away their future free agents for minimal contracts and draft assets in return. Then, upon opening up space, the Pacers can have their big deals and the picks to build the team back up.
However, both of these options leave the Pacers in an extremely precarious spot. It is easier to stay safe than it is to take a massive risk.
With how expensive this team is about to get, there are worries, but there's no real way to get out of them right now. Dumping contracts makes the team worse. Resigning players makes the team more expensive.
Talk about a rock and a hard place.
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