Pacers Report Cards: Grading every Pacers player through the All-Star break
By Mueez Azfar
Final thoughts and grade
Indiana Pacers current record: 32-25
Indiana Pacers record 57 games into 2022-23 season: 25-32
With everything being said, there is only one thing left to do, and that is give the Indiana Pacers as a whole their final grade. This is tricky, as Indiana came into the season with relatively high expectations for their standards but nothing special in overall league standards. Indiana was expected by some to finish as high as the fifth seed and as low as a play-in loss.
The Pacers were on the road to exceeding those expectations when they got Pascal Siakam, which is when those expectations shifted. Now, instead of being dark horse playoff candidates, the Pacers were being picked to win their first playoff series since 2014 and have a chance against any East team not named the Celtics.
Have they lived up to their pre-season expectations? Yes, pretty comfortably, in fact. Have they lived up to their post-Siakam expectations? That depends on how you look at things. While the Pacers' 7-8 record following the trade doesn't seem like the best, there is context to that record.
Tyrese Haliburton has spent basically that entire stretch either out with injury, or on a minutes restriction relating to injury, while Siakam barely knew the playbook for the first three games, resulting in three straight losses. In the last six games, the Pacers have picked up their groove, going 4-2 and trending upwards going into the All-Star break.
Can the Pacers keep their surging momentum into the end of the season and make a deep playoff run? That question is yet to be answered, along with many more. For now, the Pacers get a pretty good grade.
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Their run pre-Siakam was surprising to many, and the trade for Siakam may just be the final straw they need or the first fall in a domino effect that could lead to another contender being born.