On October 20th, 2025, the Indiana Pacers signed Aaron Nesmith to a two-year/40.5 million dollar extension. That was the maximum allowable contract the Pacers could offer their starting small forward at the time. While on paper, 20 million dollars seems like a lot for the role player, it seems to be an excellent choice.
The Pacers locked up Nesmith for what now seems to be a below-market rate (especially after Ayo Dosumnu got a five year/112 million dollar deal) and gave themselves some safety and time to figure out the financials for the rest of the team.
The entire roster outside of Nesmith and Tyrese Haliburton will be free agents two seasons from now. Instead of waiting to handle all of their deals at once, the Pacers could do well to offer many more of these early max extensions before they are left paying even more in a year or two.
The list of important free-agent decisions for the Pacers is long. Next offseason, both Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard will be free agents. While they are by no means world-beaters, they could be impactful players with potentially undercut trade values.
Even if either breaks out, Indiana likely won't be able to retain them given the preparations it must make for the summer of 2028.
The summer of 2028 and how some Nesmith-style extensions could help
Pascal Siakam, Ivica Zubac, Andrew Nembhard, and Obi Toppin – four of the Pacers' eight-man rotation – will be free agents. Most damningly, at least two of those players will want massive raises.
Zubac and Nembhard both make a similar 20-21 million dollars annually in the last year of their deal. If Nembhard is seeking a raise of around five to eight million a year, Zubac may want to double his wages entirely.
Throughout all those negotiations, it's hard not to leave one or two players feeling forgotten. The clearest recent example of this is the Minnesota Timberwolves, who, after a second straight Western Conference Finals appearance, failed to retain Nickeil Alexander-Walker while keeping Julius Randle and Naz Reid in the fold.
The Wolves saw their team take a massive step back with the loss of NAW, struggling for months before they found their facsimile of a replacement in the aforementioned Ayo, paying him more than Nickeil while the latter won Most Improved Player.
This was and is a crushing choice for the now restructured Wolves. The Pacers cannot afford to fall to the same mistake.
It could make sense to extend Siakam, the team's leading scorer, to another max deal across two years in order to gain some flexibility in that terrifying summer while keeping Pascal paid until his age-36 season.
It's harder to find fair numbers that don't take up a larger percentage of the cap than their current deals for the other three. However, if Toppin would like to take a pay cut to stay on the team where he revived his career, he could be an option as well.
It is not a tenable situation to have half of your roster becoming free agents at the same time. It is especially dangerous without in-house replacements for any of them.
A few surgical extensions could prevent that from happening entirely. You may lose a player in free agency, but you won't lose them because your attention is elsewhere.
It's time to cut out the self-inflicted errors entirely.
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