To say Ivica Zubac has been disappointing this season would be to underestimate the sheer quality of player people were expecting after the Indiana Pacers traded Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, two first-round picks, including the fifth overall selection last year, and a second-rounder for him.
Indiana gave up a haul for the Croatian center and is now finding that they may have been sold a lemon. That is not to say that the future of Zubac's career in Indiana is over, but it's safe to say that his benching on Monday night against the Dallas Mavericks is a pretty bad sign.
The Pacers lost by just three points to the Mavericks after being outscored by 13 in the second half. A huge part of the reason that Indiana lost despite making more threes and shooting a better percentage from the field is that they got absolutely demolished on the glass.
While this is not solely Zubac's fault – after all, rebounding is a team metric – the fact that Indiana lost the rebounding margin by 16 and gave up 10 offensive rebounds, while the center had only three boards, is staggering.
Things got so bad that head coach Rick Carlisle decided to bench his starting center, instead choosing to play small ball for the last 10 or so minutes of the contest.
Zubac will need to be far better if Indiana wants to reclaim past standards
It may feel like a long time ago, but do you remember the 2024-25 Indiana Pacers? Despite being only two seasons ago, it seems hard to think back to a team that had so many glaring weaknesses that they just overcame by committing the team to fixing them.
Any team with Myles Turner as the starting center is going to have rebounding issues. He is a flawed player in that regard. However, the Pacers solved this by bringing back Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam, while sending their wings upcourt in order to spark full-court possessions even on a run-of-the-mill defensive rebound.
It's harder to find an answer on how to fix the rebounding issues with Zubac, who was supposed to be good enough to solve it on his own. After all, that was one of the biggest perceived strengths in acquiring him.
The easiest answer would be for Zubac to simply figure it out. His 7.7 per-game number is the lowest in his career since he became a starter in Los Angeles, and it's not crazy to expect some positive regression to the mean.
However, the scheme could also help him by once again asking more from Siakam. Indiana bleeds offensive rebounds and struggles to get any of their own. Maybe it's time to put on some training wheels, even if that means changing the identity of the team just a bit.
Either way, if Zubac continues to play at this mediocre level on defense, his offensive production (16 points against the Mavs on great efficiency) will not matter nearly enough to justify the price the Pacers paid.
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