The Indiana Pacers are partnering with DAZN to make Pacers basketball more accessible for fans. While the plans start at 20 dollars a month, the streaming service will also provide free viewership for 22 regular season games and all four preseason matchups.
While the question of where to watch games has become more and more convoluted, this easy access to a couple of handfuls will help all fans, but specifically the loud talking box score watcher.
To be clear, every fan has been there. You miss a game, you glance at a recap, and claim to have been right about every bit of a matchup you didn't even experience. It's funny, it's harmless, and it's only one game after all.
However, as we all know, the more you do this, the harder it is to get back on the horse of watching games. It becomes easier and easier to talk complete nonsense until you look in the mirror and see, in all its horror...
You are a Los Angeles Lakers fan, resigned to posting jersey swaps that will somehow actually happen while bragging about living in a city that takes four hours to drive through.
No, the answer is finding the opportunity to regain some ball knowledge by reading some more 8 Points, 9 Seconds posts (sorry, but it had to happen) and by watching a few more games in between posting your way around the internet.
Indiana is in line for a big season, and a fun one at that, despite the pretty extreme expectations for a team that would've picked top-five if it weren't for a previous trade, and watching sounds like a worthwhile commitment.
Why the Pacers are worth watching for at least a quarter of the season
The Pacers are a fun team. They run, they shoot, and they defend. Most importantly, they do so in a way that consistently provides awesome basketball.
Instead of relying on a singular star scorer to take over a game, Indiana has their system to generate fast-moving scoring opportunities that no team can really match. Everyone runs, but in a league obsessed with pace, the suitably named Pacers do so better than everyone.
That's not to say that Indiana is without star players. Their top two options are deeply underrated as scorers because of the other things they do at an elite rate.
The returning Tyrese Haliburton is arguably the best pure playmaker in the league, an absolute maestro at running an efficient offense. Pascal Siakam is versatility incarnate, playing both within that aforementioned system and as a late in the shotclock option.
Those two names have defined the recent history of the Indiana Pacers. When they made the Finals in the 2024-25 season, it was with a remarkably similar core to the team that fell so deep into the lottery last year.
The racers are ready, the engine is back in place, and the flag is ready to wave.
This will be a season-long return to form for Indiana.
Well, either that or a crushing lesson in defeat and depression. Either way should be fun, if for increasingly morbid or hopeful reasons.
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