The Indiana Pacers are built in a baffling way. In an era when the draft has reigned supreme as the talent acquisition pipeline for small-market teams, the Pacers have built their roster almost entirely through trades.
Four of the five presumed starters were brought in via trade, as are half of the presumed bench contributors. Part of that is, unfortunately, due to how badly the Pacers messed up their draft picks.
This Pacers rebuild started in 2021, after the Victor Oladipo era had found its sad little end. That means our starting point is with Chris Duarte going 13th overall. Despite a strong rookie year, Duarte was dumped to Sacramento for a few second-rounders while still on his rookie contract.
The 2022 season was defined by the trade of Domantas Sabonis (and bits) for Tyrese Haliburton (and bits). The Sacramento Kings traded their second-year floor general to appease their franchise star, and the Pacers got on the winning end of one of the most one-sided deals in recent memory.
While the Duarte draft pick is quite bad, it's from this point onwards that the microscope was on every single draft pick. The Pacers had their cornerstone. They just needed to find another.
They failed to do so across four first-rounders, including two top-10 picks. Here's how that happened, and how it could've gone differently.
The ghosts of wasted draft picks litter Pacers' roster
In the first offseason after acquiring Haliburton, the Pacers held the sixth overall pick. While they had missed out on the top prize of Paolo Banchero, they had an opportunity to find a real running mate alongside their pass-first point guard.
They opted for Bennedict Mathurin, the score-first wing out of Arizona. Mathurin had moments, including some vital scoring in that Finals run, but fell short of expectations and was eventually moved as part of the home run trade for Ivica Zubac.
While Mathurin was not the worst pick of that lottery (seriously, Johnny Davis was a top-ten pick), it's difficult to think of how good a fit Shaedon Sharpe or Dyson Daniels – the seventh and eighth picks – could have been on this team.
Sharpe would be a similar archetype to Mathurin, with real injury concerns, but with far more shooting and creation upside. Dyson, on the other hand, would've brought many of the defensive elements of TJ McConnell in a much larger frame. There are a few things outside of shooting that he doesn't do at an excellent level.
The Pacers managed to find Andrew Nembhard in the second round, but missing out on a difference-maker with the first real pick of their rebuild was a tragic misstep.
Just a year later, Indiana would re-enter the draft with three first-round picks, including the seventh overall pick. They wound up trading down to eighth overall, where they took Houston forward Jarace Walker.
Walker is still an underexplored lump of massive potential and talent, but to call him a success story would be lying. At the very least, he is not considerably worse than the players taken around him. After the top pick of Victor Wembanyama, this was a very weak class.
No, the larger issue comes with the late first. Indiana took Ben Sheppard at 26th overall and dumped the 29th pick to the Denver Nuggets. They brought back Mojave King, who has yet to play an NBA game, and a first-round pick they would trade for Pascal Siakam.
While the process netted a piece that was used in the Siakam trade, the idea of Brice Sensabaugh off the bench over Sheppard is oddly satisfying. Sensabaugh is the exact type of versatile forward with some creation juice that Indiana could benefit from greatly right now.
By the time 2024 hit, Indiana no longer had any picks of their own. The 19th and 29th picks were in Toronto, and while the Pacers could and should celebrate that move, it marked the end of their chances to draft another young cornerstone.
Sadly, the last first-round draft pick the Pacers hit on was probably Myles Turner in 2015.
This has been and is the Achilles' heel of a front office that is generally excellent. If the Pacers run out of time with their veteran-led supporting cast for Haliburton, this will be the reason why—a series of wasted draft picks that could have been avoided.
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