The Indiana Pacers will have to defy NBA history to win a championship in the near future.
The ping-pong balls didn’t bounce the Pacers’ way during the NBA Draft Lottery on May 10. Indiana fell to the fifth overall pick in what is expected to be a loaded draft. The choice will go to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the February trade that brought Ivica Zubac to the Pacers. Indiana would have kept the pick if it had landed in the top four.
The Pacers likely would have added a new player to their starting lineup if they had kept a top-four pick. Instead, Indiana enters the 2026-27 season with a projected starting lineup of Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Pascal Siakam, and Zubac.
History lesson
The good news for Indiana fans is that a team led by that lineup should contend for the Eastern Conference title. And any team good enough to win its conference has a puncher’s chance to win a ring.
If the Pacers can pull off a championship run with that lineup, they go against the grain of NBA history.
Indiana’s projected lineup doesn’t include anyone who was one of the franchise’s own first-round draft picks. Nembhard was a savvy second-round selection. Haliburton, Nesmith, Siakam, and Zubac arrived in Indianapolis via trades.
Just one team in the NBA’s shot-clock era has won a championship without one of its own first-round draft picks in the starting lineup.
It’s happened as often as a once-in-a-century pandemic. And the team that did it was the Los Angeles Lakers, who claimed the “bubble” championship during the COVID-affected 2019-20 season. Los Angeles’ primary starters that season were LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Danny Green, JaVale McGee, and a combination of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Avery Bradley. The Lakers acquired Davis in a trade. Everyone else in that lineup came to Los Angeles as a free agent.
Note: If a player was traded on draft day, we’re crediting the team that wound up with the player as the drafting team. For example, Kawhi Leonard was technically drafted by the Pacers but was immediately traded to the San Antonio Spurs. For these purposes, Leonard counts as a Spurs first-round pick.
Before the 2020 Lakers, you have to go all the way back to the first three league champions – the 1947 Philadelphia Warriors, the 1948 Baltimore Bullets, and the 1949 Minneapolis Lakers – to find teams that won titles without one of their own first-round draft picks on their roster. The league wasn’t even called the NBA back then – it was called the Basketball Association of America, or BAA.
The Warriors couldn’t help but not have a first-round draft choice in their lineup. There wasn’t a draft before the league’s inaugural 1946-47 season. The Bullets and Lakers came to the BAA with established rosters after competing in other leagues.
What are the odds?
The odds of a Pacer championship in the near future would have been much higher had the lottery ping-pong balls bounced Indiana’s way.
If they pull it off anyway with their first-round-pick-free projected lineup, they’ll arguably be the most uniquely built champion in league history.
We have always been resilient,” was president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard’s message to Indiana fans after the draft lottery.
Pacer fans can only hope he’s right.
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