How Rick Carlisle can help a young Pacers team continue to develop

The Indiana Pacers are still a very young team. Despite the good things that they did this year, they have to build on the progress they made this year. Making the Eastern Conference Finals was a great firs playoff appearance since 2020, but they are looking for more.

Indiana has a young team still. The core of the team is very young. Pascal Siakam would be the oldest starter at the age of 30 if he re-signs with the team. That means they are still going to need to guidance of their head coach to help put them in spots to win.

Rick Carlisle made some stupid mistakes in the playoffs, most notably in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. He knows better than that. But he did an excellent job of getting this team to play as a cohesive unit on the offensive side of the ball. Now, it's time to take it a step further.

Rick Carlisle can help the Pacers improve on defense next year

Carlisle did his job by helping the Pacers play at a fast pace and making quick decisions on offense. Now he needs to do the same on the opposite end of the court. It's clear the defense is what's holding them back from being a Finals team. It's what kept them out of it this year.

Indiana needs help on the perimeter in the personnel department. Carlisle has some say in that but doesn't have complete control. What he does have control over is how the team gets in position defensively to make sure they aren't allowing players to get by them so easily.

It would be hard for the Pacers to be much worse than they were defensively this past team. They don't even need to be elite on defense. They just need to be average. At times against Boston, they showed the ability to be average. They just didn't have the consistency they needed.

Consistency is what Carlisle can coach. If he can do that, this team might make it out of the East for the first time since 2000.