It's no secret to the rest of the league that the Indiana Pacers do not have the best depth at center. This situation was especially dire before the team made the trade for Ivica Zubac at last year's trade deadline, but even now their backup five is Jay Huff, who likely should not be a part of the rotation of any particularly great team.
However, depth matters, and having playable options matters if someone misses time. Behind Huff is undrafted free agent Rienk Mast, who has quietly turned an excellent Las Vegas Summer League into an equally good preseason and may work his way up to a 10-day contract in case of emergency big-man needs.
Mast, for his part, has shown to be a very similar player to Huff as an undersized center who can shoot. The big difference is that Huff is set to be a free agent, while Mast will remain under team control as long as the team wants him.
With the future of the backup center position still in doubt, there is no reason for the Pacers not to groom Mast into being Zubac's number two.
Mast to Port
Mast won everything at the junior level in his home country of the Netherlands before coming over to play college basketball at Nebraska. He parlayed a good 4-year career into a summer league invite with the Pacers, where he drew comparisons to former Pacers center and Dutch countryman Rik Smits.
Smits made the Hall of Fame, so any expectation of copying that is incredibly unlikely, if not because of the talent level, then because of the inevitability of being stuck behind Zubac. However, any value is good value, and finding a difference-maker in the undrafted free agent Market could be huge for the Pacers.
Development has been something Indiana has failed at on a grand scale over the past nearly 10 years. While they've been able to trade for players and see improvements from them, their own young drafted (or in this case undrafted) pieces have failed to work out at a startling and disappointing rate.
Chris Duarte was bad. Isaiah Jackson was useless. Jarace Walker has shown to be little more than a flash in the pan this preseason.
The only draft pick to truly work out since Myles Turner was Andrew Nembhard. The second-round pick quickly earned his rotation spot and is now a key starter for a Pacers team chasing a title just a few years after he was drafted.
Expecting Mast to be much more than a decent eighth man is probably overly ambitious, but the more he plays, the more likely it seems that he could become something worth investing in for the future.
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