The Indiana Pacers and Utah Jazz spent much of last year in a race to the bottom, desperately searching to add a young cornerstone to a team that was hoping to be quite good in the upcoming 2026-27 season.
The Pacers won 19 games, while the Jazz won 22. Maybe Indiana should have won slightly more, as the Jazz jumped into the top four on lottery night, pushing the Pacers to the fifth pick. That pick was conveyed to the LA Clippers as part of the Ivica Zubac trade.
That one shift, that singular ping-pong ball difference, now separates two teams that spent last year in a lot of the same places. From the preseason hype to the mid-season tanking to the trade deadline moves for some exciting, albeit flawed, big men, these were franchises briefly living the same life.
Now, as the start of the NBA season ticks forward, they will be foils for each other, forever connected through what the Jazz inadvertently took from the Pacers.
Indiana is without their young gap-year prize, instead hoping Zubac is worth a full lost year. Utah gets both their rookie and veteran with Darryn Peterson and Jaren Jackson Jr.
There are comparisons to be drawn, but they ended on that single fateful night. Even just over the summer, the teams have been opposites.
The Jazz have had a far more eventful offseason, resigning Keyonte George and trading Walker Kessler for multiple first-round picks and pick swaps, while Indiana has done little beyond hope that Tyrese Haliburton can return to form.
To add to it, the Pacers need to make a good showing this year to keep this era afloat, while the Jazz could fail once again and only lose out on a pick they sent to the Memphis Grizzlies as part of the JJJ trade.
The stakes are so vastly different. In that way, it was far more important for Indiana to keep their pick than it was for Utah to move into the top four. The Pacers are trying to drive stick shift on the highway with a blown tire and a deadline to hit, while the Jazz are doing 10 mph on a golf cart.
One needs to succeed to survive; the other is playing with house money.
It just seems cruel that Indiana is forced to watch such an undeserving candidate get the draft luck they needed.
Can Jaren Jackson Jr. and Ivica Zubac take their teams to a new level?
Indiana and Utah were the two most aggressive teams at the deadline this year. With all due respect to James Harden's move to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Washington Wizards buying low on Trae Young (which rapidly turned into an ill-fated payday), their trades were for stars in the midst of their primes, not for washed-up all-stars or fringe starters.
Funny enough, Zubac and Jackson are opposite players at similar positions.
Zubac is a master of using his size to make his teammates' lives easier and is one of the best possession-margin winners in the league. Jackson is a great rim protector who cannot rebound and who plays with a versatility and modernity that Zubac lacks.
Now, both are at the center (get it?) of their teams' bids for relevancy after a lost season. Jackson will be forced to play as a center, which is clearly less than ideal for his skill set. Zubac will have to increase his play speed after excelling in a largely half-court pick-and-roll system.
There are so many answers waiting in the season. Waiting for it to start is miserable.
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