LAS VEGAS — While the NBA world focused on the latest chapters in the league’s long-running series of “As This Unhappy Star Turns,” the Indiana Pacers quietly yet definitively put together a very nice offseason. They did it without much pomp, but after running through the 2022-23 season as one of the league’s up-and-coming surprises, Indiana used the last few weeks to augment a young and emerging roster.
The Pacers moved quickly to give Tyrese Haliburton a designated rookie max extension, cementing him as the centerpiece of their project. They drafted a defensive-minded big in Jarace Walker with the eighth pick and sent two second-round picks to New York for Obi Toppin, an underused but dynamic power forward who went four spots ahead of Haliburton in the 2020 lottery. They recouped those seconds by sending their own 2021 lottery pick, Chris Duarte, to the Kings.
The biggest addition, however, came early into free agency on June 30, when they agreed to terms with Bruce Brown on a two-year, $45 million contract. It was an audacious maneuver. Flush with cap room, the Pacers used it to splash the pot and outspend the rest of the market for the highly sought-after wing. It was, general manager Chad Buchanan concedes, “a very unique way of pursuing him.”
“What other teams are willing to pay him? And what we were willing to pay him is a big, significant gap,” Buchanan told The Athletic. “But we also knew that maybe it’s a little more than maybe the market would say, but it was the way we as an organization and as a team have to approach free agency sometimes. We got to be a little creative. We got to maybe go deeper with a pay to get a guy, but it was the guy we wanted.
“We wanted to do what it took to get him, and working with his agents, right at the strike of free agency and talking about ‘OK, where were the other teams at? Where would we need to come in to get Bruce to turn down some of these other options from other more established teams than us?’ Buchanan added. “We’re a young team, and for Bruce to come in and leave a championship team and some other teams (that) are after him to come to play for a young team, we realize it was gonna probably take a unique way to approach luring him to us.”
Brown had a list of suitors lined up — he was expected to be able to choose from a number of offers at or over the midlevel exception worth a little more than $12 million — but the Pacers wanted Brown and acted aggressively to sign him. Haliburton made his own personal pitch as well, and Brown only spoke to one other team, the Knicks, he said, before taking Indiana’s offer.
The Pacers went after Brown because they envision a scenario where the 26-year-old could be more than just a role player, as he had been in Brooklyn and Denver. Buchanan said he thinks Brown could take another step forward in his career, even after serving as a highly important glue guy for an NBA champion while also setting highs in points and assists per game.
Brown should fit in seamlessly to a roster that has talent but is still young and short on experience. Haliburton is 23, Bennedict Mathurin is entering his second season, Toppin has played in the NBA for three seasons but didn’t get a lot of minutes, and Andrew Nembhard played the third-most minutes on the team last season despite being a rookie second-round pick.
Most of all, the Pacers will need him to lift up their defense.
“We’re a great offensive group,” Buchanan said. “We need to find some guys that can do the dirty work, the guys that were gonna embrace being a great defender, that were gonna relish guarding other teams’ great scorers. … He played so many different positions. He guards so many different positions, and he’s improved his shooting. He’s just very adaptable. I think that’s why he had such strong value on the market.”
The Pacers highlighted their defense as a major spot for improvement and targeted their offseason around it. Brown should help as a jack-of-all-trades defender. Walker came into the draft with a reputation for potentially becoming a defensive ace in the frontcourt. He’ll undoubtedly struggle at times — as all rookies are wont to do — but could become a foundational piece of the defense down the line.
He already has turned some heads during Las Vegas Summer League with not only his rim protection and sly hands on defense but also some deft passing.
Jarace Walker gets the rejection 😤 🚫
Watch the No. 8 overall pick in action in the #NBA2KSummerLeague on ESPN2. pic.twitter.com/lQSA75HTx3
— NBA (@NBA) July 9, 2023
“He’s different,” Mathurin said. “His presence is unbelievable. His wingspan is great. I love his energy. That’s the one thing we’re going to need from him. Coming in as a rookie playing defense is really hard.”
They showed signs of potential last season, sitting at 23-18 in early January before a late swoon. Some of that was tied to Haliburton, who injured his knee and elbow Jan. 11 in a loss to the Knicks and missed the next 10 games. Indiana lost all but one of those games, part of a 2-15 stretch heading into the All-Star break. The Pacers went 28-28 in games Haliburton played and 7-19 otherwise.
But the Pacers’ issues went further than occasionally missing their All-Star. They also had the NBA’s worst defensive rebounding rate, turned the ball over too frequently and gave up too many free throws. Indiana also owned the fifth-worst defense in the league last season.
“If we can become a top-20 defense, I think we would make a pretty good jump, have a chance to make a good jump. And competing for a playoff spot, I think we’d love to be in that position this year,” Buchanan said. “If it’s a Play-In, playoff, wherever it is. Maybe we realized we’re not a top-four-type seed roster at this point with as much youth as we have. But I think our guys are motivated to make a run to get into the playoffs, and I think it’s going to take each guy elevating their play, because last year, we had a good stretch to begin the season, and we kind of fell off a little bit the last half of the season. But I think our guys are motivated to try; let’s try to get into the Play-In and see if we can get in the playoffs and really get that experience under our belts for a young team.”
The Pacers also will lean into what worked for them. Indiana played fast last season and trailed only four teams in overall pace, according to NBA.com. The Pacers also owned the fourth-quickest time to shot, via Inpredictable. Only the Thunder took a shot faster, on average, than the Pacers did after a made basket.
Buchanan pointed to Rick Carlisle as the reason. The head coach, Buchanan said, likes to play to the strengths of his best player, and Haliburton likes to get out and push the ball.
The front office also wanted to build around him. Brown can run, and Walker is a spry athlete at his size. Toppin is at his best in transition, which also made him a poor fit with the Knicks.
The Pacers have a runway to build. Buchanan hopes for improvement but did not clearly define what resembles progress. With some small signs of promise already, and a young team, the Pacers have time to see how things develop around Haliburton. There is young talent aboard, and veterans Buddy Hield and Myles Turner are strong complements. They also have contracts that give Indiana flexibility; Hield is a free agent after 2023-24, and Turner has two years left on his deal.
The Pacers have already been linked to potential big moves this summer. SportsNet’s Michael Grange reported that Indiana has reached out to Toronto about Raptors All-Star forward Pascal Siakam, while Marc Stein reported the Pacers are a legitimate contender to trade for him.
Asked if the Pacers were done for the offseason, Buchanan seemed content to let the current roster get settled and grow together, but he also left the door ajar for the franchise to act if it sees fit.
“We still have a little room left,” he said. “But I don’t think a team’s done until you’re done. We’ll always try to be opportunistic when we can on anything. But I don’t think we’re like aggressively pursuing anything right now. But you always think every team in the league is gonna wait till what opportunities are out there. Obviously, some big names out there … could get moved still this offseason, and if that filters down and impacts other teams, if it impacts us, we’ll consider it. But, if it doesn’t, we’re also happy with this group now. We’re not going to rush things to try to jump and go all in right now. I don’t think that’s where we’re at. We don’t have that. We’re not one player away from being a championship-caliber team. I think we realize it takes time and it takes guys developing and growing.”
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Is Watson the next man up?
While the Pacers celebrated Brown’s arrival, his old team, the Denver Nuggets, will surely miss him. Look no further than Michael Malone’s title-parade plea for Brown to return as an example of how much he meant to the champs.
Brown was a key part of the Nuggets’ success this past season, and Denver is now missing two important rotation players as Jeff Green also left in free agency.
Peyton Watson is expected to factor into replacing Brown. He’s a 6-foot-8 wing who spent his rookie year, essentially, in Denver’s development academy after being the final pick of the first round in June 2022. He logged just 200 minutes across the regular season and playoffs, and that was after coming into the NBA after averaging only 12.7 minutes per game in his one year at UCLA.
He called himself “one of the bigger mysteries” in the draft at the 2022 draft combine, but Watson is intriguing. He was a consensus top-10 recruit in the 2021 high school class and has a 7-0 1/2 wingspan. He has the profile of a possibly disruptive defender.
Watson said he has begun to feel more comfortable in his role with the Nuggets.
“It’s just going to be on what the team needs,” he said. “I feel like I can really, really come in and affect the game on defense. I think that’s my niche right now. Just having energy defensively, getting those blocks, getting those steals and giving our team some energy.”
John Beckett, a Nuggets assistant coach and the team’s summer-league head coach, said it will be easier for Denver to trust Watson in a larger role next season because of the growth he’s shown over the past year. That growth, he said, has mostly come in how he’s been off the court.
“Just his professionalism,” Beckett said. “The fact that he’s taking care of his body more, getting his rest, eating the proper things, coming to practice on time, practicing hard and with pace. That’s probably the biggest area where he’s showed it.”
Smaller stakes
The NBA has lowered the limit on how small of a stake someone can own in one of its franchises. The minimum threshold in equity someone can take in a team is now down to 0.5 percent, according to league sources. It had been 1 percent.
A little more in players’ pockets
If you want more evidence that business is booming for the NBA right now, you can look at how fast the salary cap is rising — up 10 percent from the 2022-23 season to this upcoming one — or look at where escrow payments ended up this past season for the players.
Just 2.64 percent was taken out of the players’ paychecks for escrow payments for the 2022-23 season after the league finished its annual financial audit, according to league sources. The NBA usually takes out 10 percent of player’s salaries to put into escrow, though this amount was increased after the COVID-19 pandemic to try to make up for expected shortages in basketball related income.
The NBA and its players have a roughly 50/50 split of basketball related income, though it could tilt up to 51 percent for the players or the league, depending on how much BRI the NBA nets compared to the forecast number, and a portion of players’ salaries is put into escrow to make up for any potential shortfalls. If revenues exceed the projections, then money from the pot put into escrow is redistributed to players.
Silver says
The first investment from a sovereign wealth fund into a major North American pro sports team became official Monday, as Monumental Sports announced that it had sold a minority stake in its company to the Qatari Investment Authority. Monumental Sports is the parent company of the Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics; the QIA is the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar. It’s the first time a sovereign wealth fund had bought in after the NBA changed its rules late last year to facilitate such a deal.
This investment has raised questions of what could come down the line. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has gone on a shopping spree of late, buying Newcastle FC in the English Premier League and recently agreeing to a financial merger with the PGA Tour. Each endeavor has been met with skepticism about the nation using its vast financial resources to sportswash its international reputation, which includes criticisms from other nations regarding human rights violations.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver, speaking in a Q&A this week at the Associated Press Sports Editors conference, didn’t address the PIF specifically, but he did reiterate that sovereign wealth funds cannot buy a controlling interest in an NBA team. Currently, sovereign wealth funds, like private equity firms, are limited to holding no more than a 20 percent stake in a franchise; it must also be a passive investment with no say in operations.
“I don’t want to say what could ever happen, but there’s no contemplation right now,” Silver said. “It’s very important to us — put aside sovereign wealth funds — that individuals are in position to control our teams to be responsible to fans, to be responsible to their partners and to the players.”
Silver was also asked if he could see that limit changing.
“No. Not in the foreseeable future, no,” he said. “It’s very important to us that it’s a person. And this is independent of sovereign wealth funds.”
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Watch and learn
One of the cool things about being at Las Vegas Summer League is just walking around the Thomas & Mack Center because you never know what you’ll run into — like the two large computer screens deployed about two Victor Wembanyamas away from the baseline on one end of the court.
Those two screens belong to the folks at Hawk-Eye Innovations, which will be the league’s tracking data supplier this upcoming season for the first time. Hawk-Eye says it will use its 3D optical tracking tech to provide teams with data captured in three dimensions, including pose data based on some 20-plus points on the body — as opposed to the one-dot center of mass that Second Spectrum relied on — so it can identify extremities and joints on the body and player orientation. That should allow teams to receive more granular information, from things like more accurate shot contest data to possible uses in sports science. Here’s a short video, courtesy of the NBA and Hawk-Eye, that shows what the video on those screens looks like and what the company could possibly provide to teams starting next season.
No draft, no problem?
This summer was more proof that not getting picked in the NBA Draft is not the end of the road for aspiring players. Undrafted players signed contracts this offseason that could be worth as much as roughly $390 million, headlined by the $128 million deal Fred VanVleet received from the Houston Rockets. Max Strus and Gabe Vincent, two alums of the Miami Heat’s Undrafted Development Academy, signed contracts worth over a combined $95 million.
Second-round picks also did well. They signed contracts that could be worth more than $650 million in total. Jerami Grant, a second-round pick in 2014, signed the biggest deal by any player in open free agency at five years and $160 million with the Trail Blazers. Draymond Green re-signed for $100 million with the Warriors. Khris Middleton signed a three-year, $93 million deal with the Bucks that could reach $102 million if he hits certain incentives.
(Top photo of Bruce Brown: Ron Hoskins / NBAE via Getty Images)