Head coach Rick Carlisle made it clear on February 24 that he didn’t think the Pacers deserved to be fined $100K by the NBA last month for the way they managed their players. Commissioner Adam Silver‘s statement at the time suggested the league thought Indiana (and Utah, which was docked $500K) was prioritizing “draft position over winning.”
Speaking to the media prior to Friday’s game in Los Angeles, Carlisle changed his tune, saying he was confident in the league’s ability to address tanking, according to Sportsnaut contributor Mark Medina.
“I place every bit of trust I have in Adam Silver,” Carlisle said. “This man is privy to be the ultimate leader. He really has. He really has smart people around him. They very carefully consider everything. They never react. They always think through things.”
While Carlisle’s remarks about the league were more generous than the ones he made a couple weeks ago, he strongly pushed back on the notion that coaches of tanking teams are negatively impacted by the practice, Medina writes. Carlisle specifically pointed to Mark Daigneault of the Thunder as someone who has benefited from the current system.
“You have the two best teams in the league — one in the East (Detroit) and one in the West (Oklahoma City) — that have built their teams much the same way,” Carlisle said. “I think Daigneault is a great example. He was a G League coach. But he built a relationship in that organization and a partnership. If he built those relationships and you become a real partner, the wins and losses, this is just my opinion, the wins and losses element of it, isn’t going to be that kind of a factor.”
Here’s more on the Pacers:
Wednesday’s game in L.A. marked the first time Pacers first-round picks Bennedict Mathurin and Isaiah Jackson faced their former team since they were traded to the Clippers ahead of last month’s deadline. As Tony East of Circle City Spin writes, Jackson said he was caught off guard by the trade, adding that it was “surreal” and “bittersweet” to face the Pacers after spending spending five-and-a-half years with Indiana. Mathurin expressed a similar sentiment. “It was tough. It was tough for sure. … Everything I know is kind of based off of Indy, whether it’s just the lifestyle, on the court, off the court,” Mathurin said. “But I mean, it was good. It was definitely worth it – the change of scenery and also the change of organization. I said earlier that I was super grateful to be part of both, two great parties. It’s been fun, man. It’s been fun out here so far. My teammates have embraced me a lot, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.“
Kobe Brown was something of an afterthought in the aforementioned deal that saw Ivica Zubac land with Indiana, but the third-year forward has played pretty well as a Pacer, averaging 8.8 points and 5.3 rebounds on .471/.423/.786 shooting in 10 games (24.8 minutes per contest). While Brown is unlikely to be a priority for the Pacers in free agency this summer, they will be limited in what they can offer him after the Clippers declined his fourth-year option in the fall, East notes for Forbes. It probably won’t have a material impact on contract negotiations, East acknowledges, since Brown seems unlikely to command a deal in this range, but Indiana can’t offer him a starting salary exceeding $4.8MM in 2026/27, whereas other teams won’t face that same restriction.
Defense remains a major issue for the Pacers, per Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star (subscriber link). They’re at the bottom of several defensive stats — including defensive rating — since the All-Star break, a trend that continued in Friday’s loss to the Lakers, which was far more lopsided than the final score (128-117) suggests. “In the first half, we had three or four times where we went for shot fakes and gave up and-ones or free throws,” Carlisle said. “That’s game-plan discipline. We can do better there. That’s controllable. It takes not talent. It just takes recognition and attention to detail and focus.”