{"id":134959,"date":"2025-06-29T21:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T21:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/134959\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T21:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T21:11:11","slug":"indiana-pacers-take-big-swing-risk-with-nba-draft-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/134959\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana Pacers Take Big Swing, Risk With NBA Draft Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indiana Pacers Take Big Swing, Risk With NBA Draft Picks<\/a> originally appeared on Athlon Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Indiana Pacers did not have a first-round pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, although that did not stop them from adding quality talent on the second night of the event.<\/p>\n

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After conducting a trade with the San Antonio Spurs, the Pacers picked Kam Jones 38th overall, and then added Taelon Peter 54th overall. Both were standout college players, with Jones being one of the best second-round players in the class.<\/p>\n

However, neither addresses the lack of frontcourt depth that has plagued the Pacers since November, although both could play a role right away as Tyrese Haliburton recovers from injury.<\/p>\n

While not filling an area of need, the Jones pick was heralded as one of the best.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a perfect schematic pick for the Pacers as Jones has played in a similar scheme to the one Indiana runs during the last two years at Marquette,” wrote The Athletic’s<\/a> Sam Vecenie about picking Jones.<\/p>\n

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Adding Peter, on the other hand, was a roll of the dice.<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t see an NBA player here, but a few analytics execs saw his name pop in models with how efficient he is as a scorer and became fans of him during the process,” Vecenie added about Peter. “He\u2019ll likely be on a two-way.”<\/p>\n

Peter was the most effecient scorer in the NCAA last season, making 45.3 percent of his shots from deep while leading the country in true shooting percentage, but that doesn’t mean he will find NBA success. He played three DII seasons and barely cracked the rotation as a freshman at Tennessee Tech. Expect the same in the NBA.<\/p>\n

Check out the All Pacers homepage<\/a> for more news, analysis, and must-read articles.<\/p>\n

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Related: Proposed Trade Between Lakers and Pacers Shows What’s Wrong With NBA<\/a><\/p>\n

Related: Why Indiana Pacers Not Picking in 2025 NBA Draft is Genius<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Jun 29, 2025, where it first appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indiana Pacers Take Big Swing, Risk With NBA Draft Picks originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The Indiana Pacers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,126,4233,6,12,474,25642,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-134959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-draft","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-indiana-pacers","10":"tag-kam-jones","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nba-draft","13":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","14":"tag-taelon-peter","15":"tag-tyrese-haliburton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114768713061693242","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}