{"id":646159,"date":"2026-03-08T00:15:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T00:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/646159\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T00:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T00:15:16","slug":"pacers-notes-carlisle-mathurin-i-jackson-brown-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/646159\/","title":{"rendered":"Pacers Notes: Carlisle, Mathurin, I. Jackson, Brown, Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Head coach Rick Carlisle made it clear<\/a> on February 24 that he didn\u2019t think the Pacers deserved to be fined $100K<\/a> by the NBA last month for the way they managed their players. Commissioner Adam Silver\u2018s statement at the time suggested the league thought Indiana (and Utah, which was docked $500K) was prioritizing \u201cdraft position over winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to the media prior to Friday\u2019s game in Los Angeles, Carlisle changed his tune, saying he was confident in the league\u2019s ability to address tanking<\/a>, according to Sportsnaut contributor Mark Medina<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI place every bit of trust I have in Adam Silver,\u201d Carlisle said. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Carlisle\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the two best teams in the league \u2014 one in the East (Detroit) and one in the West (Oklahoma City) \u2014 that have built their teams much the same way,\u201d Carlisle said. \u201cI 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\u2019t going to be that kind of a factor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more on the Pacers:<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s game in L.A. marked the first time Pacers first-round picks Bennedict Mathurin<\/a> and Isaiah Jackson<\/a> faced their former team since they were traded to the Clippers ahead of last month\u2019s deadline. As Tony East of Circle City Spin<\/a> writes, Jackson said he was caught off guard by the trade, adding that it was \u201csurreal\u201d and \u201cbittersweet\u201d to face the Pacers after spending spending five-and-a-half years with Indiana. Mathurin expressed a similar sentiment. \u201cIt was tough. It was tough for sure. \u2026 Everything I know is kind of based off of Indy, whether it\u2019s just the lifestyle, on the court, off the court,\u201d Mathurin said. \u201cBut I mean, it was good. It was definitely worth it \u2013 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\u2019s been fun, man. It\u2019s been fun out here so far. My teammates have embraced me a lot, and I wouldn\u2019t trade it for anything.\u201c
\nKobe Brown<\/a> was something of an afterthought in the aforementioned deal that saw Ivica Zubac<\/a> 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<\/a>. It probably won\u2019t have a material impact on contract negotiations, East acknowledges, since Brown seems unlikely to command a deal in this range, but Indiana can\u2019t offer him a starting salary exceeding $4.8MM in 2026\/27, whereas other teams won\u2019t face that same restriction.
\nDefense remains a major issue for the Pacers, per Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star<\/a> (subscriber link). They\u2019re at the bottom of several defensive stats \u2014 including defensive rating \u2014 since the All-Star break, a trend that continued in Friday\u2019s loss to the Lakers, which was far more lopsided than the final score (128-117) suggests. \u201cIn the first half, we had three or four times where we went for shot fakes and gave up and-ones or free throws,\u201d Carlisle said. \u201cThat\u2019s game-plan discipline. We can do better there. That\u2019s controllable. It takes not talent. It just takes recognition and attention to detail and focus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Head coach Rick Carlisle made it clear on February 24 that he didn\u2019t think the Pacers deserved to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[7,363,113,126,3866,2542,4042,6,114,1714],"class_list":{"0":"post-646159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indiana-pacers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bennedict-mathurin","10":"tag-indiana","11":"tag-indiana-pacers","12":"tag-indianapacers","13":"tag-isaiah-jackson","14":"tag-kobe-brown","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-pacers","17":"tag-rick-carlisle"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116190676856951160","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646159","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=646159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}