Ivica Zubac hasn’t taken the court since Feb. 2 due to a left ankle sprain, and while he was out he was traded from the LA Clippers to the Indiana Pacers. Thursday night, he will make his debut for his new team.<\/p>\n
This season with the Clippers, Zubac averaged 14.4 points and 11 rebounds per game, shooting 61.3% from the floor. He will also provide a defensive presence in the paint that Indiana has lacked all season. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said Zubac would eventually play this season, this may have been a little quicker than his expected return but he is back.<\/p>\n
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While Zubac is back, the Pacers don’t want him to start helping them win games quite yet. As part of the trade, Indiana’s first-round pick this June goes to the Clippers, however, the pick is top-four protected. At 15-50, Indiana has the league’s worst record, but with lottery odds, that makes just a 52% chance Indy gets to keep the pick. Indiana, Brooklyn, Sacramento and Washington are in a tight “race” to the bottom \u2014 they are all within two games of each other in the standings \u2014 and if the Pacers fall to the fourth-worst record, then they end up on the wrong side of those coin flip odds.<\/p>\n
The Pacers traded a first-round pick for Zubac looking ahead to next season. That’s when Zubac will be setting picks for a healthy Tyrese Haliburton (out for the season with a torn Achilles), as well as Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard \u2014 and maybe a young star they draft this June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ivica Zubac hasn’t taken the court since Feb. 2 due to a left ankle sprain, and while he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3789],"tags":[1784,7,670,559,126,532,4034,192,4032,251,135,4033,4031,6,279,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-655668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-clippers","8":"tag-andrew-nembhard","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-brooklyn","11":"tag-clippers","12":"tag-indiana-pacers","13":"tag-ivica-zubac","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-clippers","16":"tag-laclippers","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-losangelesclippers","21":"tag-nba","22":"tag-pascal-siakam","23":"tag-tyrese-haliburton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116220040262888606","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655668","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=655668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}