Indiana Pacers President Kevin Pritchard knows he must toe the fine line between neutral and accelerating
The Indiana Pacers front office made their shift in philosophy clear before this season began. They weren't going to look for short-term solutions anymore. Rather, they were going to take a more patient, longer-term approach to team building.
"We've been looking at one and two [year increments], and now we're looking at three and four," President of Basketball Operations Kevin Pritchard said before the season. His team was fresh off of a putrid 25-win season that prompted the franchise to enter a rebuild.
Such a plan, one where nothing is imminent, is challenging yet rewarding. It's even more difficult when, in year one of a new era, the team is impressive and ahead of schedule.
The 2022-23 Pacers were projected to be near the bottom of the standings. They had a young group with nearly a dozen players who were 26 or younger, which is what a long-term approach creates. Indiana had a roster built to contend in a few seasons.
Instead, they were strong right away. After one month of the season, they were 8-6. At Christmas, the team was 17-16. Halfway through the campaign, Indiana was 23-18, which put them in sixth place in the Eastern Conference. Early in the campaign, it looked like the blue and gold might contend right now.
Then, Tyrese Haliburton got injured. "We were competing for that top four or five... when [injuries] happened, it was going to be challenging to get back to that four, five, six range," Pritchard said Tuesday at his end-of-season press conference. He noted that his optimistic nature made him happy with the way that other players stepped up when Haliburton was out.
Haliburton, an All-Star this season, would miss 10 games, and the blue and gold won just one of them. It derailed their chance to compete this season and compounded into a lousy 12-29 second half of the season. While there were some things for Pritchard to be happy about from a development perspective, the lack of wins proved that the Pacers still have a ways to go to compete.
But still, the team went 35-47, far better than many expected. And they saw important development from the start of the season to the end from Haliburton, Bennedict Mathurin, Myles Turner, Andrew Nembhard, and other key young players. In those ways, it was a solid season for the blue and gold.
Pritchard viewed it as taking two steps forward from their starting point, essentially two seasons worth of building. That makes the next steps for the Pacers difficult to identify. In a typical rebuilding scenario, the second full season chronologically has some increased expectations but still is headlined by development while the third season features goals of winning and playing after the regular season. And the Pacers wanted to take a long-term approach when this season began, so that natural, typical path would make sense.
But everything went faster than expected for the blue and gold this year, and now they have to consider if they want to view their next season in a different context. Do they want to push a little sooner than expected? Or is patience still the right choice?
"We've won 25 games (in 2021-22), we've won 35 games (in 2022-23). Can we get to 45?" Pritchard mused. "We're obsessed with where you can lift your floor and lift your ceiling."
The ideal path, as Pritchard detailed, would be to get better organically and continue along through the team building cycle. More wins would come that way, yet no true path is chosen. The Pacers wouldn't be pot committed. That's hard to do, though. If every team could seamlessly balance development and youth with expectations of competing and winning, they would. That's the dream.
The Boston Celtics pulled it off, as did the Cleveland Cavaliers. Pritchard noted that the Cavs are a team that the Pacers studied. But other teams, like the Washington Wizards and Golden State Warriors, have not had as much success chasing wins and development simultaneously. Trying to toe that line can go well, but it can also be a setback.
"Do we keep growing organically, or do we go after the big fish? That's one of those things where I feel you go parallel. You keep trying for both," Pritchard said, noting that such a plan helps both a team's ceiling and floor. "You always want it to work out perfect."
That is the next decision the Pacers must make. Do they keep cruising along at the speed they determined would be correct before the season? Or do they use the new info they acquired this season — that the team has a postseason ceiling and is ahead of schedule on development — and decide to accelerate their timeline? There would be good reasons to take either path, and Pritchard wants to try to do both. It's a tricky balance, though.
That might entail being aggressive in the draft. Maybe the Pacers are more active in free agency than they were last summer. "We're going to be competitive in free agency. At what level, don't know yet," Pritchard said.
But whatever the Pacers decide to do, it will come after they determine how hard they need to push down the accelerator. That choice could define the next era for the franchise.
Pritchard said that this offseason for the Pacers will be "nuts" due to the team's assets and free agents. They'll have a unique numbers game to play. But as Pritchard said before the season, "We're not stodgy Pacers anymore. And we're willing to use all our opportunities to go get high level talent."
This summer, with assets galore and hopes of following two parallel tracks, the Pacers will need to avoid being stodgy. The right decisions, and the right amount of force on the accelerator, could have the franchise set up for years of success.
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