Pacers caught with no ride

Indiana Pacers GM Kevin Pritchard met the media on Monday, something he doesn't do often despite good reason to, as Pritchard built a near-NBA champion in 2024-25.

Built it, watched it taken from him.

The Pacers were in with a chance during Game 7, all-but-belief crushed with 88 percent of Game 7 left to play, and Tyrese Haliburton's fall.

It was the thing to remember from the 2025 postseason, unfortunately, immediately followed by the thing we'll remember most from the 2025 offseason.

Pritchard explained that he thought his Pacers were in progressive talks with Myles Turner, the whole summer ahead of them with zero competitors featuring cap space. The Pacers played the market, the market wanted to tussle. And unless LeBron James is traded, Turner's lowball offer-to-Lake Michigan defection stands as the most compelling transaction of 2025's summer.

Pritchard and the Pacers were caught by surprise but they didn't let off the gas, even at the highest and healthiest arc inside the Finals this IND franchise understood it still had CLE and NYK to overcome, and that BOS and MKE weren't abandoning the playoff bracket. Indiana didn't think it would coast through the East with Haliburton and re-signed Turner, Pritchard knew the 2025 offseason and 2025-26 regular season would provide severe competition.

This message was made a certainty when Haliburton fell, but the Pacers underestimated the depravity – dumping Dame Lillard?!? – of their desperate competitors. It wasn't something to anticipate, 29 other NBA GMs plus darn, near everyone in the world saw no sign of Lillard's waive, stretch.

But it wasn't a good look either, left with the lowest offer out on the tall table.

The Pacers have never paid the luxury tax but they don't dismiss the notion, either, which tempts fans into thinking they'll pay the luxury tax, which the Indiana Pacers never paid, not once. Fans once again assumed Indiana steeled themselves for the commitment, Andrew Nembhard's hefty extension and Turner's anticipated $100-plus million on the books, but the Pacers declined again.

In spite of seven rounds of playoff receipts fillin' that building over the last two seasons. Five previous playoff appearances with Turner (four in Indianapolis, I don't know how they chopped the money up down in Orlando).

Indianapolis should be a top basketball destination. After visiting the circle the Knicks scuttle into, visiting the Fieldhouse should be every NBA fan's No. 2 goal. The intensity during close (Indiana Fever) games is supreme.

I joke because I'm upset. The Pacers had a real chance to win over the local barstools with NFL fans sitting on top of them and I just realized the double-entendre I made there, let's run with it.

They had a real chance to win over the left-lane F-150s that populate the state I live in, the state I love, the state I'd move from if I got the chance, the state I'm spending all summer in.

I'm going to visit Gregg Popovich's subdivision and his high school and I'm going to look at Zach Randolph's hoop, the playground he learned those moves on. I'm going to visit the Eugene Debs sign again but stop for once, because that's where Bill Walton dragged Mr. and Mrs. Larry Bird to, and they stopped. And I'm going to visit Larry's old house, because it sits upon what might be America's prettiest part and yes I've been to Wrigley Field before the renovations.

I'm going to Homer Stonebraker's grave, but when it's light outside, this time. Not just to watch fireworks in the gloaming.

Indiana is beautiful, its people are very nice, the Pacers and Pacers fans deserve better than a lowball offer to Myles Turner. Here's a picture of Missouri.

The thing that got to everyone inside Game 7 was how quickly the idea of the Indiana Pacers was over. That there were 7/8ths of an NBA game to go in Game 7 – a Finals to go, a season to go – didn't matter. The idea of basketball was slow compared to what our brains considered, over and over, after what we watched.

What you watched. Thanks to you, the noble reader at home, my eyes were on the court for the final 7/8ths of Game 7. Not stuck with ABC's endless replays of Haliburton slapping the floor in dark realization, over and over.

The abrupt ending was not the loss of a competitive Finals, the ploughboy Pacers gamely played on in Haliburton's Game 7 absence, but the Pacers as a future.

Next season, whichever number years those are, that's over. Suddenly, Indiana is in with the decimated Bucks, the struck-down Celtics.

If that. No Giannis on Indiana's roster, no Jaylen Brown-type twentysomething All-Star on the Pacers. But there is a Myles Turner on the Bucks' roster.

Nobody wanted to say nor write the word "Achilles" in the Finals, even when Tyrese Haliburton directly discussed the daily routines he went through to avoid a torn Achilles, during the Finals. I ignored the ill-at-ease subject every time Tyrese Haliburton repeatedly referred to dangers the Pacer medical staff made him acutely aware of, over and over, the name of the tendon and what it does when frayed.

We knew exactly what he was talking about, and didn't write the word until we had to. Hoped for the best and, for a while there, the hope was as true as anything we knew. We thought it was belief.

What destroyed me was how quickly Tyrese Haliburton turned around. By the time any of us put our pens down from Game 7, he'd compiled the truth and acknowledgement and all that hurtful stuff. Moving on, while we were all still inside of Game 7:

He was 120 minutes from a championship, that's all I could think about, every day and for the 17 days. Meanwhile, he's tapping this out 24 hours later.

Somewhat swift turnaround, but that's a young man made certain of his plan the second his setback was flung at him. Haliburton can't pretend he is special or that his was a singularly rotten hand when Tyrese watched others take the same hit: Tatum and Durant and Lillard and Bryant.

It is horrendous that there is a rash of similar, debilitating injuries to learn from, we hope the NBA does the same. We can't have every calf looking like Kobe's by the time every star is 27. It is time to change the schedule, we need players in the same town for four days, we can't have workers running for ten years through the NBA and not making any friends.

These are my thoughts while I'm rolling back from Game 7, trying to keep his injury from rolling across my mind, I'm stuck on the hardwood he slapped and he's heavy into his rehab. I wonder how Haliburton does it and then I remember that injuries are part of the game the players sign up for, but not the one the paying customers do.

Or whatever I am, stuffing free-with-press credential Diet Cokes into my coat pocket, charged with dialing up the numbers to next season (2025-26) with 2024-25's digits still penned into the sweaty palm of my hand. Wondering about Indiana from another time zone, wondering about Indianapolis, not worried about Tyrese.

Not for a second, and then a day after his injury I read the post pictured above. Then I was negative worried about Tyrese Haliburton, dumping my collected snacks onto an empty hotel bed, two warm Diet Coke cans a rolling reminder, Tyrese needs his core rebuilt anyway, he could play until he's 39 with that size.

Elvis slept at this hotel once. They left the air conditioner on 60 all day, lowest on the dial, but the room was a forgiving 84.

Like Kevin Durant's trade taking flight the day of Game 7, someday it will feel as if Tyrese Haliburton's injury took place decades ago.

Haliburton will return before we know it because the 2026-27 NBA season will be here before we know it, time dies late like that, so I heard, in some YouTube video I chose to help me fall asleep at a Best Western in Missouri that Elvis slept at, once.

Haliburton will return and the stress will go away and we'll have to roll over the made-up memories of what we think we lost.

Myles Turner is, as us sportswriters call him, "very unique."

I used that phrase deep into my thirties until a helpful co-worker at Yahoo! kindly explained to me why I should cease.

The Pacers are, were, unique. They ran and hustled and hustled and ran.

Losing Turner hurts the hustle, as will the eventual replacement of whatever T.J. McConnell does out there. Another unique playmaker, the Pacers will struggle to replace McConnell's mid-30s in the same way the Warriors needed Kevin Durant's brilliance to not simply replace the replaceable Harrison Barnes, but make up for the irreplaceable Andre Iguodala's declining Dre years.

T.J. is absolutely key to what Indiana does, and it won't take another random jitterbug to replace his possessions. The Pacers require a star to step up because that's how pivotal McConnell is, when he is.

Sometimes he ain't. And McConnell turns 34 in March. A few days later, Pascal Siakam jumps up and slaps "32." These two stalwarts will have spent all 2025-26 trying to make up for the loss of two extreme, All-Star-level, two-way talents. They'll feel 2025-26 all next summer and into 2026-27.

Pritchard took a hit, and he can't pretend the East looks the same as it did in the hours after Game 6. Competing Eastern outfits, especially the ones stricken by Achilles setbacks, dragged in palatable players to help them through the turmoil, possibly thrive.

Boston struck for 20 points at guard just as the Finals ended. The Bucks delivered a duel blow, kicked Indiana when it was down by refusing a sign-and-trade, a roster-saving trade exception sent the Pacers' way.

That's life as the favorite. The Pacers didn't get to enjoy it long, some small space between Thibs' firing and until Game 7. But a champ's a champ and sluggers will take swings.

The Pacers will have the rest of the hill to make something out of it, Myles Turner gave them everything for a decade and a division rival just stood up to offer the next half-decade at a monster rate, that's Milwaukee's millstone, not Kevin Pritchard's.

It is not good that Indiana lost Myles Turner, but it isn't as if the Pacers have to only play four at a time now.

OK, well, they'll play four-on-five some of the time, but not for the whole game.

Pacers owners know they can survive with a second-tier first team led by Rick Carlisle.

Pacers have competed in playoff games with Rick Carlisle featuring zero field goals from the bench and Anthony Johnson scoring 40 points.

Coach was a little buzzed in Boston, but Rick Carlisle's been watching the Eastern Conference since his view from the seat at the Meadowlands some 34 years ago and Rick has a dim opinion of what he's spottin' out there. Carlisle's knocked Giannis Antetokounmpo out of the playoffs two years in a row and now Rick's going to be frightened of Mr. Turner, the Buck Carlisle knows best?

Cow in the face of Anfernee Simons? Do you know how many cows Rick Carlisle has to drive past on his way to work? Frighten at the thought of Kenny Atkinson acting as if the Cavs are something? All Rick has to do is picture Kenny's in a suit and start laughing. The Celtics? The team that pretends it is from Indiana? The Knicks? What if they run out of pens?

Jay Huff is a perfect regular season solution, just ask the Western Conference, Jay dunked all over it last season. He'll be off the floor in fourth quarters but not before Three True Outcoming his way into Indiana's hearts. Jay can't play defense? The Pacers will figure out a way to play defense. Isaiah Jackson off an injury is not the answer, but Isaiah sees the court and runs hard, makes his opponents make plays.

The Pacers don't go anywhere. They pluck just enough to fill the building and they love what they do and they are as primed as any franchise to understand that 2026-27 is just as certain as 2025-26.

A NOTE ON THAT BIG ROAD TRIP

Nobody's ever done that, driven to every Finals game, all seven games, and it was entirely independent, paid for by you! Every subscriber, all year, pounding the rock. Well, did I have some cracked rocks while I was on the road.

Wait. I mean, we were all in on that big crack. Sorry, what I'm trying to say is that we all paid for that rock and participated in splitting it up. This is not going well, I don't know how PBS does it.

There aren't many of us, and this is our small, cool, thing and of course I've already looked up how many miles it is between Atlanta and Oklahoma City. Don't get angry, Pacer fans. Maybe it was for when the Pacers topple the Hawks in Atlanta in Game 7.

I'm gonna try to be the guy that drives to at least a couple Finals games every year, representing the good people behind OnHoops.

LIVING ON THE OPEN ROAD

Someday I wonder about visiting the hotel where Bonnie Bramlett knocked Elvis Costello to the shaggy carpet. Not for that infamy, but because I've always wanted to sleep where Stephen Stills slept.

Thanks for reading!