2016-17 Finish: 29-53

Season Highlight:

The Pacers big player is Blake Griffin, and he missed much of the season with injury.  He only played 58 games last season, and this wasn’t enough for the Pacers to be competitive with the top-heavy East.  For the first couple months of the season, the starting lineup looked like something that could be in the playoffs, with Goran Dragic, Tristan Thompson, Jamal Crawford, and Steven Adams to go with Blake.  At some point in December, GM Sheed decided it was time to move on from some of these older players and get a youth movement built around Blake.  He never really shopped Blake, and decided to try to get a top pick this year.  He traded for injure Tony Parker, hoping that he comes back next season, and ended up getting Malik Monk out of the draft.  The future is questionable for the Pacers, if Monk turns into an all-star caliber player, they are set up, but they have a lot of money invested in their frontcourt with 60% of their salary in 3 players.  It’s going to be hard to build a roster with this type of salary breakdown.

Season Lowlight:

The team just didn’t mesh well last season, and drastic measures were taken.  Griffin is the setup with a legitimate starting center to help push around the other bigs in the league, there'

Best Trade:

The Indiana Pacers send Sergio Rodriguez and Jeff Green to the Utah Jazz. The Utah Jazz send Channing Frye, Matthew Dellavedova and Montrezl Harrell to the Indiana Pacers.

I really liked this trade for the Pacers.  Initially it seemed like Rodriguez was playing well, and Green seems like a good player, but neither really has a future.  Harrell is clearly the prize here, a great young big with lots of energy who you can see starting on the NBA Rockets in the future.

Worst Trade:

The Brooklyn Nets send Tobias Harris, Cory Joseph, Jeremy Lamb and Tyus Jones to the Indiana Pacers. The Indiana Pacers send Goran Dragic, Tristan Thompson and Tim Quarterman to the Brooklyn Nets.

The Brooklyn Nets send a 1st-Rounder (Phi) to the Indiana Pacers.

Giving up the two best players in Dragic and Thompson and really only getting promise and Tobias Harris out of it.  Lamb never panned out and was traded, Philly’s 1^st rounder isn’t a prize for anyone.  I don’t see the reasoning behind this trade, but maybe there was more to it.

Other Notable Trades:

·       The Chicago Bulls send Jose Calderon and Alonzo Gee to the Indiana Pacers. The Indiana Pacers send Jamal Crawford to the Chicago Bulls.  The Chicago Bulls send a 1st-Rounder (Den) to the Indiana Pacers.

Basically, getting a 1^st rounder out of Jamal Crawford, not a great pick, but Jamal is on the way out, and the Pacers tried to get ahead of it.

·       The Orlando Magic send Jerami Grant to the Indiana Pacers. The Indiana Pacers send Tony Snell to the Orlando Magic. The Indiana Pacers send a 2nd-Rounder (Ind) to the Orlando Magic.

Snell for Grant, both players have been somewhat meh so far, not a big deal really.

·       The Indiana Pacers send Channing Frye to the Miami Heat. The Miami Heat send Darrun Hilliard to the Indiana Pacers.  The Indiana Pacers receive 7 GM points. The Miami Heat trade -7 GM points.

Not even sure if this is worth talking about.

·       A bunch of trades that got them the pick for Malik Monk

All of these deals got them the best shooting guard in the draft.  He hopefully pans out and turns into a great player.

Free Agency:

As far as last season, there wasn’t a lot of big additions.  They added Jeff Green and kept Jamal Crawford, but salary limitations have kept them from being big players in free agency.  Looking at this year, there won’t be much in the way of cap room after they resign Blake Griffin.  It worked out well for them that Steven Adams got an extension and Blake resigned, so they don’t have a lot of worries about anyone leaving. 

Star:

Blake Griffin – Last year he averaged 22 points and 9 rebounds on the year, but was injured for a good bit.  A successful season for him this year will look like 75+ games played.  With fewer back-to-backs, hopefully this is the case for a lot of stars.  He will need to up his scoring production too, and looks like he has realized this averaging over 26 points per game in the preseason. 

Goat:

Jamal Crawford – He went from averaging 28 ppg in 2015 to 14 points a game in the next season.  He literally reduced his production by half, and this was a big reason why he was moved on.  Whether it was age or offensive philosophy, we won’t know, but his decline is what brought on the mass exodus of aging players from the Pacers. 

Draft Grades (from Draft Grades article)

Round 1: Malik Monk (Pick 7)

Round 2: N/A

Grade:  A+

The Pacers got probably their dream guy to fall. They had a defensive role playing PG in Delly, and a role-playing scorer in Jeremy Lamb, either of which needed to be upgraded. Monk being the best SG option, probably in the entire draft was a key target, if not, one of the top PGs. As it turned out, Malik was there and his prospects are off the charts. He’s a big-time scorer and immediately upgrades the starting line-up of the Pacers assuming they can bring back Griffin. Good stuff!

The Future:

It will all depend on how Malik Monk and Blake Griffin play together.  Monk is hyper athletic, but he’s a bit undersized as a SG.  As it is thought, the Pacers starting lineup is pretty strong with Parker returning from injury.  The starting 5 will be able to matchup with almost anyone, but the bench isn’t looking great.  It’s going to be up to GM Sheed to try to figure out a way to bring in some better bench players.  Unloading some of the inflated salary of Steven Adams might be a way to do this.  Adams is a great player, but he’s not ever gonna be more than a 10/10 type player.  Do you really need to pay him $20M dollars?  This team is in flux, not young, but not old yet either.  It will be interesting to see how they mesh together!

Upcoming Free Agents:

Blake Griffin – This guy has already indicated he’s coming back, which is good news for the cap pressed Pacers.  His resigning is all the Pacers were hoping for this offseason.

Cap Space – None available, they better get some good minimum guys