INDIANAPOLIS: Officially, the NBA offseason has begun. Following a few days of celebration and introspection following Monday night’s 2024 NBA Championship win by the Boston Celtics, other clubs will assess how to enhance their long-term prospects.
This includes the Indiana Pacers, who advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals after winning 47 games in the recent past. Although they are a young squad and had a fantastic 2023–24 season, they understand that improvement isn’t always linear. If they hope to return to the conference finals or even further in the future, they will need to discover ways to get better.
We can identify where we still need to do better. During his post-season exit interview, general manager Chad Buchanan mentioned the team’s roster, skill level, defence, and other related aspects. “We have a lot of room for improvement. That, along with developing a team going ahead, I believe will be our main priorities this summer.”
According to Buchanan, Indiana’s players understand how crucial it is to get stops in order to advance far in the playoffs. Throughout the regular season, the club experienced multiple instances where they switched up lineups or engaged in hard drill to refocus on defence, which frequently resulted in spurts of wins and defensive success.
Despite this, the Pacers’ defence was ranked 24th at the end of the regular season, and they placed 13th out of 16 teams in the postseason. They know they can score against anyone, but getting stops is the first step towards future growth.
You’re always trying to find methods to make your team better as a front office employee,” Buchanan added. Despite having limited salary cap space, his team can try to improve with its three draft picks. They can re-sign their own free agents and add talent by using cap exceptions. He went on, “I also think that we have a lot of internal growth ahead for some of our players,” mentioning defence in particular.
If there’s something out there we feel solves a need, we’ll be aggressive to do that,” Buchanan added. Between the Pacers young core and just being out one first-round draft pick in future seasons, Indiana can make any logical move that becomes available to them.
The re-signing of Pascal Siakam is their primary off-season goal. The team and the attacker, who had a fantastic season last year, have discussed the forward’s aspirations to enter free agency this summer. Reports imply that the parties have common interests.
Leave a Reply