The Pistons Blueprint To Success: The Indiana Pacers
Pistons and Pacers Similarities:
Here we are in the second round of the 2024 NBA playoffs and the Pacer have advanced over the 3 seed Milwaukee Bucks. A Bucks team that was clearly never full strength, but nevertheless, were handled relatively easy by the Pacers.
This is important to the Pistons because just last season, the Pacers were led by a roster with Haliburton, Mathurin, Hield, Nwora, Turner and McConnell who had an offensive rating of 114.6 (19th of 30) and defensive rating of 117.7 (26th of 30) and won 35 games. That is a roster that is similar in talent and ratings to Cunningham, Ivey, Fontecchio, Thompson, Stewart and Duren. 35 to 14 wins is a huge difference, but the Pistons front office and coaching, quite frankly, didn't even attempt to win games or make it easy on Cade this season.
The Blueprint:
The Pacers went into the 2023 summer and signed a reigning champion in Bruce Brown. A player that was essential to Denver in winning it all. They also went out and traded for Obi Toppin, who put up 21 points and 8 rebounds in the closeout game against the Bucks and was doing between the leg, windmill dunks against his former team in game 1 of the conference semifinals. An injection of energy on the court.
Outside of Haliburton’s ascension, the two additional players signed in the offseason completely changed the trajectory of the Pacers franchise. Without signing Bruce Brown, they would have never landed Pascal Siakam as easy as they did. The Pistons need to target a high value free agent or two that will immediately fit with Cunningham or can be viewed as a trade piece come the 2025 NBA trade deadline (just as Bruce Brown was to Indy) for a bigger fish. I laid out an off-season primer in a previous article that lists a number of potential free agents and trade targets that could change our trajectory as well.
Most of this will also depend on if Monty Williams is the right coach going forward. We took a step back with him leading the charge this season. A strange occurrence, considering what he was able to do in Phoenix and the respect he carries league-wide. The Pacers boast one of the best coaches in the NBA in Rick Carlisle so if there was one thing holding the Pistons back from achieving success with this blueprint, coaching would be it.
The Conclusion:
Sign a couple of good free agents whose value should hold strong or increase up until the 2025 trade deadline (Bruce Brown). Sign them with the idea that they could be traded for someone that elevates us to a playoff team (Bruce Brown for Pascal Siakam). Keep the contracts at a movable cost, avoid overpaying for someone if the value could tank. Right now, a couple of my favorite targets for this are Patrick Williams and Isaiah Hartenstein.