For the learned, the 2024 NBA playoffs have been a conquest, and for the ignorant, an instruction. Three games to none, the Indiana Pacers lost all four by a combined score of eleven points.   However, it also served as a stark reminder of both how far and how near they are from championship contention.
The Pacers knew going into the season that their chances of making the postseason were minimal, but they ended up finishing it four days short of June. Injuries facilitated their run to the Eastern Conference finals, but getting there is a more significant thing than how they achieved it. As the calibre of competition increased, the Pacers used the series, playoff run, and regular season to evaluate their relative performance. Tyrese Haliburton made history by starting the season as a lock for the top place and finishing it by defying expectations in his first postseason and acting unselfishly.

. But in the process of going through several iterations and evolving at a frantic, thrilling, Haliburton-esque pace, the Pacers absorbed a wealth of important lessons about both their best and worst games, learning the kind of information that some young teams take half a decade to acquire.

After Game 4, Jaylen Brown remarked, “I know people think that Indiana wasn’t a good team or whatever the case may be, but I thought they were as tough as anybody we played all season.” They exerted a great deal of pressure on us and were swift and physically strong. Thus, give them your respect and give them a shout-out.

This season, the Pacers went through 22 different players as they adjusted to two midseason transactions; their star player came and went due to a hamstring injury, and their young players came and went from the rotation, navigating the complex, gratifying, and nonlinear curve of development. Pascal Siakam’s arrival raised their ceiling. They were able to regain some flexibility by trading Buddy Hield for draft selections. They gave up firepower in favour of long-term dynamism by offloading Hield, all three, and no D, hoping that player development would enable them to replace the lost offensive. Indiana won that wager thanks to Andrew Nembhard, who put up 56 points and 19 assists in the last two games versus Boston—a point that Haliburton failed to record. With a plethora of picks, the whole non-taxpayer midlevel exception, and young players that beg you to fall in love with their potential, the Pacers are now well-prepared for the offseason.

The arrival of Haliburton sped up the Pacers’ schedule. Following the trade deadline, Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan told reporters, “He has changed our thinking a little bit.” “A portion of it is our playing philosophy, the guys you want to surround him with, and his progress in leading our team to new heights in such a brief period of time. This squad has demonstrated that it can compete with the best teams in the league, so while we want to have some young players who are still developing, we also need some veterans who are helping us win right now.

On paper, the Siakam-Haliburton tandem makes perfect sense because they complement each other’s fast-paced, pass-happy styles while also differing in that one likes to play inside the arc while the other stays outside of it. However, since they didn’t have a training camp to bond over, they had to adjust quickly. In addition, the Pacers acquired Hield, Haliburton’s longest-serving teammate and preferred drive-and-kick target, and permanently placed Nembhard in the starting lineup. During the regular season, the new starting five, which surrounded Haliburton with four capable defenders, gave up just 107 points per 100 possessions. However, the Pacers’ previously explosive offence began to falter as Haliburton dealt with a hamstring injury, two trades, and a new spacing reality in the second part of the season.

When Indiana’s new offence was clicking, it played quickly in both the half-court and full-court, setting up post-up mismatches for Myles Turner and Siakam, who were starting to establish a strong high-low game. However, that vision didn’t become clear until the Pacers’ starting lineup played a league-high 288 minutes together in the postseason, when they also had a respectable 14.1 net rating.

When the Celtics took away Siakam’s post-up in Game 4, he immediately countered and set up youngster Ben Sheppard, who made a wide-open three on the other corner.