The Indiana Pacers have been a constant presence when it comes to the playoffs. Since 2011, Indiana has failed to reach the postseason only twice: the 2014-15 season (when Paul George missed most of the year recovering from a broken leg) and this injury-ravaged season.
They came within a game of making it back to the playoffs, but after their play-in round loss, the Pacers' focus now shifts to replacing Nate Bjorkgren, after the team decided the rookie head coach would not be part of the team's future. Indiana is now looking for a new coach for a second consecutive offseason.
There is also the unknown when it comes to their roster.
Indiana returns 12 players from a roster that was ravaged by injuries this season, leading to a 34-38 record. Was the disappointing season a result of health or is it time for the Pacers to begin retooling their roster? Now eliminated from postseason contention, let's look ahead to the free agency, draft and trade decisions facing Indiana this offseason.
Replacing Nate Bjorkgren
Bjorkgren was the first to admit that his first year on the job was a difficult one.
"It's been a tough year," Bjorkgren said following a report by Adrian Wojnarowski that his style of coaching and communication with his players and staff were at the center of turmoil this season. "There's a lot of challenges being a head coach in this league. I don't make excuses for things. I'm a young coach. I'm learning, I'm growing and I've got to coach better. This is on me. I'm the head coach. Things should be pointed at me and rest on my shoulders."
Bjorkgren could have drawn up plays like Hall of Famer Phil Jackson, but in this league when a coach begins to lose the locker room and fails to develop relationships, he has no chance of surviving.
"Communication is an enormous part of it," Bjorkgren said. "It's the management of personalities. That's where I've got to keep growing and get better."
Bjorkgren could have easily pointed to plenty of reasons beyond communication issues for the Pacers finishing below .500: having to field 21 different starting lineups, starting forward T.J. Warren playing just four games, or even the realization that former All-Star Victor Oladipo was a shell of himself, before getting traded for Caris LeVert -- who was then immediately diagnosed with a cancerous mass on his kidney and didn't make his Pacers debut until nearly two months after the trade.
However, none of that was enough to get Bjorkgren a second season at the helm.
President of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard deserves credit not for not bottoming out in the aftermath of Paul George demanding a trade in 2017 and keeping the team in the postseason in the years since. However, despite being part of the organization since 2011, Pritchard had never been the sole decision-maker when it came to hiring a head coach until Bjorkgren was tabbed in October. (He did have a relationship with former Pacers head coach Nate McMillan from their years together in Portland.)
Less than a month after the season ended, Pritchard decided the man he hired just last October was not the right fit moving forward, which means Indiana needs to open up the search process once again.
The Pacers are not known for having a revolving door of head coaches and have prided themselves on stability. Every head coach that the Pacers have hired dating to Larry Brown in 1993 had survived at least three seasons prior to Bjorkgren's dismissal after one year. He is the first non-interim head coach in Pacers history to fail to make it to a second season.
Doug McDermott and T.J. McConnell
There are two words that do not mesh well in the NBA: lottery and tax.
After losing in the play-in round, the Pacers are headed to the lottery. They were not a tax team this season and will dodge paying a penalty.
However, Indiana enters the offseason with a projected payroll of $125 million (including their draft pick), $11 million below the 2021-22 tax threshold. The team's top two reserves, Doug McDermott and T.J. McConnell, are set to become free agents, and retaining both players would require Indiana to pay the luxury tax for the first time since 2005-06 unless they move off salary at some point during the 2021-22 season.
McDermott should receive votes for Sixth Man of the Year after averaging career highs in points (13.6), field goal percentage (53.2%), true shooting percentage (63.2%), rebounds (3.4) and offensive rating (110.5). He also ranks No. 6 among all small forwards in offensive real plus-minus. Since the All-Star break, the forward has shot 56.1% from the field and 41.5% from 3-point range.
McDermott has outplayed his $7.3 million contract this season by close to $5 million according to ProFitX and at the very minimum will see offers that start at the $9.5 million midlevel exception.
McConnell shows up for work every night, having missed only nine games due to injury since entering the league in 2015-16 and has evolved into one of the top two-way backup point guards in the NBA. Besides averaging a career-high 8.6 points (in 26 minutes), McConnell ranks No. 2 in steals (behind Jimmy Butler) and No. 1 among all reserves in assists (6.5).
Like McDermott, the guard has outperformed his $3.5 million contract this season by $4 million according to ProFitX and is a strong candidate for a team to use a good portion of the $9.5 million midlevel exception, if not all of it.
The Pacers' replacement for either player could come at lower cost in the July draft with their lottery pick.
Note: ProFitX is a dynamic financial and performance index powered by Artificial Intelligence with front-office optics displaying 17 visual and time-series models for 480+ NBA Athletes. The Athledex models historical, dynamic & future performance data to monitor and project insights on contracts, performance, injuries, team fit, development, and potential.
The state of the roster
Get used to the words "expiring contract" when talking about the construction of the Pacers' roster.
While the Pacers should get high marks for having six players on contracts that range from $10.5 to $21.7 million (despite the possibility of losing McDermott and McConnell), only Domantas Sabonis is under contract in 2023-24.
That means the Pacers enter this season with three key players on expiring contracts (T.J. Warren, Jeremy Lamb, Aaron Holiday). Four more players have contracts that expire after 2022-23 (Malcolm Brogdon, Caris LeVert, Myles Turner and Justin Holiday).
Outside of Justin Holiday, every player on the above list can be extended either before the start of the season (Aaron Holiday, Brogdon, LeVert and Turner) or during the course of the season (Warren and Lamb).
Despite the Pacers' loss in the play-in tournament -- and the team's failure to get beyond the first round of the playoffs since 2014 -- this roster isn't stuck in neutral. Every player on this roster has trade value, both financially and on the court.
The Pacers still also don't know what this roster is capable of when fully healthy. The projected 2021-22 starting lineup of Brogdon, LeVert, Warren, Sabonis and Turner played zero minutes together this season.
Offseason cap breakdown
Team needs
For everyone to be on the same page
A healthy T-J- Warren
Stretch-4
Resources to build the roster
The draft: one first-round pick (lottery) and possibly three second-round picks
Exceptions: $9.5M midlevel (but more likely $5.9M) and $3.7M biannual (but dependent on their own free agents). $4.9M and $2.9M trade exceptions.
Cash: $5.8 million to send or receive in a trade
Dates to watch
• Expect the Pacers to exercise the $2.3 million team option of Edmond Sumner by Aug. 1. In 53 games this season, Sumner averaged 7.5 points on 39.8% from 3. According to ProFitX, Sumner has outplayed his $2.1 million contract for the 2020-21 season by a remarkable $8 million.
• The $1.7 million contract of Kelan Martin becomes guaranteed on Aug. 7 (one day after the moratorium ends). The 25-year-old appeared in 30 games, averaging 6.9 minutes and 2.9 points.
• There is no offseason trigger date on the $1.7 million non-guaranteed contract of Oshae Brissett. The Pacers can waive Brissett up until the Saturday before the regular season starts and not incur a financial penalty. The full amount will get guaranteed on Jan. 7.
Restrictions
• Edmond Sumner cannot be traded until his team option is exercised.
• Oshae Brissett and Kelan Martin can be traded but their non-guaranteed contracts count as $0 in outgoing salary.
The draft
After sending last year's pick to Milwaukee as part of the Malcolm Brogdon trade, the Pacers are back to having their first-round pick -- and back in the lottery for the first time since 2015, when they drafted Myles Turner No. 11 overall. The Pacers also have all their future first-round picks, and have only traded out of the first round twice since 2006.
Here's how ESPN's Jonathan Givony and Mike Schmitz have Indiana selecting in July:
No. 13 (own): Josh Giddey, PG, Australia
No. 54 (from MIL): Matthew Mayer, SF/PF, Baylor
No. 60 (from UTAH): Sandro Mamukelashvili, PF/C, Seton Hall
Since taking over as head of basketball operations in 2017, Kevin Pritchard has made three draft-night trades, the most notable coming in 2019, when the Pacers acquired T.J. Warren and three second-round picks as part of a three-team deal with Miami and Phoenix.