Ladies and gentlemen, we are almost there. Indiana Pacers basketball returns tonight, Wednesday, October 23rd at 7:00 PM Eastern time against the Detroit Pistons!

This will be the Pacers’ first NBA game since their May 27 loss to the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals. That loss ended a Cinderella run of sorts and created new expectations for the team in blue and yellow.

After years of playoff disappointment, followed by years of missing the playoffs, a huge trade to begin a rebuild and a recent surprise run to the Conference Finals, the Pacers decided to hold out this offseason. They made smaller moves around the margins, focusing primarily on retaining their core players and relying on chemistry and growth from within.

Despite the lack of new faces outside of James Wiseman and rookies Johnny Furphy, Enrique Freeman and Tristen Newton, Pacers fans still have plenty of questions for their team. Although they seemingly made the Conference Finals ahead of schedule last season, most still view the Pacers as a work in progress, an unpolished statue, you might say. Of all the East playoff teams not named the Celtics, the Pacers may pose the most question marks among their fan base and others.

Fluke run or real deal?

For some, the playoff run in Indiana was a sign of a team on the rise, no longer content with being there happily, but instead hoping to add their first NBA championship to their history books sooner or later. For others, the Pacers’ rise was simply a product of fortunate circumstances coming their way, mainly injuries and bad luck for other teams, and they should soon become a mid-tier team again.

This is the first question the Pacers need to answer: Are they for real? While the Pacers wouldn’t have made it to the Conference Finals by sheer luck alone, there’s no denying that they were helped by some injuries to playoff opponents like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Julius Randle and OG Anunoby. This has led many to label the Pacers as an “accidental team” and compare them to the 2020-21 Atlanta Hawks, who had a similar playoff run, making it to the Eastern Conference finals before ultimately falling and all quickly fell out of play-off contention.

Barring the obvious differences in situations between these two teams, the Pacers want to avoid this comparison going forward. Sure enough, it hasn’t gone unnoticed by Pacers players, namely Tyrese Haliburton, who spoke out several times during the offseason about the noise he heard from other teams and fans and how it motivated him and the team to be better and to prove doubters wrong.

“The reaction and the view of us as a group after we had success last year and were viewed that way, as a bit of a fluke in some people’s minds, is, I think, a big motivation and irritation,” Haliburton stated in his Media Day Interview 2024-2025. “So I think as a group we have a lot of guys that, you know, have chips on their shoulders for different reasons. Everyone is doubted in some way or another. I think everyone has different motivations, and I think for everyone as a group this just puts an extra dimension on our shoulders, and I think that’s the exciting part because I think that’s why there was so much last year success and hunger, and that doesn’t mean everyone has different motivations. ‘We are not changing this year because we know what we are capable of. We’ve always known what we’re capable of, and we don’t have to talk about it. This year we’re just going for it.”

Hidden in plain sight in this larger question of whether the Pacers are a serious contender is the issue of Haliburton itself. After his superstar turn and success in the first-ever In-Season Tournament in the first few months of last season, Haliburton suffered a hamstring injury and was not the same player for the rest of the season and most of the playoffs. His shot wasn’t good; he didn’t seem to shoot as much overall and seemed a step slower on the floor. After summer rehab, spending time with Team USA in Paris and winning a gold medal, Haliburton looks rejuvenated and ready to turn some of the criticism against himself into praise.

“I’m coming into this year and whether it’s the case or not, I look at it as if everyone thinks my success in the first half of last season was a fluke, and I have to prove it again,” Haliburton told GQ Sports. “And that’s just who I am and that’s just how I’m cut out. That’s the nice thing about it for me: it’s just another chip on my shoulder, (added) to the thousands that are already there.”

Tyrese Haliburton clearly has an idea of ​​how pundits reacted to his and his team’s success and seems motivated to remove any doubt and show the world that the Indiana Pacers are the real deal.

Do defensive problems remain?

One reason the Pacers need to prove themselves relates to the second big question they’ll have to answer this season: Are they serious defensively? In the first half of the 2023-2024 season, before the Pascal Siakam trade, the Pacers gave up an average of 123 points per game, barely surpassing their 125 points scored, which yielded the fourth-worst defensive rating in the league.

These early-season defensive issues prompted Rick Carlisle to drop one of the most memorable quotes in recent Pacers history on New Year’s Eve 2023. Speaking to the press before the New Year, Carlisle said: “Being traditionally great on offense is nice, but even dating a pretty girl gets boring after a while if she has no one to guard.”

Apparently this analogy was exactly what Indiana needed to tighten up a bit. After the Siakam trade, progress was made on that front, as the Pacers allowed an average of 117 points in the second half of the season and “improved” to the ninth-worst defensive rating in the league, finishing with the seventh-worst defensive rating. rating in the league for all 82 matches.

In the playoffs, Indiana’s defense improved again to just under 113 points per game, giving them the fourth-worst defensive rating among playoff teams. It wasn’t ideal, but not nearly as bad as it was before the Siakam trade. Prior to the Siakam trade, which combined their defensive issues with Tyrese Haliburton missing time due to his hamstring injury and being a step behind when he returned, there was a serious chance that the Pacers had fallen out of the playoff picture and into the Play-off had slipped in. , or worse, missed the playoffs altogether.

The Pacers aren’t exactly short on defensive talent. They have established defensemen like Aaron Nesmith, Myles Turner and Pascal Siakam, along with young up-and-comers like Jarace Walker, Ben Sheppard and Andrew Nembhard. The question is whether they can use these players’ talents to their advantage and come up with plans that can stop them in time if their all-time great offense doesn’t produce results.

For now, we only have as a reference the 41-game sample size of the post-Siakam trade portion of last season, the playoffs and the 2024 preseason, in which Indiana gave up 121 points per game and ranked sixth in defense. judgement. However, it goes without saying that preseason defensive efforts should be taken with a grain of salt, and objective evaluation should start with the first game of the season.

It’s not like the Pacers lack motivation in this area either. Former President Barack Obama (yes, that Barack Obama) told Tyrese Haliburton on a podcast episode of The Young Man & the Three (formerly Old Man) that Indiana needs to improve its defense based on what he saw from them the previous season.

When a guy with those credentials tells you to pick it up, it’s safe to say it’s necessary, and that’s exactly what fans hope the Pacers do starting Wednesday.