The Pacers’ backup center situation is being treated like a crisis, but it really isn’t one.
Yes, Ivica Zubac is now the starter after the trade deadline deal with the Clippers sent the Croatian big man to Indiana. And yes, that trade eventually ended up including the fifth overall pick in this past draft after a gap-year 19-win season, which means Zubac is going to have to produce at a high level to make the whole thing worth it.
But once Zubac is in place, the bulk of the center minutes are already spoken for. The real question is whether Indiana needs to chase some separate answer for the minutes behind him. The short version: no, not really.
The Pacers are not going to pour real resources into a backup center spot. They don’t need to. You don’t invest heavily in a player who is only going to give you about 10 minutes a game.
There’s also the simple truth that a backup center only becomes a major issue if Zubac misses a significant stretch. And if that happens, Indiana’s problem is bigger than finding a spare five. It would be in a hole that a backup alone can’t patch.
Even if the Pacers wanted another option, they already have one in house.
Pascal Siakam is the backup center.
Indiana’s identity during its Finals run in 2024-25 was built on speed and open-court play. Even with Myles Turner on the floor, he was often left trailing the break. Turner helped, but the bigger breakthrough came from Siakam.
He’s the ultimate Swiss Army knife, the kind of player who can do a little bit of everything well enough that a team can keep leaning on him when things get messy. For this conversation, the important pieces are his rebounding, his defense, his ability to box out effectively, and his strength. Those traits give him a real path to handling a decent chunk of small-ball five minutes.
That’s the larger point here: good teams don’t force bad minutes just to satisfy a label. They use the roster they have as efficiently as possible, or they go get somebody better.
Indiana doesn’t have the pieces to make a major move after the Zubac trade. So the Pacers will have to make it work with what’s already on hand.
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