The Kawhi Leonard trade is finally done, and the ripple effects reach well beyond Los Angeles and Toronto. According to Shams Charania on Twitter, the Clippers have completed the deal after a long delay tied to the Aspiration scandal, sending Leonard out and landing two unprotected first-round picks, Brandon Ingram, and Gradey Dick from the Raptors.
That package comes with a catch for the Clippers: it has to help make up for the five first-rounders the league stripped from them, including the 2029 Indiana Pacers pick they had acquired in the Ivica Zubac deal. So while Los Angeles gets a new haul, the damage from the lost picks still hangs over the move.
The bigger story, though, is what Leonard’s move means for the East. That conference has already loaded up in recent years, with LeBron James and Karl-Anthony Towns joining the mix, while Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jaylen Brown are now attached to teams with plenty of firepower. The league’s long-running joke about the East being weaker doesn’t hold up the same way anymore.
And that’s where Indiana gets squeezed.
The Pacers made a Finals run in 2024-25 and probably hoped to use the next step to climb back toward the top of the conference. Instead, the teams around them kept getting stronger. While Indiana took what amounts to a gap year, the New York Knicks went straight to the mountaintop.
That makes the road back a lot steeper. Even with a better front-court rotation and a new bench piece, the Pacers still have to prove they can rediscover the form that carried them to a Game 7 against the eventual champion Oklahoma City Thunder. The problem is simple: the East got better, and Indiana did not get the luxury of standing still.
There’s also a harder question sitting underneath all of this: can a team win a title without a top-10 player?
The Pacers’ bench has been a common talking point, and maybe that’s fair from a roster-building angle. But championship teams usually start with one non-negotiable. You need one of the best players in the world.
The last team to win without that kind of star was the 2004 Detroit Pistons, who pulled off the upset against the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. Since then, every champion has had a top-end player in his prime.
For Indiana, the obvious name is Tyrese Haliburton, but that answer depends on him returning to form. That’s a lot to ask from a player who has never made an All-NBA first or second team.
If it isn’t Haliburton, then the answer has to come from elsewhere. Pascal Siakam is still a strong player, but he’s already in his mid-30s and won’t be taking another leap beyond the top-20 level he’s already shown. He remains underrated, just not enough to solve this problem on his own.
So the Pacers are left with one path. They have to become the modern version of the ’04 Pistons.
In other words, Indiana’s only route through this East may be to be the deepest, cleanest, most complete team in the league and leave as little as possible to chance.
In Other News...
T.J. McConnell Owns A Rare Stat Pacers Fans Should Appreciate More
T.J. McConnell has long been one of those Pacers players whose value shows up in ways that dont always make the loudest headlines. He has built his reputation in Indiana on energy, pressure defense and the kind of hustle that changes a game without needing a scorekeepers spotlight, which is part of why he has become such a reliable piece for this team heading into the 2026-27 season.
One reminder of just how unusual his game can be came on March 3, 2021, against Cleveland, when McConnell became one of only two active NBA players to post 10 assists and 10 steals in a single game. He also set an NBA record with nine steals in the first half, a sort of all-over-the-floor performance that Pacers fans should probably appreciate more every time he turns a loose ball into a possession the other way. [Read more 🡒]
Tyrese Haliburton Just Reminded Everyone What The Pacers Still Depend On
Dean Olivers recent argument that Tyrese Haliburton belongs in the conversation as the best player from the 2020 NBA Draft only reinforces how central he has become to everything Indiana wants to do. Since arriving in a 2022 trade, Haliburton has piled up two All-NBA Third Team nods and two All-Star appearances, and the Pacers have already seen how sharply their level drops when he is not on the floor.
Even with a five-year extension signed in 2023, the bigger question now is less about his standing around the league and more about how Indiana manages him going into the new season. The Pacers know what they depend on when Haliburton is running the offense, which is why there is so much attention on whether he will be brought along carefully as the schedule begins. [Read more 🡒]
Pacers Suddenly Face Their Toughest Pascal Siakam Choice Yet
Pascal Siakam has already become one of the defining pieces of Indianas recent rise since arriving in January 2024, giving the Pacers the kind of two-way stability and playoff-caliber presence they spent years trying to find. Now he is eligible for a three-year, $207 million extension, and the front office has a decision that reaches far beyond a simple contract offer.
The Pacers can try to lock him in now, explore something shorter, or keep their options open and push the conversation closer to the end of his current deal, which runs through the 2027-28 season. However they handle it, the choice comes down to the same balancing act: preserving roster flexibility while making sure a player with Siakams impact does not slip into a much messier negotiation later. [Read more 🡒]