The Pacers may have authored one of the wildest playoff runs of 2025, but ESPN’s Brian Windhorst isn’t rushing to put them in the same tier as the East’s heavyweights.
On Tuesday morning, Windhorst joined Tim MacMahon and Vincent Goodwill on a YouTube exclusive segment of Get Up, where the conversation turned to Tyrese Haliburton and a viral moment from his interview with Speedy Morant on the Boardroom Talks podcast. Goodwill played the clip in which Haliburton reacted to the Knicks winning a championship by saying, "When the Knicks won, I thought to myself, 'I gotta turn this sh*t off.'"
When asked whether a Knicks title would add anything to the Pacers-Knicks rivalry, Windhorst didn’t take the bait on Indiana.
“Honestly, I think from the Knicks perspective, they’ve got bigger fish to fry than the Pacers,” Windhorst said.
He then listed the teams he sees as more immediate concerns for New York.
“They’ve gotta worry about the Sixers. They’ve gotta worry about the Celtics.
They’ve been obsessed with the Celtics the last couple of years,” Windhorst said. “They’ve gotta worry about the Spurs.
They’ve gotta worry about the Thunder. The Knicks are hunting championships.”
That kind of dismissal is easy to understand when a team has gone through a 19-63 season, and it becomes even easier with questions hanging over how its best player will look coming back from a torn Achilles. Still, the Pacers’ case isn’t just about what happened last year.
If anything, the bigger question is what comes next. Indiana was a torn Achilles away from likely winning a title in 2025, and with new additions of Zubac and Oubre Jr. --as well as Haliburton reaffirming he is still the elite point guard he was before getting injured-- the Pacers enter the next phase with plenty to prove.
That proof matters in two directions. It matters to skeptics like Windhorst, and it matters inside the locker room too.
And while the Knicks may have “bigger fish to fry,” the Pacers haven’t exactly disappeared from the picture. New York still hasn’t beaten Indiana in a playoff series since 1999, and even if the Knicks were better in 2026 than they were in 2024 or 2025, the 2027 Pacers might be better than the teams that have knocked them out before.
For now, though, Indiana’s job is simple: use this season to remind everyone it still belongs in the conversation with the East’s best. The potential is there. Now the Pacers have to cash it in.
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The appeal is easy to see if Finney-Smith can recover the form that made him such a useful fit in the first place. His shooting slipped badly, which is part of why his value has drifted, but the contract structure adds another layer to the story because it becomes non-guaranteed after this season. If that leads to a buyout, Indiana could be among the teams that would have reason to take a closer look at a wing who still has the defensive profile and playoff experience to matter if the shot returns. [Read more 🡒]
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For Pacers fans, it is another reminder that Haliburton does not carry himself like a player dazzled by the trappings of stardom, even with a massive deal already in hand. He also noted that he expects his travel habits to change if his next contract lands where he wants it, which adds a little intrigue to how he sees his career, his future earnings and the comforts he may eventually decide are worth it. [Read more 🡒]
Pacers Could Benefit From A Knicks Problem Getting Harder To Ignore
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For Indiana, that kind of squeeze matters because the Pacers are trying to climb in a conference where small openings can change everything. If the Knicks have to keep choosing between holding the core together and preserving flexibility, it could affect how aggressively they operate in trade talks and how stable they look over the long haul. The Pacers do not need New York to collapse to benefit, only for one of the Easts biggest rivals to spend more time dealing with cap problems than building momentum. [Read more 🡒]