Pascal Siakam may already be the Indiana Pacers’ best player, especially with all the uncertainty around Tyrese Haliburton’s return from Achilles surgery and recovery. But even with that in mind, Haliburton is still the engine here. Siakam is the extra gear - the one that can push Indiana from very good into something a little more dangerous.
That idea gets more interesting when you zoom in on one specific wrinkle: Siakam at center. The Pacers have already started to uncover that lane.
Last season, Siakam played 11% of his minutes at the five, a jump from an average of 1.5% in his first two years in Indiana. That works out to a little more than three minutes per game.
It’s not a massive sample, and nobody should pretend it is. But with Ivica Zubac now in the fold, Indiana doesn’t need it to be a full-time answer.
It just needs to be good enough to keep the Pacers on the floor with their best eight players instead of forcing in another center for the non-Zubac minutes. If it turns into more than that, even better.
The appeal is pretty simple: it gives Indiana another way to play without changing who they are. The Pacers already have a fairly standard setup.
Their point guard plays like a point guard, their shooting guard like a shooting guard, their small forward like a small forward, and so on. They’re familiar, maybe even predictable.
They’ll run in transition and create out of the pick and roll. That’s not a flaw by itself.
Sometimes the old answers are still the right ones.
But the best teams usually have more than one identity.
The Cleveland Cavaliers were cited as an example of the opposite trend, a team willing to move away from traditional positional expectations. The Pacers don’t need to become that kind of roster.
What they can do is add another look within their own framework. Siakam at the five trims some of the pick-and-roll volume and costs them on the glass, but it also turns Indiana into a faster, more frantic team.
That version already showed up often enough in the 2024-25 playoffs, when the Pacers leaned on it during their run to the Finals. Part of the reason was the limitations of Myles Turner.
With Zubac in place now, the Pacers have a better player in that spot. But the bigger point remains the same: when a team is already strong, having a weapon like this matters even more.
Using Siakam’s versatility as an extra motor could be exactly what takes Indiana up another level.
In Other News...
Pacers Fans Finally Have A New Way To Watch This Season
After a season in which many Pacers fans had to piece together how and where to follow the team, there is finally a clearer local viewing option on the horizon. Indianas new broadcast partnership with DAZN gives the fan base another way to watch the Pacers this season, a welcome bit of stability for a team that has spent enough time lately giving people reasons to circle dates and tune in.
The arrangement matters because local access has become part of the modern NBA experience, and Pacers followers have been looking for a cleaner solution. While other league news has centered on contract standoffs and summer development stories around the conference, this is the kind of off-court change that can still shape how a season feels from the start, especially for fans who just want a reliable way to keep up every night. [Read more 🡒]
Pacers Linked To Veteran Reunion That Could Help A Finals Push
The Pacers roster shuffle left them with a little flexibility, and that has naturally turned attention toward a familiar face. After waiving Ethan Thompson and signing Braden Smith to a two-way contract, Indiana still has an open spot, and James Johnson has emerged as a possible reunion candidate for a club trying to keep its rotation steady while staying in the mix for a Finals push.
Johnson is the sort of veteran addition teams tend to revisit when the games get bigger and the margin for error gets smaller. He has bounced around the league, has already given Indiana a useful bench presence before, and brings the kind of leadership and locker room value that can matter as much as on-court minutes in a deep postseason run. Whether the Pacers decide to go that route remains the part worth watching. [Read more 🡒]
Pacers Still Need Johnny Furphy To Answer One Lingering Bench Question
Johnny Furphys second NBA season has offered a little more runway, but not nearly enough clarity for the Pacers to feel settled about his role. The former Kansas second-round pick has appeared in 85 of a possible 164 games over his first two years, and last Februarys ACL injury only added another layer of interruption to a development path that has already been uneven. Indiana has seen enough to keep him in the conversation as a backup wing, especially with his size and youth, but the overall package still feels more like a work in progress than a finished rotation piece.
The encouraging part is that Furphy has handled more minutes and shown some scoring growth when hes been on the floor. The part Indiana still needs answered is whether the shot can become reliable enough to translate those flashes into steady NBA production. Until that happens, his case is less about what he has already become and more about whether he can prove he belongs in a bench role the Pacers can actually count on. [Read more 🡒]