The Pacers don’t have much to worry about when it comes to scoring. If Tyrese Haliburton gets back to his old form, Indiana profiles as one of the league’s best offenses. The real issue is different: the bench needs a scorer, and that is where Andrew Nembhard enters the picture.
TJ McConnell and Obi Toppin are expected to be Indiana’s sixth and seventh men, but neither is built to create shots the way a team usually wants from a second unit weapon. McConnell brings his own value, and Toppin is especially more of a finisher than a self-starter with the ball. That leaves a gap, and it is a meaningful one.
Nembhard can help fill it.
Haliburton and Pascal Siakam are the two players on the roster who should be allowed to really hold the ball and run possessions. Those are the engine pieces.
Most of the rest of the team is supposed to make quick decisions once the ball gets to them. There are a couple of exceptions, though.
Ivica Zubac is one of them. He will spend time operating out of the post, and while he is mostly there to finish pick-and-rolls, a player acquired with a top-five pick in a trade is not going to be hidden.
Nembhard is the other exception. Even after a quiet showing in Indiana’s 19-win gap-year season, he has still shown enough to handle isolation possessions and do more than simply attack closeouts. The version of him that went after Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the Finals is still in there.
That version may actually fit better in a role with more space to breathe.
If Indiana wants to maximize its lineup balance, the simplest move might be starting newcomer Kelly Oubre Jr. and shifting Nembhard to the bench. That would give the Pacers a stronger scorer against reserve units, where his ability to create could matter more.
The idea of a sixth man has changed a lot, too. It is not the slight it once was, when teams automatically started their best five players no matter how awkward the fit looked. Lou Williams helped rewrite that thinking.
Sweet Lou won multiple Sixth Man of the Year awards and even turned down starting jobs so he could keep attacking weaker competition on his way to recognition, awards, and the same steady contracts. He could move from iso-heavy scorer to spot-up threat depending on who was on the floor with him.
Nembhard being asked to do something similar is not as strange now as it would have been 15 years ago, but it still comes with real complications. In the NBA, perception matters, and a player who is already viewed as a starter has every reason to resist being labeled a bench piece.
Still, the Pacers’ best path to being a true contender is balance, top to bottom. Without a real scoring answer for the second unit, that balance is incomplete. Moving Nembhard to the bench might not be popular, but it could be the move that keeps the season on track.
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 🡒]