The Pacers’ rebuild may have turned on the 2023 draft.
That night brought Indiana the No. 8 pick and, with it, Jarace Walker. Later in the first round, the Pacers added Ben Sheppard at No.
- On paper, that’s the kind of draft haul a rebuilding team can live with.
In practice, it looks a lot more complicated now.
The biggest issue isn’t just that Walker and Sheppard have not become difference-makers. It’s that Indiana’s timing was brutal.
The Pacers held the seventh overall slot in the 2023 lottery and missed the 6.8% chance to move up. That was the start of a stretch that left them with too little upside at the wrong moments.
Sheppard, at No. 26, is the easier miss to absorb. That pick rarely turns into much.
Of the last seven players taken 26th overall, only Bones Hyland and Payton Pritchard have even become rotation pieces in their careers. So missing there is not the real problem.
Walker is different. The eighth pick comes with real expectations, and history gives teams a much better shot at landing a quality player there.
The source points to recent names like Franz Wagner, Dyson Daniels, and Egor Demin as examples of what can be available in that range. Indiana did not get that kind of return, and that matters.
Then there is Bennedict Mathurin, taken sixth overall. Put all three picks together, and the picture gets harsher.
In those two drafts, the Pacers had a chance to build a strong young core around Tyrese Haliburton. Instead, those premium slots did not produce the kind of foundation a team hopes for when it is trying to rise fast.
The missed fortune is part of it, of course. Landing Victor Wembanyama or Cooper Flagg would have made the job easier for any team. But the larger point here is that Indiana did not get the kind of break that can simplify a rebuild, and it also did not maximize the assets it already had.
That’s where the timing becomes so costly. In a league where draft picks carry so much weight, the moment those picks arrive shapes their value.
The Pacers did not just get unlucky. They let prime chances slip away.
And that’s what makes the 2023 draft such a sliding-doors night for this rebuild: it may have nudged Indiana toward a future where the Pacers are good enough to hang around as dark-horse contenders, but not quite good enough to become champions.
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