The Indiana Pacers didn’t need much on their Christmas list this year - just a win. One win.
Something to break the skid, to reset the energy, to remind themselves what it feels like to walk off the floor with a little momentum. But as they return from the holiday break, that wish remains ungranted.
Indiana hasn’t tasted victory since Dec. 8.
That’s six straight losses, nearly three weeks without a win, and a growing sense of frustration that's becoming harder to ignore. Head coach Rick Carlisle is still sitting on 999 career victories, stuck one win shy of a milestone that now feels more elusive by the day.
And for a team that came into the season with higher expectations, the current 6-24 record is a gut punch.
Pascal Siakam didn’t sugarcoat it.
After Tuesday’s 111-94 loss to the Bucks - a game that was never really in doubt - Siakam stood in front of reporters and let it out. Nine minutes of raw honesty from a veteran who’s seen enough and isn’t interested in excuses.
“We just didn’t play with no pace, no determination,” he said. “It was just jacking shots sometimes and playing with no force.”
That kind of candid assessment hits differently when it comes from a player of Siakam’s caliber. He’s not just venting - he’s diagnosing.
And what he’s seeing is a team that’s lost its identity on both ends of the floor. The offense is stagnant, the defense is slipping, and the energy - the intangible fuel that drives competitive basketball - just isn’t there right now.
“Sometimes it doesn’t look like we have any pace or any pep to anything that we’re doing,” Siakam continued. “It just looks slow, there’s no energy. It’s not fun to be around.”
That last line says a lot. When losing becomes the norm, it doesn’t just show up in the standings - it seeps into the locker room, the film sessions, the shootarounds. It becomes a weight, and if you’re not careful, it becomes the culture.
Carlisle knows this better than most. He’s been around the league long enough to understand that culture isn’t a one-time achievement - it’s something you build and protect every day.
“To have a championship culture, a lot of it is swimming upstream,” Carlisle said. “You want guys to be really competitive and want to play a lot of minutes, but at the same time encourage teammates that they’re competing with for minutes. It takes a special group.”
That’s the challenge Indiana is facing right now. Not just how to win a game, but how to stop the losing from becoming something more permanent.
And that’s why the idea of tanking - while always a topic when teams fall this far behind - misses the bigger picture. Sure, losing more games can help draft position.
But try telling that to the players who are out there every night, the ones fighting for contracts, minutes, and pride. Try telling Carlisle, who’s built a career on winning, that he should be fine with letting the losses pile up.
It doesn’t work like that.
The business side of the franchise feels it too. Empty seats.
Quiet crowds. A fan base that’s seen enough rebuilding cycles to know when things are slipping in the wrong direction.
And if you want a cautionary tale, just look at the Colts. Once a perennial playoff team, they’ve now gone more than a decade without an AFC South title.
Five straight seasons without a postseason appearance. That’s what happens when mediocrity becomes acceptable - and it’s a trap the Pacers can’t afford to fall into.
Tuesday’s loss to Milwaukee was a rough one - a 17-point defeat that highlighted all the issues Carlisle has been pointing to: long scoring droughts, lack of ball movement, defensive lapses. The Bucks controlled the pace, the paint, and the scoreboard, and the Pacers had no answer.
Carlisle put it simply: “Each game’s an individual entity and a new challenge.”
The next challenge? The Boston Celtics, who’ve been one of the East’s early success stories.
Even without Jayson Tatum - who’s been out since tearing his Achilles last postseason - Boston has surged to an 18-11 record, winning eight of their last ten. They already beat Indiana earlier this week at TD Garden, and they’re not slowing down.
For the Pacers, it’s not just about trying to win the next one. It’s about stopping the slide before it becomes something deeper.
Something cultural. That’s the real battle right now - not the standings, not the draft board, but the soul of the team.
Because once losing becomes normal, it gets a lot harder to remember what winning feels like.