The Indiana Pacers Candidates Down the Stretch

In 2025, the Indiana Pacers were 33-25.

Then they went on an 11-6 run in the month of March that consisted of:

• Two clutch wins, one by one point against the Bucks and one in OT against the Timberwolves, that rallied the troops
• One game against the Wizards where they scored 162 points and hit 27 three’s
• Scoring over 100 points every single game to end the year
• An offensive rating of 123.5, one of the best in modern NBA history

The team that ended the year fourth in the Eastern Conference wasn’t playing like it, and they rode that momentum all the way to an NBA Finals run with an unheard-of underdog story.

The point is that we always feel like we know the season’s narrative because the dog days leading up to the NBA All-Star break are so doom-and-gloom and boring at this point. We have only just begun! This is the home stretch to get hot at the right time heading into the playoffs. The load management is over: this is ramp-up season, when trade acquisitions get familiarized, the team chemistry is established, and the momentum in a sport is built on tone.

Essentially, any NBA outlet right now will tell you several things because we think we know everything:

1. There’s a clear top 4 in the East
2. The West has Oklahoma City and 5 other teams trying to catch up to them when they’re fully healthy
3. Wembanyama and the Spurs throw the best punch at OKC because of how much he hates Chet
4. A healthy Jokic at his best may be the best in the West
5. The Pistons are the “we believe it when we see it” team in the East because they’ve been the #1 seed, but were those Pistons not too long ago?

We think we know everything. But then stories like the Pacers happen.

Let’s take a look at some Pacers candidates heading down this pivotal stretch.

Charlotte Hornets

This is everyone’s darling pick at the moment. You’ve got Eric Collins going absolutely bananas as the local broadcaster any time LaMelo Ball hits a crazy shot (or literally anything happens). You’ve got Kon Kneuppel almost averaging 20 per game at a 48% field goal rate in a rookie of the year battle with Cooper Flagg, and he’s already the stabilizing, mature team leader presence at just 20 years old. You’ve got Brandon Miller dunking on every person alive and yelling at them afterwards. They’re 6th in offensive rating and shoot the lights out of a gym with a stable of young and fun draft picks from the dog days!

Credit: Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images

Those are the fun parts of the Hornets after they won 10 of 11 before the All-Star Break. How believable it is remains to be seen. The collective NBA-watching community is trying to wish -cast them into a Cinderella story, but that would be a massive mountain to climb given that they’ve been below .500 since they were 2-1. There’s also the reality that they’ve still been committed to making the team the LaMelo Ball show, and while he’s an incredibly talented shooter, the reality is that he plays with the maturity play style of a middle schooler making a 6-7 joke while shooting a million threes to impress the girl from Snapchat that came to see him play. The seriousness of the team when they’re not fighting the Pistons is in question, but we’re at the very least hoping that they could get into the play-in and throw a haymaker at one of the top seeds in the East for a round.

Philadelphia 76ers

The Sixers are also a bit of a mystery box team. Joel Embiid is actually playing games and averaging over 30 minutes and over 25 points(???). VJ Edgecombe and Tyrese Maxey also have the great vibes, high ceiling, where they’re two young athletic freaks that are too wide-eyed to let adversity bring them down as the backcourt they’re building around. Paul George will return with the last 10 games of the regular season left, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing for that locker room. However, the reality is that this Sixers team felt old and stale in the Embiid-George-Harden era, and now having Maxey and VJ at the forefront of the franchise gives them some new life.

They’re fourth in the East and have a brutal stretch of road games to end the year, but the formula of two rising stars next to the two been-there veterans and a shorter bench come playoff time may pay off.

Phoenix Suns

The Suns blew up their “we’re going in on constructing the star model” team by cutting ties with both Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal this offseason, after it’s fair to say that iteration of the team post-Finals appearance was a failure. They gave Devin Booker a two-year, $145 million max to keep the man who had been with them through ups and downs, created a team of pretty much just guards and Mark Williams, and called it a day and said, “We’ll figure this out later.”

And looking at where Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal are now… is it fair to ask if they won the break up??

The lofty expectations of “win-now” with Durant and Beal, with a reported toxic locker room, are gone, and they seem to just be playing with house money again, with Dillon Brooks thinking he’s a WWE villain and Collin Gillespie suddenly being a reliable guard when Booker has gone down with injuries this year. They create the most isolated turnovers in the league, have been firmly in the playoff race all year long, and Jalen Green is just getting started now as a midseason acquisition coming back from injury. It’s absolutely tragic that Dillon Brooks broke his hand this weekend, but he could potentially return right before the playoffs; that’s prime “BY GOD, THAT’S DILLON BROOKS’S MUSIC!” territory for the wrestling villain.

The lack of size is going to hurt them going against the likes of possibly Gobert, Jokic, Chet, or Wemby in the postseason. Still, they make it incredibly uncomfortable to play against, thanks to how pesky their guards are in the halfcourt. The haymakers that Indiana was throwing with their pace could be the “junkyard dawg” mentality they have on defense.

Cleveland Cavaliers

A team that acquired James Harden to try and make a postseason run as a sneaky contender? The jokes write themselves.

This genuinely feels different for the Cleveland Cavaliers, though. After getting the 1-seed last year and running it back with the same milquetoast operation that vastly underperformed the first half of the year, they ripped the band-aid off. They sent a younger Darius Garland for a James Harden, the bearded club-going model of the action-hero storyline, where he gets off the couch for one last job, and the gamble is paying off tremendously. They ended the stretch before and after the break on a 13-2 stretch, won their first five games with Harden, and Donovan Mitchell’s overlooked offensive season, averaging nearly 30 points a game, has been rolling with Harden as the primary distributor.

The shift in vibes around the team, similar to the Pacers winning those clutch games in the second half of the year, could be what raises the ceiling on a team that looked in the mirror and made a change. They’ve also got the 4th-easiest schedule heading down the stretch, including 10 games against tanking teams! The Cavs have a new look, and it is bearded and beautiful.