best i can offer you is a burger at swensons but you have to pay your own transportation

My vibes are immaculate and I’ll do it for 2 mill.

100% agreed. Great person and solid backup big. Long career to boot for a guy who joined after 4 years of college too. Shoutout to his dad as well. Glad they both played on the cavs

27 overall is 2nd round now? Sheeeesh

Micah Potter come on down

Not when you’re hard capped by using the MLE

My best guess is that Pacers will be slightly into the tax going into the ‘25-‘26 season.

Whether the Pacers prioritize the ability to duck the tax at the deadline OR the ability to trade for another piece at the deadline is much less clear. It seems like a mutually exclusive proposition at this point, and largely dependent upon the structure of Oobre’s contract.

• On one hand, it would make a lot of sense for the Pacers to maintain the ability to duck the tax at the deadline. If Zubac has trouble integrating and/or Haliburton takes longer than expected to get back to form, paying the tax this year could backfire bc of the repeater penalty. If this is how the FO is thinking, allocating Oobre to the non-taxpayer MLE is the way to go. But this caps the Pacers at the 1st apron.
• On the other hand, the Pacers have a lot of talent at the wing that they can consolidate into big piece. If the Pacers start next season on fire, going all-in to make a big trade at the deadline could make a ton of sense (depending on who is available). If this is how the FO is thinking, avoiding a 1st apron hard cap could be achieved by splitting Oobre’s salary between the taxpayer MLE & a couple million of regular (and taxed) salary.
• Either way, the team will probably be deep into the aprons in ‘27-‘28. “Just” has to show contender potential.

___

The Pacers haven’t been a team that avoids the tax at all costs. What they have been is tentative about the tax: a team that is only willing to pay the tax for a core group that has proven contention potential.

That early/mid 2000s tax-paying team was contending until the Malice broke it up. The next contending team after that was in early/mid 2010s with PG. To keep that team together, the Pacers offered Lance Stephenson an extension that would’ve put the Pacers into the tax. Lance just made the decision to sign a shorter “prove it” contract w/ the Hornets instead (which didn’t work out well for him).

Regarding Myles last off-season, the Pacers’ FO has made it clear that they would’ve gone deep into the 1st apron to match Milwaukee’s offer for Myles Turner IF given the chance to match. Nothing has come out to refute the Pacers’ FO account of things, and it lines up with ownership’s philosophy to keep contending cores together even if it means paying the tax. But the Pacers were definitely slow to re-sign Myles for the following reasons:

1. Given Haliburton’s injury, starting the clock on the repeat taxpayer penalty for a lost year would’ve been less than ideal.
2. Turner’s no-shows over two consecutive late playoff runs were concerning.
3. Pacers’ FO assessed that the market would Turner would be relatively poor due to a combination the CBA & other teams that were expected to want/need a player like Myles. Milwaukee’s offer was a shock.

Pacers’ ownership has the reputation for being just as cheap as the Bulls bc they didn’t give into the delusions of Larry Bird in ~2016. This is a long story in its own right, but the abbreviated version is as follows:

• Bird spent a few years making aggressively poor decisions, ultimately fucking up the contender that he created earlier that decade.
• To try to make up for it, he sold PG on the idea of bringing Anthony Davis into the building.
• Bird failed to sell Pacers’ ownership on going deep into the tax for AD. Herb & Stephon didn’t see acquiring AD as a viable path towards immediate contention, in large part bc the team couldn’t even get out of the first round the year before.
• Pacers did not acquire AD. Larry Bird’s tenure as the Pacers’ primary decision maker in the front office ended. Paul George asked out.
• A new era started w/ KP running the front office. First with Oladpio and Sabonis, then with Haliburton and Siakam.

He would be 3rd String Center / Power Forward , Garbage Time guy ~ to be 11-14 Man  on Roster 

One step below 8-12 minutes is spot minutes and another step below that is progress stopper. I get the argument that he’s not contributing to winning on the court but I heavily disagree that he’s a net negative overall, especially at week 2 of free agency.