first one in the gym last one out kinda guy, real gym rat

Chet is wondering what any of these words mean

He’s going to be squatting 5000lbs by late October.

The 82 games schedule can be really hard on the body and players need to step back a little, but 5000lbs? This my boy TJ, he don’t need to go that easy. Double that easily.

Pacer legend TJ leaf

They were not a great regular season team.

People who weren’t paying attention tend to think that the ‘24-‘25 team was garbage in the regular season because of its 10-15 start. But to start that season, all of the Pacers’ NBA-caliber wings and both backup centers got injured - all missing games at the same time.

get through the concurrent injuries at wing, the Pacers had to play G-leaguers. The centers never came back because both tore their achilies, so Carisile had to find “good enough” guys off the street. All this happened as Rick was working out the kinks of a new switch-heavy defensive scheme, and as Tyrese was ramping up after having zero summer ramp-up. Worst case scenario start to the season.

From the very second they got an NBA caliber wing back from injury (Nembhard was first IIRC) and found “good enough” backup centers off the street - so mid December - that team was keeping pace with OKC, Cleveland, and Boston in terms of winning percentage and net rating. That Pacers team had really good records against winning teams and the West, respectively as well, while that year’s two most used starting lineups made up the 2 of the league’s top 3 high-usage five man lineups by net rating. Literally only OKC had a better starting lineup.

They went on an incredible playoff run though, but then they changed their roster a lot.

• Offensively, Myles a Haliburton’s PnR/PnP merchant. Even with Myles getting setup with tons of wide-open looks through PnR/PnP actions, he had way too many games where he couldn’t make a wide open shot to save a life. He got benched down the stretches games often - more than any other starter that season - which was just incredible considering that our backup centers that season were picked up off the street. Myles also disappeared in back to back ECF series and the Finals, so there’s that.

• On Paper, Zubac >>>> Turner. There were All-NBA voters putting Zu over Tyrese on their All-NBA ballots in 2024-2025, whereas Turner hasn’t sniffed an All-NBA vote in his career. Zu’s play-style is different, but Carisile is a future HoF coach who will figure it out. Rick also spent much of last season developing very promising small ball lineups, and Huff developed into a better fit than our off-the-street back-ups from 2024-2025. Our frontcourt is more well-rounded than it’s been in a long time.

• Mathurin is the only other notable loss. He has ton of individual skill; probably not a lot of NBA players who can beat him in a 1v1. But his play-style game never fit Rick’s scheme, and is generally pretty outdated. Even on his good nights, he’d general pose an opportunity cost to the team by icing out Tyrese (and by extension, all of the actions that Tyrese sets up to get other guys going). In nearly every ‘24-‘25 game where Mathurin was cooking, opposing teams would wait until Mathurin iced out Tyrese, then start hitting Benn with double-teams and zones. Mathurin would then repeatedly try to play hero ball through bad looks instead of deferring, which generally led to crash-outs and losses. It was more bad than good, and it’s why he’s on a 2year/16M deal with the Pelicans.

• I fully trust that Oobre will match or exceed Mathurin in the “borderline starting caliber wing off the bench” role on this team.

Everyone is also a year older because they punted last season, and this is mainly relevant for the older players on the team like TJ and Siakam.

• Everyone would’ve been a year older whether the Pacers punted or not.

• Siakam clearly has a lot left in the tank, and one of the biggest positives from last season was all of the small ball lineups that Rick developed, both with Siakam and without Siakam.

• I’ve been worried about TJM for a while. He’s a total net negative on the court when his shot isn’t falling just because of how badly he gets hunted in half court sets. But at least Huff is a solid PnR/PnP big for TJ and Oubre should be able to provide help defensively. These are two things that TJ hasn’t had from his fellow 2nd unit players in years.

Nesmith is an advanced stat demon; a very solid 2-way player; and the perfect glue guy at the 3 bridge the play-styles of Haliburton and Siakam.

A lot of the same can be said about Nembhard, but Nemby is less of a glue guy and more of guy who adds immense flexibility and defense to the backcourt in particular.

My dad loves joking around with me about how funny Nesmith looked when running towards Haliburton after his shot against the Knicks, you could see his braids flying around lol

I remember the championship we won, do you guys have one of those?

Over Nembhard?