The Pacers Were Great at Losing Close — and That's the Problem

Indiana went 10–2 in games decided by five points or fewer last season. Sit with that for a moment. A team that finished 19–63, that went 6–24 over its final 30 games, that got outscored by nearly eight points a night across a full season — that team won 45% of its clutch games. Nearly double its overall winning percentage. The number doesn't flatter Indiana. It indicts them.

Here's what a 22-point gap between clutch win rate and overall win rate actually tells you: this roster could execute when the margin forced everyone to focus, when rotations tightened to eight or nine guys and possessions became precious. What it couldn't do was sustain that discipline across 48 minutes, night after night, against teams with real depth. Clutch competence is a skill. It is not, by itself, a foundation. The Pacers were essentially a team that needed a crisis to play well — and in the NBA, you can't manufacture a crisis every night.

Pascal Siakam is real. At 23.5 points per game on nearly 49% shooting across 65 games, he gave Indiana a legitimate first option, the kind of player who can close a tight game because he's been doing it his whole career. Andrew Nembhard at 7.5 assists per game is a legitimate orchestrator. Those two, healthy and together, explain the clutch number. They also explain why the overall record looks the way it does: when Nembhard missed time, when Bennedict Mathurin was limited to 32 games, when Aaron Nesmith played fewer than 50, the depth behind them was nowhere near sufficient to compensate. Close games reward your best players. Blowouts punish your worst ones. Indiana had too many of the latter.

The defensive trend at season's end is worth noting — allowing 119.7 points per game in the final 10 compared to 126.0 in the 20 before that — but I'd be cautious about overstating it. A 6.3-point improvement in garbage time, when opponents may be resting starters and the competitive stakes are gone, is a data point, not a transformation. What it might signal is that coaching adjustments were beginning to register with younger players. Whether that carries into a season where the games actually matter is a different question entirely.

The Johnny Furphy situation is the most honest summary of where this franchise stands developmentally. His shot volume jumped significantly in the final 10 games while his field goal percentage cratered from 56.7% to 39.7%. The coaching staff expanded his role precisely as his efficiency collapsed — and never corrected it. That's not a player problem in isolation; that's a depth problem. When you have no better option, you ride the guy who's struggling. Indiana rode him. That's what 19–63 rosters do.

Kelly Oubre's two-year deal addresses a real need on the wing, and my read is that the Pacers' best path forward runs directly through health. If Nembhard, Mathurin, and Nesmith each give Indiana a full season — something none of them managed last year — the clutch competence this team demonstrated becomes genuinely meaningful. A roster that executes in tight moments and actually has the depth to keep games tight is a different animal than what Indiana put on the floor in 2025–26. The gap between those two versions of this team is not talent. It's availability. That's the number the Pacers need to fix before any other conversation about their ceiling makes sense.