Pacers’ offseason roadmap points to small moves
By CHRIS GOFF
ISL Correspondent
As the Pacers move forward and try to learn from the painful experience of a Game 7 beatdown, the biggest takeaway from their extended playoff run is that this is the right group of players.
While there’s no guarantee they make it back to the Eastern Conference finals, you have to like their chances. Getting that far again could simply prove a matter of smoothing out rough edges.
That mission will require creativity. With all the salary commitments they made last offseason, the Pacers remain in a tight spot in terms of the salary cap and luxury-tax line, and they have several free agents to deal with this summer.
As with any organization, it all starts with the owner. Herb Simon is a retail billionaire whose Simon Property Group is the largest publicly traded company of its kind – obviously, if he decides to bounce the payroll up a few million, he is able. Just as obvious is that Simon decided fiscal caution is prudent after he paid a nearly $5 million luxury tax bill for a team that failed to win a playoff series in 2005-06.
In most of the years since, with poor attendance in a small market, the Pacers have suffered losses. For that reason it’s hard to blame Simon for not spending wildly. Regardless, entering the offseason Indiana has little wriggle room, even if it wanted to spew cash. A number of existing contracts have built-in raises, and the salary cap is expected to rise by less than $500,000.
Indiana will come within almost $10 million of the cap with the contracts of just six players – Roy Hibbert, Danny Granger, George Hill, Ian Mahinmi, Paul George and Gerald Green. Add in the $1.04 million that will be on the books after the Pacers make their first-round selection in this month’s draft and the smaller contracts of Lance Stephenson, Miles Plumlee and Orlando Johnson, and they’re already at $51 million – with the luxury-tax threshold expected to fall between $71 and $72 million next year.
All of that is before they attempt to re-sign David West, Tyler Hansbrough, D.J. Augustin, Sam Young or Jeff Pendergraph, or replace them, or add someone for a new role.
“Our intent as a franchise is to try to bring back our whole core,” coach Frank Vogel said. And the Pacers are more than able to do so, but as a side effect, it’s going to be extremely difficult to engineer any major additions.
Indiana’s biggest priority is bringing back West, the locker-room leader who remade the franchise with his veteran moxie and versatile scoring. The Pacers have the money to keep West. His free-agent salary hold, however, shoots them past the cap line, meaning only the midlevel exception is available to sign outside free agents.
The summer of 2014 is when Simon might be confronted with going well into the luxury tax to keep together a genuine championship contender. For now, that’s a matter for another day. While Simon keeps a low profile, he attends games and passionately wants to win. He can get his team back to the same point without paying tax by using the tools at his immediate disposal. Their first-round pick, at No. 23, and the midlevel exception can fix the bench. That gives a 12-man roster, and from there the front office can choose one of the restricted free agent power forwards – likely the cheaper Pendergraph – and dabble in the minimum salary market to complete the roster. Not a grandiose path, but enough to give this group another chance at contention next spring.
