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Pacers’ Most Powerful Trade Chip Isn’t Even on the Roster
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- Pacers’ Most Powerful Trade Chip Isn’t Even on the Roster
(Robert Goddin-Imagn Images)
The Indiana Pacers ' future first-round picks rank first among their trade assets in a Bleacher Report ranking of every NBA team's top trade assets , published Wednesday by Grant Hughes. Jarace Walker is second, and Aaron Nesmith is third.
Hughes wrote that Indiana controls all of its own future first-round picks and can send out any first between 2027 and 2033. The 2026 pick going to the LA Clippers removed the chance that the Pacers would owe their 2031 first, according to Hughes, which would have complicated sending out multiple firsts under the Stepien rule.
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The tricky part, he wrote, is finding non-essential salary to attach.
Indiana Still Has Significant Draft Capital
The Pacers sent the Clippers two first-round picks, a 2028 second-round pick, Bennedict Mathurin, and Isaiah Jackson on Feb. 5 for Ivica Zubac and Kobe Brown.
The 2026 pick was protected 1-4 and 10-30. If Indiana had kept it, the Clippers would have received the Pacers' unprotected 2031 first instead.
Indiana entered the May 10 lottery with a 52.1% chance of landing in the top four. The pick fell to No. 5, and the Clippers took Keaton Wagler.
The other first in the deal was Indiana's unprotected 2029 pick. On Sept. 2, the NBA took it from the Clippers as one of five first-round picks Los Angeles forfeited for violating salary cap circumvention rules, and it does not return to Indiana.
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Myles Turner had left for the Milwaukee Bucks in 2025, and Indiana went 19-63 last season.
"I think as you look at how things played out last season into this offseason, our glaring need at the center position," Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan said at the Pacers Foundation golf outing Sept. 24 . "I felt like, and I think we as a staff all felt, that our team was right there. We're right on the cusp of being a championship team. Why should we be patient and wait for something else down the road? Why should we be thinking long term? It's right there in front of us."
"And we felt like an opportunity to get a top 10 center in our league at the position that was obviously a big need for us," Buchanan continued. "We've been very selective on when we put in draft picks into trades in the past. And that was a moment where this is time to go for it. This is a player that fits our — what our roster needs right now. Our character of our locker room fits what his personality is, and it was time to go for it. It was time to fill that need and put our team in the best position we could going into this season to be where we were at before."
Assistant general manager Ted Wu said the same day that the center market last summer was one reason Indiana did not wait.
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"We made the trade for Zu because we wanted Zu, and once you kind of offer up the picks, like Chad said, we don't give up those picks lightly, but once we do, they're not really in our control anymore," Wu said. "So the league was able to kind of look at what the Clippers had and took that one in that year."
Jarace Walker Ranks Second
Indiana drafted Walker eighth overall in 2023. Hughes wrote that he has not popped since, but that his youth and the control that comes with restricted free agency next summer could appeal to other teams.
Walker and Ben Sheppard were eligible for rookie-scale extensions, and neither signed one before the Oct. 19 deadline.
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Last season, Walker averaged 11.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 2.5 assists in 76 games and shot 37.4% from 3-point range.
Through eight games this season, he is averaging 7.9 points and 6.1 rebounds. He played 44:41 and had 15 points and 7 rebounds on Monday, when the Pacers used only six players in a 108-104 loss to the Atlanta Hawks .
Aaron Nesmith Rounds Out the Top Three
Nesmith fits anywhere, Hughes wrote, though an acquiring team might not love that his $11 million salary this season jumps to $19 million in 2027-28.
He signed a two-year, $40.4 million extension in October 2025 that includes a trade kicker. It pays a projected $19.4 million in 2027-28 and $21 million in 2028-29, after he finishes the last year of a three-year, $33 million deal this season.
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Nesmith sat out Monday's game with left hamstring injury management. Tyrese Haliburton is out with a left hamstring strain.
Indiana (2-6) has lost five straight and plays at the Memphis Grizzlies at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday.
