A big question after the Pacers waive James Wiseman

INDIANAPOLIS – The Pacers are too injured. Six of their top eight rotation players from last season are not available to them right now – Myles Turner (money) is in Milwaukee while Tyrese Haliburton (achilles), Andrew Nembhard (shoulder), Bennedict Mathurin (toe), T.J. McConnell (hamstring), and Obi Toppin (hamstring) are all sidelined. Pascal Siakam and Aaron Nesmith are the last two standing.

No matter, Indiana has depth. Right? That has been a superpower in recent seasons. But Johnny Furphy (foot), Kam Jones (back), and Taelon Peter (groin) are also injured. Quenton Jackson missed the team's first two games. So, no depth either.

That forced the Pacers to make a transaction after just three outings. Out went James Wiseman, who played in two games across two seasons for the franchise. He tore his achilles last season, then was simply the least effective center on the roster this year. The Pacers needed a roster spot, and all three of Isaiah Jackson, Jay Huff, and Tony Bradley had proven to be more deserving of one than Wiseman despite the $1 million guarantee in his contract.

In comes Mac McClung, a freakishly athletic guard who is a multi-time dunk contest champion. Fun! He's only played in six NBA games, so making any prediction about his impact is nearly impossible. He's been great in the G League, though. I watched him absolutely shred the Mad Ants in the G League playoffs last season, posting 39 points and six assists in the quarterfinal game to eliminate Indiana. The Pacers hope that will translate to quality NBA play – they need it in the backcourt.

If Peter, who is listed as doubtful, can't play for the Pacers Wednesday night in Dallas, they'll have 10 available players. Just four of them will be guards. McClung could be in the rotation right away. He'd be sharing a backcourt with RayJ Dennis, Quenton Jackson, and Ben Sheppard. There's injured, and then there is this.

The team's health status made the transactions a requirement. They need ball handlers and got one. But the Wiseman waiver was a particular part of this that I have been thinking about. To be clear: I think it's the right move. To bring in a guard, Indiana had to open up a roster spot. They had four centers, so losing one of them wouldn't be so painful from a depth perspective. Bradley has been the team's most consistent performer at the position, Jackson has the highest highs, and Huff is a style fit working his way in. Wiseman, meanwhile, had been the least effective. He had a chance to start in Memphis over the weekend and the Pacers offense was ghastly when he was on the floor (though the team's defense was solid). It is his only appearance of the season. He had to be the one they let go of.

I did understand the Wiseman signing this season, more so than last year in some ways. He's huge and he's fast. There are alignments where he can be valuable. So far in his career, he hasn't impacted winning much, but the Pacers player development system has been great in the last half decade. In 2024-25, when they were chasing wins and ultimately reached the NBA Finals, I didn't understand the need for Wiseman. In 2025-26, with a lower ceiling over the team thanks to Haliburton's absence, trying to develop him made more sense.

But they're trying to develop Jackson, too, and just didn't have room for the Memphis product any more. Sometimes, projects don't work out. Maybe McClung will. But that leads me to my question.

Wiseman is just 24. That's young. But I have intentionally left out one piece of biographical data about him to this point in this writing – his draft position. Of course, many of you reading already know it. He was the second overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, one spot behind Anthony Edwards. That's six spots ahead of Toppin, 10 in front of Haliburton, and 12 before Nesmith.

That draft slot has also been a major selling point among fans and onlookers. To be clear, I am exclusively speaking about that group right now and not the Pacers front office. We'll get to them. I see and hear often that part of the pitch for Wiseman being a potentially strong player is that he was the second overall pick in a draft. My question is this: When does that not matter any more for a player's evaluation?

Take this to an extreme. Absolutely nobody is banging on the table demanding that the Pacers sign Anthony Bennett, the top pick in the 2013 NBA Draft. He had an underwhelming four-year career and hasn't played since 2016-17. There is no illusion that he is an NBA caliber player.

But he did go first overall. Nine players from his draft class are still in the league. It's not as if it's exclusively because he's 32-years old that nobody suggests he be on a roster. It's because he isn't an NBA-caliber player, and that's obvious.

2018 lottery picks Jerome Robinson, Mo Bamba, and Kevin Knox are not on rosters right now – though the latter two did sign training camp deals this year. I still hear a rare suggestion that the Pacers should sign one of those two at times. But I never hear about Josh Jackson or Frank Ntilikina, two lottery picks from the prior year. Ntilikina, Bamba, and Knox, have played for NBA teams within the last three seasons.

I hardly hear about Jarrett Culver, the sixth overall pick from the 2019 draft. Cam Reddish, the 10th pick from that same draft, gets a rare name drop. Killian Hayes, the seventh pick a year later, almost never does. Ditto for picks 11-13 in the 2021 draft class: James Bouknight, Josh Primo, and Chris Duarte.

The answer to this question might just be a difference of opinion. Some fans think certain players, who were once top picks, could still be good. Others don't. You could make that argument about any player, though. I also think, subjectively, that fans have more of a bias toward players picked inside the top three or so. And it's a stronger feeling than one for players picked later in the lottery. Dragan Bender and Josh Jackson, fourth overall selections, never really got the dead cat bounce in their careers, and fans never really clamored for it to happen.

So, back to Wiseman. Maybe the answer to my question is just that his draft happened in this decade, and that feels recent to many. Plus, the Pacers have been ace in developing players from his class. I get why fans were so attracted to the idea. But I never understood why him being selected second overall means he magically has more potential than other young talents. At some point, what you've shown on an NBA court matters more. Unfortunately for Wiseman, that involved a lot of injuries and starting his career on a team that (rightly) chose playing vets over youngsters.

To bring this back to the actual Pacers... who knows where they ranked Wiseman on their draft board in 2020. They might have had him eighth. Maybe he was first. I don't know. They clearly had enough belief in him to sign him to two contracts, and I understood the bet.

Let's pretend the Pacers had Wiseman ranked fifth. Does the fact that another team thought Wiseman should be the second overall pick make him a more appealing free agent in the future? I actually think the answer to that should be yes. I'm just a guy who writes and talks about the team. But if a player in any draft gets picked higher than I thought they would be or personally projected (Hi, Bilal Coulibaly), my immediate thought is, "did I miss something?" and not "Is [team] dumb?". And I think if I worked for a team (lol), that same thinking would have to apply.

So I do think that, in some ways, Wiseman getting picked second overall matters when taking a swing on him. But, simultaneously, I believe draft position gets way too much consideration from fans as a reason a player should be signed.

Even after Wiseman got waived and McClung was signed, I received roughly a half-dozen questions from fans about either Markelle Fultz or Ben Simmons. In all but one of those cases (a Simmons note from a fan of his play), the question included a comment about the player(s) being a former No. 1 pick.

Why does that still matter so much? Yes, at one point Fultz was considered the top prospect by many. That was over seven years ago. He'd be the sixth-oldest Pacers player right now with only Huff, McConnell, Siakam, Toppin, and Bradley as his senior. Is anybody talking about the potential of those players?

Don't get me wrong, Toppin and Huff are still on an upward trajectory, but that's more due to their number of years in the NBA. That doesn't apply with Fultz. Simmons, meanwhile, was drafted before Fultz and would be Indiana's third-oldest player.

Both guards were contributors for NBA teams last season – Simmons in LA with the Clippers and Fultz for the Sacramento Kings. If one is to suggest that the Pacers should sign them because of how they played last season, I could understand. They both battled injury in 2024-25. I've long been a fan of Simmons, especially on defense.

But using the draft position of either player in the sales pitch feels like an outdated measure of quality. So I think the answer to my own question of, "When does that (draft slot) not matter any more for a player's evaluation?" is this: it depends on the age of the player.

Age feels like a more reasonable thing to note for Wiseman than for Fultz or Simmons. Marvin Bagley, another big man who was chosen second overall, is in year eight and gets discussed more for what he does with the Washington Wizards right now and less what he could be someday. He's 26. Bagley found a path to a nice career, and Wiseman could certainly be next in line to do so.

None of this is meant as a knock on Wiseman. His second-most recent NBA appearance was in Detroit for the Pacers season opener in 2024, and Indiana doesn't win that game without his pre-injury contributions. Wiseman is just the face of this thought that has been rattling around in my head.

And now, he has been waived. And it was because his current production wasn't enough to justify any remaining upside. Mac McClung now joins the team, and my mind may eventually have a broad NBA question because of him, too.

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