Debrief: Ivica Zubac hardly played. What can he take from this Pacers season?

INDIANAPOLIS – Myself, the Pacers themselves, and Ivica Zubac all have an incomplete feeling about Zubac's 2026 with the Pacers. It's not possible to have grand takeaways about a five-game sample, especially when star forward Pascal Siakam missed those five games.

Two of those five came against the same opponent, the champion New York Knicks. One of them came with a minutes restriction – Zubac logged just 16 minutes, all in the first half, during his Pacers debut against the Phoenix Suns. And his final game came with injuries. The visible one being a knot on his head after taking an elbow to the face, the invisible one being the fractured rib he suffered at one point in the loss vs the Trail Blazers.

Zubac thinks he knows which play the rib injury occurred on but isn't certain. "It was in the first quarter against Portland," he said, pretty sure. "Felt it right away, but it didn't feel like it was fractured. After the game, it got a little worse. [I] had trouble sleeping through the night."

Circle City Spin

The Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever, up close

Circle City SpinTony East

It was a very uncomfortable injury. Sleeping, coughing, laughing, even breathing were all challenging for Zubac. His season ended that night after just five games donning the blue and gold, and many of them were weird.

Evaluating them is challenging. The most obvious reason to play Zubac at all this season was to get him some in-game reps with other Pacers core players, especially ones who could be in the team's rotation in 2026-27. Even that hardly happened outside of one game. Here's the breakdown of how many key teammates were available in Zubac's five games:
-Pacers vs Suns, March 12: Four (Andrew Nembhard, Jay Huff, Jarace Walker, and Ben Sheppard)
-Pacers vs Knicks, March 13: Seven (Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Walker, Sheppard, T.J. McConnell, Obi Toppin, Huff)
-Pacers vs Bucks, March 15: Five (Walker, Nesmith, McConnell, Huff, Toppin)
-Pacers vs Knicks, March 17: Six (Walker, Nesmith, McConnell, Sheppard, Toppin, Huff)
-Pacers vs Trail Blazers, March 18: Five (Walker, Nesmith, McConnell, Huff, Sheppard)

His second outing against the Knicks feels the most instructive. That game featured the entire Pacers projected rotation for next year outside of the stars in Tyrese Haliburton and Siakam. But the Pacers offense stunk that night. They scored just 92 points and shot under 40% from the field. Nembhard and Nesmith combined for 8/27 from the field.

Zubac had 11 points and eight boards, then admitted postgame that he was nervous for his debut with the team two nights earlier. He was also critical of his own performance on the glass. "I've gotta be better, man. I don't remember the last time I allowed that many offensive rebounds," he said. Mitchell Robinson, who started that night, pulled in nine.

Zubac, in that vein, was often his own biggest critic. That's a positive takeaway. He is aware of what he needs to do to improve on a nightly basis, and that played a part in his ascent every year for the Clippers.

That will be important next year, too. The veteran big man has an entirely new challenge coming his way as he learns how to fit into a new system, and one that will ask him to do more than he has in the past. If the Pacers don't change their style that has guided them through two deep playoff runs, Zubac will be an important side-to-side passer. He'll be engaged in many actions. Being involved isn't new for Zubac, but being a top of the key fulcrum will be something new-ish.

It took Huff a while to get the hang of it. That's why the Pacers wanted Zubac to play and get some reps with his new teammates. Unfortunately, that time was cut short and featured zero minutes with Siakam. He played just two games with Nembhard and four with Nesmith. The rest of the rotation was scattered every outing. It's hard to take much from that.

It's equally hard to make much of Zubac's play. After shooting 71.4% from 0-3 feet with the Clippers, that number was 47.4% with the Pacers in the same season. That is obviously an outlier. From other distances, his shooting percentages were similar to his LA self. Once his touch normalizes, his scoring should hold with the blue and gold.

His defense in a new system – as well as his screening, jump shooting (about 10% of his shots come from beyond 10 feet), passing, and other skills – are all still to-be-determined fits. There's a lot of missing context from his season, and he got hurt before there was enough data to draw conclusions.

Zubac won't be flying completely blind in 2026-27, but he'll still be adjusting along the way. His offseason will be important, as will training camp. That's one advantage of getting the trade done in February, Zubac is a member of the Pacers for the entire offseason. Some of the team's assistant coaches, including Jenny Bouckey and Jim Boylen, have been with Zubac in Europe this summer.

"Definitely helped with [getting] a feel for how this team wants to play, about the pace, about defensive coverages, the defensive rotations," Zubac said of what he got out of his abbreviated Pacers season. "Offensively, where they want me to be, what they want me to do. So it definitely helped. I wish [there] were more games to get a better feel for it. But I kind of understood what they want from me, and (I've) got the whole summer to get in the best shape of my life and get ready for the next year."

Zubac averaged 11.6 points and 7.2 rebounds per game in his 118 minutes for the Pacers. He will hope all three of those numbers are by far his lowest with the franchise. And the Pacers will, too.

Thank you for reading. Two of these to go, then it's time for the offseason to get rolling. Sign up for a story about Pascal Siakam, Kobe Brown, and oh so much more.