Pacers have no answer for Hornets threes, NBA reveals coming changes
The Pacers are approaching the best possible lottery odds and may be one of the last teams to have those odds.
MY LIVING ROOM, Ind. – The Pacers were beating the Hornets 9-7 after about three minutes of play on Friday night. They had four assists already, a fitting continuation of their dominant night in Chicago two days prior when they blew out the Bulls in a 49-assist performance.
Then, the Hornets happened. And the Hornets happen fast. LaMelo Ball hit two shots from beyond the arc. Kon Knueppel finished at the rim. Sion James checked in and couldn’t miss from deep.
Over the next four minutes, Charlotte went on a 24-2 run and took a 20-point first quarter lead. The Pacers called a timeout twice during that run but couldn’t stop momentum.
"The first half was poor," Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said postgame. "They really hit us with a bunch of transition and threes in the first half, and they’re a good team. So we didn’t do very well in the first."
Tony East
The rest of the first half, and really the whole game, was wavy. The Pacers deficit was as small as seven in the second quarter at 49-42. They were down 19 at halftime.
Charlotte led by 15 late in the third quarter — a big lead, but manageable for the Pacers. With seven minutes left in the final period, the Hornets were up 27, a game-high figure.
Again, the Hornets happen fast. Once they get rolling, they’re hard to stop. And they had enough runs to keep the Pacers away throughout the night.
The Pacers ultimately lost by 21. Their 20-point first-quarter hole proved to be the difference — the final 40 minutes of play were roughly even. Yet it was still a crushing loss for the Pacers.
"They created separation with small-small pick and roll. We've done a poor job of talking and a poor job of reacting," Pacers assistant coach Jim Boylen said of the team's early defensive struggles during an interview on the FanDuel Sports Indiana broadcast of the game. He also cited how often Charlotte was scoring in the first eight seconds of a possession as a concern.
The biggest difference was the three-point line. The Pacers actually had a solid outing when it came to shooting at 15/36 from deep, yet they were still -27 from beyond the arc. The Hornets made 24 threes in 49 attempts, a terrific percentage and huge raw number.
In fact, it was the most threes allowed in one game by the 2025-26 Pacers. They've given up 20-plus triples to their opponent five times this season and are 0-11 when they concede at least 17. So 24 is, naturally, a death sentence.
Five different Hornets players made at least three shots from beyond the arc. Pat Connaughton and Josh Green both made two. Charlotte leads the league in made threes per game, and even still they were well above their average against the Pacers flimsy defense.
The final score was 129-108. The Pacers didn't play as poorly as that score suggests, but their worst moments were devastating and the Hornets couldn't miss. The loss ensures that the Pacers will have top-five lottery odds when the May 10 draft lottery comes, and a win by the Sacramento Kings over the New Orleans Pelicans means the Pacers can win two more games the rest of the way and still have the best lottery odds possible. They have five more games in total.
Elsewhere, from the NBA
Tanking no more?
The Pacers are involved in a race for lottery odds in what is likely going to be the last season under the current lottery system. The NBA, and specifically commissioner Adam Silver, has addressed the hopes to combat tanking with rule changes that will go into effect next season.
"We are going to fix it. Full stop," Silver said of tanking. "Certainly going into next season, the incentives will be completely different than they are now."
This season, thanks to a strong draft class and multiple teams with protected picks in the bottom top of the standings, has been filled with teams that are incentivized to lose and finish with better lottery odds. The league's on-court product has taken a hit. The NBA wants to fix its incentives to make the every-night focus to be winning, which may be hard if win-loss records are still tied to the draft order in some way.
Some of the anti-tanking proposals presented by the league were reported by ESPN here. This all coming after the Pacers traded away an unprotected future first-round pick (and perhaps two) is a fascinating wrinkle to the Ivica Zubac trade. The nature of any new rules will determine if those picks are more, less, or similarly valuable to the perception at the time they were dealt.
A lower salary cap next season?
Shams Charania reported that a decline in local media revenue is a factor that could lead to a lower-than-previously-projected salary cap for the 2026-27 season.
The decrease, as of right now, is only $1 million lower than prior cap outlooks. That's not a huge raw number, and it theoretically impacts every team. But franchises that are closer to certain spending thresholds, which will also dip by roughly that $1 million mark, are hit a bit harder by this dip if it comes to pass – as are teams that would have used salary cap space in the offseason. The Pacers are trending towards a flirty relationship with the luxury tax line again next season, so they could lose some flexibility if the salary cap drops. I covered the details of that here.
Expansion coming soon?
The NBA’s Board of Governors voted to authorize the league to explore expansion to Las Vegas and Seattle. It would be the first time the NBA expanded since they added the Charlotte Bobcats in 2004.
The expectation, per reporting, is that the two franchises would begin play in the 2028-29 season. That would mean an expansion draft is coming in two years, and after two more seasons. It's too early to worry about that now for teams, who have to continue to build their rosters as planned and maximize their goals with the current rules.
In other words – don't expect the Pacers, or any team, to alter their team-building plans too much in advance of the expansion draft. It's also such a distant event that it's A) impossible to predict who teams would and would not protect in an expansion draft and B) unknown what the specific rules for said draft would even be. Salary cap rules for new expansion teams are collectively bargained, but the rules for the expansion draft itself are not.
The next steps are finding ownership groups for both teams. If willing buyers meet the NBA's hopeful price, the league could have 32 teams by the end of the decade. And a Western Conference team (likely Minnesota or Memphis) would move to the Eastern Conference. One possible Pacers impact: their division, and thus the opponents they play most often, could change after conference realignment given the locations of the teams most likely to move.
Once expansion draft rules and timing are known, front offices can better plan for expansion. For now, it's a to-be-determined impact on other franchises, but great for the cities of Las Vegas and Seattle.
Thank you for reading. Just five more games for the Pacers with stories to come. Sign up to not miss any of them.
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