An ode to the Indiana Pacers' persistent relevance

Indiana is not a glamour franchise and has never won an NBA championship. But they always find a way to the top levels of the league.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Tranquility After the Storm; Erik Bodom; 1871

The Indiana Pacers are back in the Eastern Conference Finals, exactly a decade after their last visit. These two things are true of the Pacers: they are one of 10 NBA franchises to never win a championship and they are one of the most consistently competitive teams in the league.

The Pacers under Herb Simon famously do not tank due to existing in a relatively small market in a basketball-crazed state with a bottom line that relies heavily on gate receipts. Given the NBA’s perverse incentives when it comes to the draft, it’s remarkable that the Pacers have found a way to return again and again to the top tiers of the league while almost never picking in the top five.

This year’s achievement marks the fourth consecutive decade the Pacers have made at least the conference finals. Maybe that doesn’t seem like some sort of achievement. But the list of teams with at least one conference finals appearance in each of the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s is relatively short: it’s the Pacers, Heat and Lakers (who have made it that far in every decade since the 1940s). Making it to the final four of the NBA is a massive achievement, even if it’s not quite the exclusive domain of truly, sustainably excellent teams. (Hello, 2021 Atlanta Hawks.) Certainly, if you’re a fan of a team that makes it to the conference finals, you’re having a great time following your basketball team. Success is way more than than the struggle bus of one of these teams that has never made the conference finals. (Hello, dear fans of the Pelicans and Hornets.)

The Pacers haven’t had a parade since joining the NBA. And yet the Pacers are usually pretty good, sometimes really good and rarely straight-up mediocre for more than a few years at a time.