Last year, the Indiana Pacers were one win away from an NBA championship before a devastating Achilles injury took out star point guard Tyrese Haliburton in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
Fast forward eight months to the All-Star break of the 2025-26 NBA season, and the Indiana Pacers are 14th in the Eastern Conference and have the 4th-worst record in the NBA, sitting at a miserable 15-40 record. Only two players have missed the entire season for Indiana this year—Obi Toppin and Tyrese Haliburton. They also lost Myles Turner in free agency. Yes, other rotational players have missed some time this year, but that’s common for any team in today’s NBA. So why is a team that was so close to glory last year a complete laughing stock this year?
The short answer: a masterclass of a tank job.
Tanking has been a strategy in the NBA for decades: the act of deliberately losing to secure a higher draft selection. However, there hasn’t been a tank more blatantly obvious than what the Pacers have been doing this year. The Boston Celtics, a team fresh off losing their best player, Jayson Tatum, were expected to tank, just like the Pacers. The Celtics started the year 0-3, but have gone 35-16 since and now sit as the 2nd overall seed in the East.
Sure, the Pacers were dealing with more overall injuries than Boston, but in no world should a banged-up Indiana team that has shown they can compete for an NBA championship be lower in the standings than the Brooklyn Nets: a team whose best player is Michael Porter Jr.
Although the tanking is embarrassingly obvious, you have to give it up to the Pacers front office for the heist they’ve been able to pull off. Indiana traded for the Clippers center Ivaca Zubac and, in that trade, sent the Clippers a heavily-protected first-round pick, which essentially confirmed Indiana’s master plan. The Pacers pick that was sent was protected for picks 1 through 4, which means if Indiana finishes in the top 4 of the draft lottery, they will hold onto the pick. Fully incentivizing the Pacers to go out and lose games on purpose.
So now you’ve got an Indiana team next year that will likely be back to full health, with superstar Tyrese Haliburton recovering from injury, with a new talented center in Ivaca Zubac, and likely a top 4 player in the 2026 NBA draft class added to the team. Instead of a young, struggling team receiving the top 4 talent, it will go to the Indiana Pacers, a team that one year ago was a win away from an NBA title. As the saying goes, the rich get richer.
It really begs the question for the NBA: at what point do you begin to penalize tanking?
