Pacers had to spend money to deal with injuries, but are now less flexible

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Pacers are among the most injured teams in the NBA this season. According to Spotrac injury trackingthey’ve had the second-most players miss time due to injury this year (only the Chicago Bulls have had more players miss time) and have lost the most cumulative salary so far this season — they’ve already paid nearly $22 million to players looking for game action.

So far, the Pacers have done what they can to combat those injuries. On the pitch, they have tried to rely on their playing style and be creative with formations where possible. However, the sheer number of injuries has rendered some of those measures ineffective and the Pacers are 6-18 so far this season.

Off the field, the team has signed several players to keep up with their health reality. Barely a week into their season, the Pacers waived James Wiseman and acquired Mac McClung because they needed a healthy guard more than center depth. That was just the beginning of a series of steps Indiana has taken to field a healthy roster.

At some point, 13 different players have missed time for the Pacers this year. Many of them have been concurrent, and it has led to change after change. The Blue and Gold players have already started 16 different lineups and fielded 22 different players despite their season being only seven weeks young.

To make all those lineup changes and active players into a cohesive team, the Pacers front office has been busy. They’ve signed McClung, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, Cody Martin, Monte Morris, Garrison Mathews and Ethan Thompson to contracts since the start of the regular season — and that’s not even counting the moves made during training camp. James Wiseman and RayJ Dennis were not allowed to facilitate any of these transactions. This year, on average, a new player will play for the Pacers every four games.

“We mess up plays sometimes because people don’t know things,” Pacers point guard Andrew Nembhard said. “It’s difficult. You were signed two or three days ago, now you have to play in the game. We are figuring out how to play with guys, their tendencies, their feeling (for the game), [and] what we are trying to do as a team. It is a difficult situation.”

The inflow and outflow of new talent was a necessity. McClung joined when the Pacers needed a guard – Tyrese Haliburton, TJ McConnell, Nembhard, Taelon Peter, Bennedict Mathurin and Kam Jones were injured at the time. Morris came on board when they specifically needed a point guard. Robinson-Earl, Martin and Mathews all originally signed with the team via hardship contracts, with Robinson-Earl later signing a standard contract. He essentially took Morris’ place – at that point McConnell, Mathurin and Nembhard were healed, but Obi Toppin, Johnny Furphy, Quenton Jackson and Aaron Nesmith were all sidelined.

It’s always been a thing for the Pacers this year, and all of their trades made sense when they happened. The decision makers in Indiana did what they could to salvage a dire situation, but it took a while for the team to find its feet. Indiana started 2-16 and has now won four of their last six games.

How do the Pacers’ injuries impact their salary cap prospects?

The other hurdle the Pacers faced in signing all of these players is the salary cap. Struggling players are capped, and multiple signings and waivers have caused some minimum salary caps to rise or overlap in ways that have somewhat affected the Pacers’ flexibility.

Indiana was about $6 million dollars below the NBA’s luxury tax line when the season started. Since then, that distance has decreased. Their first move was the most damaging in this way; renouncing Wiseman early in the campaign came at a cost. The young center had $1 million of his contract guaranteed for the current season, but he had only been on the team for 11 days by the time he cleared waivers. His prorated minimum salary would come with a cap hit of approximately $168,000 for the eleven-day period, but instead his number on the Pacers books for the remainder of the regular season is the aforementioned $1 million. The team pays the remaining $831,000 and receives no production for it.

McClung, Morris and Robinson-Earl (in order) filled out Wiseman’s roster during the season. All three players were on minimum salary deals of varying values, and they also had a few days of overlapping cap hits, while the player who previously occupied their roster spot cleared waivers, which takes 48 hours. McClung’s cap hit on the Pacers’ books is $178,000, while Morris sits at $224,000. Robinson-Earl is still under contract.

Then there are the hardship contracts. The Pacers have signed five 10-day hardship deals across three players this season. Each of these 10-day pacts comes with a limit change of approximately $132,000. Five of them combined to inject about $660,000 into the Pacers’ salary mix.

Individually, none of the moves the Pacers made to combat injuries were expensive. All together they have started to add up. Between the Wiseman waiver, hardship contracts and minimum salary juggling, the Pacers have already added more than $1.5 million to their salary books this season. They are now just under $4.5 million under the luxury tax line and $12 million under the first salary cap, which is a hard cap for the team this year.

For a team that has major exceptions to the salary cap (via their unused Non Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception and their Disabled Player Exception for Haliburton), every dollar counts. The Pacers had to use some of their flexibility to field a balanced team early in the season while dealing with injuries. But these steps bring the team closer to different spending thresholds and will be a factor in what they do going forward.