The Indiana Pacers were hoping for a top-4 pick. They wound up with nothing in the draft lottery
The Indiana Pacers were hoping for a top-four selection in the NBA draft. The ping-pong balls of the NBA draft lottery came out in such a way Sunday that Indiana would have had the No. 5 pick in next month's draft — but that pick will instead go to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the trade that brought center Ivica Zubac to the Pacers earlier this year.
Pacers President of Basketball Operations Kevin Pritchard did nothing to hide how disappointed he was about the latest batch of bad luck for a franchise that played in Game 7 of the NBA Finals last season, lost star Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles tendon in that game — he missed this entire season — and has had nothing to celebrate since.
CHICAGO (AP) — The Indiana Pacers were hoping for a top-four selection in the NBA draft. They missed getting there by one spot. That means they got nothing.
The ping-pong balls of the NBA draft lottery came out in such a way Sunday that Indiana would have had the No. 5 pick in next month's draft — but that pick will instead go to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the trade that brought center Ivica Zubac to the Pacers earlier this year. Pacers President of Basketball Operations Kevin Pritchard did nothing to hide how disappointed he was about the latest batch of bad luck for a franchise that played in Game 7 of the NBA Finals last season, lost star Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles tendon in that game — he missed this entire season — and has had nothing to celebrate since.
The team with the second-worst record in the NBA this season, after being the second-best team last season, just got dealt another loss. “I’m really sorry to all our fans,” Pritchard wrote on X , the social media site formerly known as Twitter, after the lottery. “I own taking this risk.