Doyel: How Kevin Pritchard pulled off the perfect Pacers offseason in two phone calls
INDIANAPOLIS – Tyrese Haliburton is floating above the floor at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, 20 feet tall, working magic tricks with the basketball. This is happening on the scoreboard, silly. Haliburton hasn’t grown 14 feet since we saw him last! His bank account, on the other hand…
Back to Haliburton and the scoreboard at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, which has been lowered to within 3 feet of the floor, the bright backdrop to one of the bigger days, transactionally speaking, in franchise history. Haliburton’s highlights are playing on the scoreboard for the crowd of about 100 – mostly media, franchise employees and Haliburton’s family – while the real Tyrese Haliburton, all 6-foot-5 of him, is motionless.
Haliburton’s supposed to be walking up the stairs to the dais, where he’ll discuss the $260 million contract that was announced Thursday, but he’s standing next to the stairs, next to the scoreboard, transfixed. It’s like he’s never seen highlights of himself. It’s like he has no idea how good he is. He’s standing there, smiling with what you’d call glee, as his 20-foot-tall version puts on a show.
It's like he has no idea we’re watching him, watch himself.
This is who Tyrese Haliburton is: gleeful, emotional, transparent, humble. What you see is what you get, whether he’s 20 feet tall and dunking on someone or 6-foot-5 and wearing a royal blue suit above white socks and thick black shoes. Last time you saw an outfit like this, Michael Jackson was moonwalking across a stage.
Haliburton climbs the stairs, and he looks thrilled. Looks like he might just do the same thing.
Kevin Pritchard: Bruce Brown a 'winner'
Out in the audience, taking his seat as Haliburton moves into position on the dais, Bruce Brown is showing how perfectly he’s going to fit in here.
All eyes are on Haliburton as Brown spots a seat in the front row, next to Haliburton’s parents, brother and girlfriend. Brown walks to the only empty chair in the row, smiles to the family, and introduces himself:
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “I’m Bruce.”
As if they didn’t know, you know? Haliburton’s news conference comes on the heels of one for Brown, who just a few minutes earlier had been introduced to the city after signing his two-year, $45 million deal. Pacers President Kevin Pritchard had just spent several minutes saying Brown was the team’s primary target in free agency and then explaining why, using words like “toughness” and “competitive spirit” and “defensive abilities” and, finally, “winner.”
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle had just talked about “the indomitable spirit” Brown will bring to the team, calling it “a huge free agent signing for the Pacers organization.”
Brown himself had just told all of us that he was “super grateful” for the contract, sharing his first thought since signing it: “I’ve got to get into the gym and prove I deserve this money.”
Everyone here knows who you are, Bruce.
But it’s beyond charming that he makes no assumptions, just as it’s charming how Haliburton can unabashedly enjoy watching his highlights on the giant scoreboard, as if he’s seeing the same thing the rest of us are:
The future.
Rick Carlisle: 'Small-town feel, big dreams'
How are they going to fit, these two? The way everybody fits with an unselfish player like Haliburton, the way everybody fits with a versatile player Brown: perfectly.
They’ve been connected since the first minutes of the official 2023 free agent period earlier this summer, a frenzy of phone activity for most teams in most years, but not for the Pacers. Not this summer. Pritchard says he made two calls, and pretty much stopped there: He called Haliburton, to make official the $260 million contract offer. And then he called Brown, to tell him he was the Pacers’ No. 1 target.
Shortly thereafter Haliburton was calling Brown himself, recruiting him to come to the Pacers and not the Knicks, who’d also reached out. It wasn’t long, a few hours max, before the Pacers had achieved their two biggest goals of free agency – locking up their franchise player, Haliburton, through 2029, and locking down their top priority on the open market, Brown.
The basketball will come soon enough, with the Pacers sorting through a problem they’ve not had since the start of the small-ball revolution: too many starting-caliber guards. Seriously, who comes off the bench among Haliburton, Brown, Bennedict Mathurin and Buddy Hield? We’ll see. They’ll figure it out.
The frontcourt looks deep too, albeit differently than past years when the Pacers were deep at center: Myles Turner, Domantas Sabonis, Goga Bitadze, Isaiah Jackson. Now the Pacers have Turner at center, with Jackson, Jalen Smith and undrafted rookie Oscar Tshiebwe capable of playing there or power forward, and with rookie Jarace Walker and former Knicks forward Obi Toppin primarily at power forward.
The Pacers don’t have star power beyond Haliburton, but they have 10 or 12 players who are no joke. What will that mean for a team that won 35 games last season?
“We can make big jumps potentially,” Pritchard said.
Added Carlisle: “We have a small town feel but we have big dreams here.”
'Things were in a dark place'
Thursday was the day Pacers owner Herb Simon committed more than $300 million to Haliburton and Brown. Can we cut the narrative that he’s cheap? The biggest names in the NBA don’t ignore the Pacers in free agency because Simon won’t pay. They ignore the Pacers because, ahem, they ignore the Pacers.
Simon is a lot like Pritchard, in that he wants to add quality on and off the court. Some teams care more about the player than the person, but here it’s always a package deal, which is why the franchise was so gutted by the way Victor Oladipo wanted out in 2021. Even after Paul George had shown us just 3½ years earlier what happens when a player decides his brand is as important as his basketball, none of us – not the Pacers, not the fans, not you, not me – saw Oladipo’s rejection of Indianapolis coming.
A year later the Pacers were still scuffling along, rejected twice by a franchise player and now dealing with injuries to most of what was left.
“In December 2021, January 2022, things were in a dark place,” Carlisle was saying Thursday. “We needed a new direction, we needed life, we needed an identity … then the trade with Sacramento happened.”
The one that sent Sabonis to the Kings for Haliburton in February 2022.
Doyel in 2022: Tyrese Haliburton is the ascending young talent Pacers have tried to acquire for years
Here we are, 18 months later, and the Pacers feel new and fresh. Do they feel terribly good? Not yet, but that’s why they play the games. Haliburton, Mathurin, Turner, Brown, Walker, Toppin – that could be the making of something special. We’ll see.
What we know is the Pacers got better Thursday, on the court and off it. In Bruce Brown they signed a key figure from Denver’s 2023 NBA championship team, someone confident enough to get in the face of Suns scoring machine Devin Booker, but someone shy enough to walk into his news conference on Thursday, eyes wide, deep breaths, and admitting: “I’m nervous.”
In Haliburton they signed a pass-first point guard who can score 30 points when he feels like it, an emotional leader who got emotional twice Thursday – when he thanked “my biggest fan, my pops,” sitting in the front row in a Haliburton jersey, and his mom, who had never missed one of Tyrese’s games until his freshman year at Iowa State, when her plane to the Texas Tech game in Lubbock never took off.
By the time Haliburton is done thanking his parents, he’s wiping his eyes and they’re wiping their eyes and Pritchard, sitting next to Haliburton at the dais, is looking around uncomfortably, trying not to lose it himself.
This was a big day for the Pacers, with players larger than life and a franchise ready for takeoff.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers: Kevin Pritchard pulled off perfect offseason in two calls
