So far in free agency the Pacers also signed two year deals with Darren Collison and Bojan Bogdanovic. Collison has been a career backup and spent some time in Indiana when they had their first run-in with the Heat in 2012, but they traded him that offseason. Bogdanovic is a lights out shooter and a lights on defender, I'm coining that phrase by the way, it means that he's bad. He benefits from guys that can draw attention and kick to him for threes and I don't really see Indiana having any of those guys on this roster. They then made a deal to send CJ Miles to Toronto for Cory Joseph. Cory Joseph is a solid point guard that filled in nicely for Kyle Lowry when he was injured. This seems like this will be his chance to become an everyday point guard. They were also able to waive Monta Ellis, which is not a bad move considering that you are not a team that is going to contend.
To summarize, they lost Paul George, Monta Ellis, and CJ Miles while adding Darren Collison, Bojan Bogdanovic, Cory Joseph, Victor Oladipo, and Domantas Sabonis. It appears that the Pacers are going the way of the tank. I'm not sure how you can compete with Myles Turner, Lance Stephenson, Thaddeus Young, and the rest of these guys. I would look for Indiana to try and make some moves to get some picks, but the only real asset I see on the roster would be Myles Turner, but he is probably untouchable. Larry Bird always said that the Pacers could not afford to not be good. It's interesting that he resigned before they did these moves. It will be interesting to see where they go from here. This will be Myles Turner's chance to really step up and improve his game. A starting five of Joseph, Oladipo, Stephenson or Bogdanovic, Young, and Turner seems like it could compete, but it's not enough to make the playoffs in the East, which is pretty bad.
Looking toward the future, cap space will be something that a lot of teams will not have and the Pacers have a lot of money coming off the books after the 2018-2019 season. The only contract on the books is Oladipo, along with Sabonis and freshly drafted TJ Leaf. That summer they will have to re-sign Myles Turner, which might not be cheap, but they will have space to take on bad contracts from teams with draft picks as their price. It is a hard sell to fans though to say, don't worry we have a plan to be not good for 5 years and then we might be good or terrible, but there's a chance we might get a superstar, there's always a chance. This was a long winded way of saying the Pacers will not be good next season.