For most of this century, one of the tried and true maxims of the NBA has been that you wanted your team to either be at the top or the bottom of the standings. There was no worse place for a franchise to be than in the middle.
Oh, the dreaded middle.
But the last couple of months, if not several years, have taught us anything, it’s that there is real value to being in the middle.
The Dallas Mavericks were in the middle and won the lottery. So were the Atlanta Hawks the year before them.
And now here come the Indiana Pacers, a team from the middle of the country who entering the season were given the 17th-best odds of winning an NBA championship — worse than the New Orleans Pelicans and tied with the Sacramento Kings! — and are just one victory away from doing that very thing.
Welcome to the NBA’s Competence Era.
Boom or bust has gone bust in the NBA. The Big 3 model LeBron James and the Miami Heat brought into vogue is no longer feasible under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. And with recently flattened lottery odds there isn’t enough payoff for tanking to justify the pain.
As I wrote following Portland’s disappointing lottery finish in May, the Trail Blazers may have figured that out a bit sooner than the rest of us.
There has been no shortage of analysis about the parity in the NBA. The league will crown its seventh new champion in the last seven years on Sunday. In that time, nine teams – nearly a third of the league – has made at least one Finals appearance.
And when I think of what that means for teams like the Portland Trail Blazers, it’s this: It can be done.
Indiana is not a destination for star free agents. A Hall of Fame-caliber player is more likely to force his way out than in.
Who knows whether the Pacers, after an inspiring Game 6 romp, will have enough left in the tank to steal Game 7 on the road in Oklahoma City. But just being here validates the process and the moves Indiana, led by a pair of former Blazers executives (and a former Blazers assistant coach, for that matter) made to get here.
I was among those who anticipated a Thunder romp in these Finals.
And what that would have meant for the other 29 teams in a copycat league, I’m not sure. The Thunder, with their incredible collection of talent and draft picks, are in a league of their own when it comes to team-building, with some basketball sleuths concluding that their 68-win season can be traced to a 2007 trade for veteran big man Kurt Thomas when the franchise was still in Seattle.
It’s not exactly a replicable approach.
The Pacers, however, have methodically and consistently embraced the middle, constantly evolving, making sensible moves that made them incrementally better. In less than eight years, Indiana’s front office of Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan, has traded away two All-NBA players in Paul George and Domantas Sabonis.
Starting in 2020, the Pacers went three seasons without making the playoffs, but never won fewer than 25 games and never picked higher than sixth in the draft, when they selected Bennedict Mathurin — a key role player on this potential championship team.
The lesson here is that the pathway to success in the modern NBA is for teams to raise the floor and let the ceiling take care of itself.
The Pacers winning a title would defy the belief that you need a top-flight superstar to win an NBA title.
At 25, Tyrese Haliburton is a star, no question. But he is merely a two-time All-Star and this spring made his second appearance on the All-NBA third team. In a poll of active players by The Athletic late in the regular season, Haliburton was voted the league’s most overrated player. Meanwhile, Pascal Siakam was an All-NBA second and third team selection in previous years in Toronto.
Most observers would tell you that the Pacers are in position to win the franchise’s first championship not because of their front-end talent, but because of the balance throughout the roster. Because of T.J. McConnell and Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard and Mathurin.
The Pacers are built much more like the 2019 Blazers than they are any of the recent NBA champions.
Not since the 2004 Detroit Pistons has a team with so little star power claimed an NBA title. Even though that team had two Hall of Famers, including Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, and a Hall of Fame coach in Larry Brown.
And that should excite fans of teams like the Trail Blazers, whose team doesn’t have, and may never have, a star of the LeBron James, Jayson Tatum or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ilk. But is building a roster with the kinds of players and role players that Indiana is winning with.
The Blazers are several moves, and probably years, away from being in the kind of conversation we’re having right now about the Pacers. But can’t you see Deni Avdija and Toumani Camara being part of the kind of model Indiana has established?
Trail Blazers Cavaliers Basketball
Portland Trail Blazers' Deni Avdija (8) shoots past Cleveland Cavaliers' Dean Wade, right, during the first half of an NBA basketball game in Cleveland, Sunday, March 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Phil Long) APAP
I’ve fallen into the trap of believing that the Blazers need a true star to catapult to contention and, make no mistake, that’s still the most direct line to true success. But building around max contract stars, as the Blazers learned with Damian Lillard, is fraught with peril.
Look at the Boston Celtics, who two months ago were favorites to defend their 2024 title, and now appear destined to have to break up much of a championship roster.
Locally, the onus is still on the Blazers and general manager Joe Cronin to build smartly around the few reliable, foundational players the team already has in place. Just because it’s been done elsewhere doesn’t mean the Blazers have been given a golden ticket to do the same. It is hard to draft well and sign the right role players on valuable contracts. It takes vision.
And I am mindful of the notion that some middling teams could hide behind the success of a scrappy, built-from-the-ground-up team like the Pacers as evidence that mediocrity may eventually pay off without any real urgency to deliver.
But as we approach the end of an exhilarating, theatrical NBA Finals that will deliver one of two franchises its first ever title, I’d like to plant my flag and say that a win by the Pacers would be a win for fans of any team that doesn’t have a direct path to acquiring a superstar.
Or that doesn’t have 18 years to wait for a trade to fully pay dividends.
--Bill Oram is the sports columnist at The Oregonian/OregonLive.