The Indiana Pacers’ need for a guard in the absence of Tyrese Haliburton has outweighed their need for a center in the absence of Myles Turner. Thus, they got rid of one disappointing Golden State Warriors lottery pick in order to add one of the great Summer League Warriors.
James Wiseman was Indiana’s starting center in Saturday night’s 128-103 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. “Big Jim” scored four points and blocked one shot in 20 minutes, but turned the ball over three times and logged a -15 for the game. Apparently that was all the Pacers needed to see in Wiseman’s first regular-season game since he tore his Achilles tendon in the first quarter of the 2024-25 season opener.
It’s another bit of bad luck for Wiseman, who has had the beginning of his promising career derailed by injuries since the Warriors drafted him with the No. 2 overall pick in 2020. In his rookie season, Wiseman injured his wrist in January, then suffered a torn meniscus with 20 games to go in the season. Complications from the surgery and his rehabilitation knocked Wiseman out for all of the Warriors’ championship season in 2021-22.
Wiseman never really figured out how to play with Steph Curry, but it didn’t help that he was never on the court. He was consistently bad on defense, with his occasional shot-blocking not making up for his lack of mobility and constant fouling. Eventually, the Warriors traded to the Detroit Pistons midway through his third season, where he averaged 7.1 points and 5.3 rebounds on a 14-68 team that had three other centers competing for minutes.
Now he’s been cut loose in favor of Mac McClung, a 26-year-old guard who has spent more time on NBA courts during his three straight Slam Dunk Contest wins than he has in actual NBA games, where he’s logged 76 minutes in six career games. McClung averaged 13.4 points and 4.8 assists playing for the Warriors during Las Vegas Summer League, after playing two games his rookie season, one being the Los Angeles Lakers’ final game where he did a sick dunk at the buzzer.
McClung has always been a more famous basketball player than he is a good basketball player, ever since his high school dunk highlights started going viral. He scored a Virginia state record 47 points in a high school game, then played college ball at Georgetown and Texas Tech. McClung went undrafted and has had a ton of success in the G League — just not the NBA.
Beyond the chance to have a player win a dunk contest in a Pacers uniform, there are reasons to believe the Pacers could get something out of McClung, who is signing his first standard NBA contract in his fifth professional season — he’s no longer eligible for a two-way deal. McClung won a G League title with the Delaware Blue Coats in 2023, just two months after becoming the first G Leaguer to win the NBA Slam Dunk contest.
In 2024, he won the dunk contest again, then won G League MVP for his performance with the Osceola Magic after averaging 24.7 points and 6.5 assists, along with 1.4 steals. For his G League career, McClung has shot over 40% from three-point range and showed he can run an offense.
Why hasn’t he had a chance in the NBA? He’s a little bit small, for one. Despite his athleticism, McClung is only 6-foot-2 and isn’t quite enough of a passer to play point guard, or big enough to play shooting guard. Basically, NBA teams generally haven’t thought that McClung’s offense is good enough to overcome his size disadvantage, especially on defense. When the Warriors released McClung early in their 2022 training camp, Steve Kerr explained that the team wanted “a more pass-first guy,” which ended up being Ty Jerome, two years ahead of his breakout season with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Also, Jerome is 6-foot-5.
The Pacers are running out of ball handlers with Tyrese Haliburton out for the season and Andrew Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin, rookie Kam Jones, and veteran T.J. McConnell out with injuries. McClung could even start alongside Ben Sheppard given the Pacers’ depth issues.
McConnell might represent the best-case outcome for McClung. He’s also an undersized, score-first guard who went undrafted out of college and had to fight his way into the NBA. McClung couldn’t ask for a better mentor than McConnell, who has been one of the league’s best backup point guards for years and who makes up for his short stature with toughness and opportunistic ball-hawking (2.2 steals per 36 minutes last season).
As for Wiseman, he drew the short end of the stick because he was the lone Pacers big man with a non-guaranteed contract. Isaiah Jackson, Jay Huff, and Tony Bradley have their flaws, but they’re also much expensive to cut than Wiseman. He’ll likely catch on with some G League team — probably not the Santa Cruz Warriors — and hope that an NBA team with a need for a big man scoops him up.
Wiseman out, McClung in. In an Indiana Pacers season that’s quickly going down the tubes (they’re 0-3), the real impact of this move might be felt most at All-Star Weekend, where McClung will be going for an unprecedented fourth dunk title. Given their recent All-Star Weekend history, that may be the closest the Warriors get to a dunk champion in a while.