INDIANA – In the midst of what has been a nightmarish 2025-26 NBA campaign, the defending Eastern Conference champions Indiana Pacers may finally be seeing the light.
Indiana, who are on a season-high three-game winning streak, host the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday night (Thursday morning, Singapore time) in Indianapolis.
The Pacers are battling New Orleans, Sacramento and Washington for the league’s worst record, and they currently sit in the Eastern Conference cellar.
Without star Tyrese Haliburton, who ruptured his right Achilles tendon in Game 7 of last season’s NBA Finals defeat to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team lost 13 of their first 14 games.
The nightmares did not end there. After going a respectable 5-5 in their next 10 games, Indiana went a full month without a victory, leaving Rick Carlisle stuck on 999 career wins.
He finally became the 11th coach to reach 1,000 victories last week in a 114-112 victory at Charlotte, and Indiana have since defeated Miami and Boston. Monday night’s 98-96 victory over the Celtics, thanks to Pascal Siakam’s 7-foot bank shot with 6.8 seconds left, is the team’s best of the season.
Siakam, a former Raptor and three-time All-Star who was named the MVP of the Eastern Conference Finals last spring, has persevered through this 9-31 campaign.
He leads the Pacers with 23.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and 1.3 steals.
“He epitomizes versatility at that position,” Carlisle said.
“For a power forward or a four man or however you want to label that position, it’s not just scoring, rebounding, defense – it’s also ball-handling and playmaking... A great deal of responsibility falls on him. He’s just been so graceful with everything he’s accepted.”
In the visiting Raptors, Indiana are facing a team that have struggled the last several weeks after an early-season nine-game win streak propelled them up the Eastern Conference ladder. They currently sit fourth in the conference standings.
Toronto dropped a 115-102 decision to Philadelphia on Monday, allowing the 76ers to score 80 first-half points. The Raptors finished a combined 54 games below .500 the past two seasons, so third-year coach Darko Rajakovic is taking this year’s highs and lows in stride.
“Obviously, we’re making significant strides. Players individually are getting better,” he said after Monday night’s loss. “There’s a lot of reason for us to look back and be satisfied with what we’ve achieved, but that doesn’t change the fact that we need to go another 42 games... so we need to constantly be hungry and humble.”
Toronto won the first two games between the teams, posting both victories over a 12-day span in the middle of November.
Meanwhile in NBA action on Tuesday, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 34 points as the Oklahoma City Thunder snapped a three-game losing streak against the San Antonio Spurs with a 119-98 victory over their Western Conference rivals.
Gilgeous-Alexander said Oklahoma City’s improved defense finally allowed the Thunder to claim a victory over San Antonio at the fourth attempt this season.
“Since the first time we played them we weren’t able to get stops, keep them out of transition – but tonight we did that,” he said.
“This team had got the better of us the last few times we played them, and that doesn’t happen to this group. Uncomfortable feelings and adversity is where you go to find who you are. We showed it tonight.”
Elsewhere, even without Anthony Edwards and Rudy Gobert, the Minnesota Timberwolves dominated the host Milwaukee Bucks 139-106 behind 29 points from Julius Randle.
In other news, Anthony Davis will not require surgery on his injured left hand after all, the Dallas Mavericks announced after the star big man met with his own physician.
It was the latest twist in a story that saw multiple developments during the day – from reports that Davis would likely be sidelined after undergoing surgery to repair ligament damage in his hand, to Davis himself disputing the reports in a series of posts on X.
Dallas confirmed that Davis underwent a medical evaluation on his hand and it was determined the injury will heal in approximately six weeks without surgery. REUTERS, AFP
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