Derek Schultz: Blueprint for a Pacers breakthrough?

Over a thousand miles away last week, with cheers echoing across the Rocky Mountains, a long-awaited celebration was taking place as basketball fans toasted Denver’s first championship in their 49th season as the Nuggets.

Here in Indiana, where the Pacers just completed their 50th season without an elusive title, you could sense a tinge of jealousy. Like Milwaukee in 2021, another NBA afterthought had broken through while the Pacers are left waiting. Although they were a dynasty in the franchise’s first nine seasons, most fans aren’t old enough to remember the Pacers’ ABA championship-winning days, and there still isn’t a single Larry O’Brien Trophy in their case.

The Denver Nuggets’ breakthrough, though, should give Pacers fans hope. While people in Indianapolis might not often think of the Nuggets (or vice versa), the respective journeys of the two franchises have largely mirrored each other over the years, beginning in 1976 when the Nuggets and Pacers made up half of the ABA’s four-team contingent that merged into the NBA. Following years of good teams and good players for both franchises and repeatedly coming close but falling short—the Pacers have made 28 trips to the playoffs without winning an NBA championship, while the 29th time in the postseason was the charm for Denver—the Nuggets finally broke through.

Can the Pacers follow their ABA travel partners to NBA glory?

The ABA days

If Denver fans needed someone to blame for their near half-century championship wait, they could point the finger at the Indiana Pacers. If not for the blue and gold, the first-ever season for the Denver Nuggets would’ve been a championship one.

Before the start of the 1974-1975 season and in anticipation of the merger with the NBA, a league that already had a team carrying the “Rockets” name, the former Denver Rockets were renamed the Nuggets.

The new moniker led to a whole new level of success for Denver, as the Nuggets cruised to an ABA-best and franchise record 65 wins while leading the league in points, field goal percentage and assists.

Led by a young Larry Brown (remember that name for later), who earned ABA Coach of the Year honors that season, Denver earned the top seed in the ABA’s Western Division and was the odds-on favorite to take home its first professional title—until Indiana played spoiler.

Despite finishing 20 games back of Denver in the West standings, the Pacers stubbornly pushed their Division Finals series with the favored Nuggets to a decisive Game 7. That night in Denver, Indiana slowed the pace down to a crawl, neutering the Nuggets’ high-flying offense to 22 points below its season average and leaning on star George McGinnis’ (another name to remember for later) game-high 40 points in a stunning, 104-96 series-clinching victory.

It was the third time in four years that Denver’s ABA franchise was eliminated by Indiana, and they haven’t come close to reaching 65 wins since.

Shared NBA building blocks

After 1975 and their eventual pilgrimage to the NBA, the Pacers and Nuggets never again met in the playoffs, but that’s not where their relationship ends. Following another heartbreaking postseason defeat in their inaugural NBA season, Brown recruited his old college teammate and fellow New Yorker, Donnie Walsh, to his staff in Denver. The future architect of the Pacers’ best seasons nearly two decades later, Walsh spent his first seven years in professional basketball with the Nuggets, a franchise that was a consistent playoff threat in its NBA infancy.

The Pacers occupied the other end of the NBA standings spectrum, compiling zero playoff wins and one lone appearance during Walsh’s Denver tenure. Fed up with going nowhere, new Pacers owners Mel and Herb Simon in 1984 turned to Nuggets assistant George Irvine to turn the team around. Walsh decided to pack his bags, too, departing with Irvine for a spot on his staff in Indianapolis.

After leaving the bench for the general manager’s chair in 1987, Walsh then returned an old favor to Larry Brown by hiring him as Pacers head coach. Brown led the Pacers to the Conference Finals in his debut season in 1994, resulting in the beginning of the “Boom Baby!” era that launched the Pacers into NBA relevance and prominence for the first time.

The impactful cross-pollination between the franchises in the years since the ABA move has gone beyond just the sidelines and front office. Alex English, one of the most prolific scorers in the league throughout the 1980s and the Nuggets’ all-time leader in that category, was drafted by Indiana and ended up in Denver, thanks to an ill-fated homecoming deal for a declining George McGinnis in 1981. Years later, Denver draftee Jalen Rose was shipped to Indiana for Mark Jackson and starred for the Pacers during the franchise’s only NBA Finals run in 2000.

Believing in a breakthrough

These days, the only connection the Nuggets might share with the Pacers is the hope that an NBA championship is actually feasible in a middle- to lower-tier market. Unlike recent champions such as the Warriors, Lakers or Heat, the Pacers have the capability to mirror the Nuggets’ title-winning blueprint. They can’t lure megastars by flaunting a flashy nightlife, big-city fame, or a giant media market; they’ll have to build a championship team like Denver did, through skillful drafting and savvy trades.

The drafting part is the biggest hurdle. Denver has a bona fide NBA superstar in Nikola Jokic, which is a key element the Pacers have always lacked. Although he famously (and controversially) finished runner-up for the award this season, Jokic is still one of just 15 players in NBA history to take home multiple MVP trophies. The Nuggets boasted the best player on the court for the entire postseason—a massive arrow to have in their quiver and the biggest determining factor in winning an NBA title.

Even at Reggie Miller’s peak, that has rarely been the case for the Pacers, and you’d have to return to the ABA days of McGinnis, Mel Daniels and Roger Brown for the last time Indiana consistently put the best player on the floor on any given night.

A franchise megastar might be a prerequisite for winning a ring, but Denver isn’t crowning itself a champ without Jamal Murray (drafted seventh, 2016) and Michael Porter Jr. (14th, 2018), nor is the team hosting any parades without trading for key veterans Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Whether it’s Tyrese Haliburton or Bennedict Mathurin, the Pacers eventually need someone to become their Jokic, but they can and have built contending cores before, even without a legitimate superstar. That secondary portion of the championship blueprint is doable.

Forty-seven years ago, the Pacers followed the Nuggets to the NBA. Indiana followed Denver’s success by building its NBA foundation with those who helped the Nuggets establish theirs. The franchises followed similar trajectories, ultimately resulting in similar setbacks and similar heartbreak.

Now that the Nuggets have finally enjoyed their breakthrough, let’s hope the Pacers will someday share a similar championship fate.•

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From Peyton Manning’s peak with the Colts to the Pacers’ most recent roster makeover, Schultz has talked about it all as a sports personality in Indianapolis for more than 15 years. Besides his written work with IBJ, he’s active in podcasting and show hosting.