Pacers Trade Gamble Sparks Debate About Risk, NBA Strategy, and Taking Chances in Life

Most of you guys may be familiar about this, but for those of you who aren’t, so last year, the Pacers made a trade with the Los Angeles Clippers for a center. Zubac is the guy’s last name, one of the better players in the league. And again, I don’t talk a lot of sports on this show. I do talk about it when it transcends society. What happened yesterday is like life altering potentially for the Pacers. Pacers are such an entrenched part of our city, but it’s also sort of a, I think we can get into some things about taking gambles in life and calculated risks. So they traded for a guy whose last name is Zubac. He’s a very good center, probably one of the top ten centers in the league. Centers sort of been diluted, the need for a center in the past 20 years, but guy’s a good player. But they had to give up a lot to get this guy. They gave up a couple of good players, decent players, not tippy top guys, but decent players, Mathurin, Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson and then a couple of draft picks. One is an unprotected pick in 2029, and then they got to what happened yesterday, which was they agreed to trade their first round pick this year if it was not a top four pick. Now, the way the NBA works, and again, most of you guys probably know this, but if you don’t, there’s no guarantee where you’re going to pick, what exact pick you’re going to get. It’s called a lottery. And it’s not like lottery, like where ping pong balls are popping around. It’s a formula and numbers and all. It comes on a computer and all sorts of stuff. But there was a chance the Pacers, based on how bad they were this year, there was a 50% chance they were going to end up with a top four pick, and then there was also basically a 50% chance they were going to end up with a pick outside of the top four.

Pacers’ High-Risk NBA Trade Draws Strong Reaction From Fans

And the Pacers were sort of in a skip year with Haliburton being injured and they knew they were going to be very good. So they traded for this guy Zubac, knowing that they weren’t going to win this year. They traded for him for next year. When their team is back, he’ll make them better next year. But they also knew that there was a 50/50 shot they were going to end up with a top four pick, and if they got a top four pick, they got to keep their pick and then they would have to trade a pick in 2031 to the Clippers. If the pick was outside of the top four, they had to trade it to the Clippers. So like life altering, right. Nobody cares about 2031, and you would get a top five pick and you get this excellent center. They were swinging for the fences. Well, the pick was fifth in the draft and they lost the pick. Do you guys realize the Pacers, I think, are the only NBA franchise that has never had a number one pick? That’s amazing. The Pacers have never had a number one pick in the NBA draft. They’ve only had a handful of picks ever in the top four. It’s amazing how well the Pacers have never been a tippy top franchise, how consistently not bad they’ve been over the years. At least not bad enough to be that top, top team right to getting the top pick. So Pacers had a thing, a horrible luck yesterday, and they ended up with the fifth pick, which means they lose the pick.

Indiana Pacers Took a Calculated Gamble to Maximize Their Championship Window

And immediately people take to social media and they start screaming at Kevin Pritchard, the president of the Pacers. And he’s the guy that made the decision to make the trade. And people are outraged. And I can’t believe you did this and blah, blah, blah, to the point where he had to actually address it on social media. Like you almost never see this. He did that, just a hey, I’m sorry, I feel bad for our franchise, I feel bad for the fans, blah, blah, blah. Like you almost never see this from an NBA executive. And I was reading this apology that this guy wrote and I’m thinking to myself, this is why people don’t do anything bold in life, right? Like you’re the Pacers. You were an NBA finals team last year. You were an injury away from your best player from not only winning the championship, I think most people believe they would have won that finals game in Oklahoma City if Haliburton had stayed healthy. They were playing great in that game seven. But you also were on the verge of having a dynasty, a lot of great young players, all the pieces together, and you lose your best player. It just totally alters the course of your whole franchise, not just in this year, but for years to come potentially. And so the Pacers recognized, hey, we have a window here. They lost their center Myles Turner to free agency because he didn’t want to play for a year in a team that wasn’t going to make the playoffs. And so the Pacers said we think next year we can be competitive. We need a center. This guy’s the guy. Let’s go get him. Well, in what planet would you think you’re going to get a really good player for nothing? The Clippers knew they had an asset. They were going to demand something. And the Pacers made a risk. They took a gamble. They had a 50/50 shot of hitting a home run, potentially getting the number one pick in the NBA draft and totally exceeding all expectations and having a dynasty of a franchise as it goes now. And look, by the way, these guys bust all the time in the NBA draft. Go back and look at any NBA draft, and you tell me, other than one or two guys who ends up being a star no matter where they’re picked, not many guys. It’s very rare that draft picks turn out, and it’s true in the NFL, too. So the Pacers, you’re getting an established star. You might get a pick on top of that. But a worst case scenario, you get an established all star caliber player for a guy who might not turn out at all, could be out of the league in 2 or 3 years. No, of course it could become a great player. Who knows?

Risk-Taking in Sports and Business Often Defines Long-Term Success

My point on all of this, though, is not whether the player ends up working out or not, not whether it ends up being a good trade or not. But think about how often in life we have an opportunity to take risk. And do you take them? Like if you look at your life now, do you ever think back and go, man, if only I had blank. Man, I should have blank. Doesn’t mean whatever blank is would have worked out for you. But don’t you kind of look back and go, man, I wish I’d kind of done this or done that. Maybe you’re perfectly happy with your existence. My life has always been about risk, about chance, about doing what I think is right or best in the moment. And I’ve cost myself a lot of money over the years. I’ve cost myself a lot of money sitting here with you people right now. I can’t even begin to tell you. Do I regret it for one second? Nope. Because I believe in what we’re doing right now. I believe a couple years from now, I’m going to be infinitely more successful than I was in my previous position, and I was willing to take the risk because my brand, my thing was always about Rob Kendall tells the truth, Rob Kendall takes on the politicians or the topics or whatever. I was going to run out of luck on that eventually. Your great ratings can only carry you so far for so long. And so I’m here now, and we’ve talked about how the gangbusters numbers were doing and how great it’s going. And other than being a few bucks short, I’m having more fun than I ever had. I can’t tell you guys the joy of being able to come in here every day and be able to talk about what I want to talk about for as long as I want. They’d have killed me if I’d have done 30 minutes on the Mid-States Corridor at the old place. It was four days like, you know. Now I can do that, and it’s super valuable and it’s super important. What Jason McCoy just told you about the Mid-States Corridor and Braun trying to ram that road through that’ll benefit him and his business, nobody else will do that. I’ll do it. I’m happy to do it. It’s important. You guys deserve it. And so it’s risk, right? When I was 24 years old, Jason and I bought a radio station together. Like, I didn’t know anything about running a radio station, and I learned a crap ton out of it. Even though I lost money on the radio station, I’d made a bunch of money on the business I had before that, and I learned so much from that radio station that has helped me for the last 20 years. Things that had nothing to do with radio. I mean, some stuff that did have to do with radio, but like business, politics, like all of those things came out of owning that radio station. So my point is, like in my life, I’ve never judged the thing in the moment of, oh, that worked out horribly. Everything you’re involved in, you have to look at it about what the potential of the thing is, unless you just want to. And some people are okay with this, right? I just want to live the most secure, ordinary life imaginable. That’s great. If that’s you, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But for people with an entrepreneurial heart, which the NBA is a sports league, but it is an entrepreneurial business. It’s a business, right? That’s what the NBA is. That’s what the NFL is. That’s what the MLB is. We’re playing that out right now with the Bears. The Bears are thinking about coming to Indiana because they’ll make a bunch of money doing it, not because they love Indiana and they’re willing to screw Chicago in the city of Chicago and the people of Illinois who have been their home for generations, because the money would be better in Indiana. It’s a business. And so if you’re the Pacers and you run the Pacers and you’re a mid-market team and every, what, like every 20 years, the Pacers, well, maybe not 20 years, every 15 years, the Pacers sort of open up a window where they’re really good. I mean, you think about what did we have? We had the late 90s. I mean, I kind of, I guess you can stretch that the Reggie era of like 94 through 2000. And then there was a big, long period where the Pacers weren’t very good. And then they had Paul George and Roy Hibbert and those guys in the early 2010s. And then you have now this window that’s opened up here.

Pacers Strategy Reflects Broader Lessons About Entrepreneurship and Opportunity

So the Pacers know, right, there’s a shelf life because they’re a mid-market team. They don’t attract big name free agents. They can’t get a LeBron James or a Kevin Durant or Steph Curry. They’re not going to sign here. You got to either draft them or trade for them. And your windows are short because of that. And the Pacers took a big swing. They said look, our window is now. We have one of the best players in the league coming back off an injury. We could potentially hit the home run of home runs if we keep the top four pick, and if we lose the top four pick, we get a top ten NBA center and we are trying to cash in in the window. Now you got Siakam who’s an aging player, all that. I’m not going to go into the details of the Pacers roster construction. I’m not a massive NBA basketball fan, but I’m not mad at the Pacers about this. I think in life you take risk if there’s a reasonable chance of success. I think in life, if an opportunity to hit a home run presents it to you and you think the pitcher’s going to groove the ball down the middle of the plate, you got to step in and swing the bat. So I’m curious how you guys feel about this. What do you think about that trade? Are you guys mad at the Pacers? Were you mad before yesterday? Like look, there’s a chance this show fails. There’s a chance a year from now we’re sitting here and we haven’t grown at all. We’re not picked up by any other outlets. I’m just sitting here talking to you guys every day. Would still be great. But we tried, right? We’re taking a bet on being an independent voice, independent media, unlike anybody else has ever done. It’s been great so far. We like where it’s going, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to succeed. But I won’t view it as a failure if a year from now we’re right where we’re at today because we tried. You took the swing. You took the chance. That’s what you got to do.