Pacers ‘unlucky’ with injuries, missed buzzer beater, but early-season hole is getting big

DALLAS –Aaron Nesmith missed the 3-pointer that would’ve made up for all the other misses and then clearly wanted to do nothing more than vanish.

Nesmith, arguably the Pacers’ grittiest glue guy and most lethal outside shooter, got, under the circumstances, a dream look for a game-winning, buzzer-beating 3-pointer. It would’ve meant redemption for what, at that point, was a 2 of 15 shooting night — including 1 of 8 from 3-point range — and would’ve stolen the painfully short-handed Pacers a win in a game they led by as many as 14 points and trailed by as many as 12.

Pacers point guard RayJ Dennis purposely missed the second of two free throws with Indiana trailing by two points with 3.4 seconds to go. Three players — two Mavericks and one Pacer — converged on the ball in the paint and somehow tapped it in the direction of a wide-open Nesmith.

Nesmith’s shot cleared the arms of charging Mavericks center Dwight Powell, but it didn’t clear the front rim, landing in the hands of Dallas’ P.J. Washington as the buzzer sounded to give the Mavericks a 107-105 win. Nesmith lifted his jersey up to cover his face and then continued to push it up so high he almost took it off. He tried to bury his face in it again and then realized he couldn’t actually disappear and any further venting needed to happen out of the public view of the American Airlines Center. He waved in the general direction of his teammates and held tightly to a blank expression as he bolted for the Pacers locker room. He was long gone from there by the time it opened to the media.

Pacers coach Rick Carlisle shook off any concern about Nesmith’s shooting, noting that he’s been one of the Indiana’s most reliable shooters over the last three plus seasons. Nesmith made a team-best 43.1% of his regular season attempts in 2024-25, then an incredible 49.2% of his playoff 3-pointers during the Pacers’ NBA Finals run with his 60 total 3s being the most of any player in the playoffs. Going into Wednesday’s action, he was 10 of 21 (47.6%) from beyond the arc in the first three games of 2025-26. That marksmanship combined with his willingness to sacrifice his body whenever necessary and take on some of the NBA’s toughest defensive assignments made the Pacers happy to tack on two more years and $40.4 more million to his contract just before the season started, locking him up through 2028-29.

“Individual shooting stats don’t faze me,” Carlisle said. “What fazes me is when guys lose their enthusiasm for the next shot and when we forget that things that have happened in the past are done. Look, Aaron’s a great shooter. He’s going to shoot great. On nights like tonight he does a lot of other things for us. These kinds of things happen. We’re men, not machines.”

But what clearly stung for Nesmith is knowing that if even one of the eight 3-pointers he missed — or even one of the six 2’s or the two free throws he missed on technical fouls — had gone in, the Pacers may have been able to finally get a win in 2025-26. It might take another at least another week before they get as good of a chance.

At 0-4, the Pacers are in the midst of their longest winless start to begin the season since 1988-89 and the second longest in their history. Just over four months after they entered Game 7 of the NBA Finals with the chance to claim their first NBA title, they find themselves in the zero-win company of the Brooklyn Nets and New Orleans Pelicans, two clearly lottery-bound teams who combined to win fewer regular-season games (47) than the Pacers (50) last season.

It’s no mystery why the Pacers are in this predicament, and considering how depleted they are it seems unfair to judge their performance at this point. They entered Wednesday’s game with eight of the 18 players on their roster listed as “out” on the injury report. That includes not only All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton — who tore his right Achilles tendon in Game 7 and will miss the entire season — but four more players who were among their top eight scorers in 2024-25 who have been injured since the start of preseason. Point guards Andrew Nembhard and T.J. McConnell, high-scoring wing Bennedict Mathurin and high-flying forward Obi Toppin all watched Wednesday’s game in street clothes. So did rookie guards Kam Jones and Taleon Peter and promising second-year wing Johnny Furphy.

So the Pacers are holding a roster together with safety pins and duct tape until their reinforcements return. In four games, they’ve had four different starting lineups. Their starting point guard for three of the four — Ben Sheppard — is playing the position for the first time since college. Just two of their three two-way contract players are healthy, but they’re both playing heavy minutes. On the campus of Southern Methodist University, the Pacers held a three-player tryout in the middle of a roadtrip Monday — something Carlisle said he’s never done before — which led to them signing three-time NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion Mac McClung. McClung had his first practice with the team Tuesday and played 13 minutes Wednesday.

Four of the five players who came off the Pacers’ bench Wednesday have played more G League games than NBA games. The fifth, center Tony Bradley, didn’t play an NBA game for more than two calendar years until the Pacers signed him out of the G League on a 10-day contract on March 2.

But in spite of all that upheaval, the Pacers have fought and had a chance to win three of the four games they’ve played. They lost to the Thunder in double overtime in the season opener on Thursday and after a blowout loss on Saturday to the Grizzlies in Memphis, they took the Timberwolves to the wire in a four-point loss on Sunday prior to Wednesday’s nail biter.

“Our energy is always going to be there,” forward Jarace Walker said. “Our spirit is going to be high no matter what.”

They’ve benefited from injuries to their opponents in the closer games. The Thunder (Jalen Williams), Timberwolves (Anthony Edwards) and Mavericks (Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis) all played without an All-NBA player due to injury or lost an All-NBA player due to injury in the course of the game. The Mavericks provided the Pacers the best hope to steal a win because they were not only missing Irving — down with an ACL tear until likely well into the second half of the season but also centers Derek Lively II and Daniel Gafford. Davis started the game but played just 6:36 when he came out with right lower leg soreness.

For the first 18 minutes in particular — and on the defensive end for the entire game — the Pacers played as if they had every intention of taking advantages of those absences. They built a 50-36 lead on a put-back layup by center Isaiah Jackson with 6:18 to go in the first half, holding the Mavs to 13 of 30 shooting while making 17 of their 39 shots. They were winning on the glass, chasing down loose balls and causing turnovers, doing everything they could to win a game when they were missing so much firepower.

But when they went cold, they went frigid. After that layup by Jackson they made just 2 of their last 11 shots to end the half with five turnovers after that stretch. They allowed a 12-0 Mavericks run before taking back a 55-52 lead at halftime, but that disappeared within a minute of the third quarter. The Pacers were outscored 29-19 in the period, making just 7 of 28 field goals and 1 of 11 3-pointers.

“There were some times we got stagnant offensively,” Carlisle said. “We must not allow that to happen. We have the ability to play our style regardless of the situation.”

In addition to Nesmith’s poor shooting night, Sheppard scored four points on 1 of 7 shooting, including 0 of 4 from 3. Walker finished with 20 points but was 5 of 19 from the floor and missed 10 straight shots from the second quarter to the fourth.

“That’s when our turnovers started piling in,” Walker said of the second and third quarter scoring drought. “We got a big lead, got a little careless. We can’t let that happen next game.”

For all their problems they still summoned a comeback. They fell behind by 12 points with 9:12 to go and then again with 4:23 left but outscore the Mavericks 18-8 in the closing stretch to set up the 3 that Nesmith missed.

“The effort was terrific,” Carlisle said. “The way the guys hung in at the end, giving us a chance when we were down 12. Then the last play, it was a great job by our guys and just unlucky. They had some good fortune on that.”

Nembhard (shoulder strain) is doing on-court work. Mathurin (great toe sprain) is out week-to-week but was at least shooting after practice Tuesday. McConnell (hamstring) was said to be out until Nov. 9, a little more than a week away.

Still, the schedule only gets more difficult and the hole they’re in could get bigger. They return home for four games, but the first three are against an Atlanta team that had an excellent offseason, the still dangerous Golden State Warriors and a Milwaukee Bucks team that is getting outstanding performances nightly from Giannis Antetokounmpo. They play the Nets next Wednesday but then have a four-game western road trip with games at Denver, Golden State, Utah and Phoenix. The Nuggets, Warriors and Jazz are a combined 9-4 so far.

So far the Pacers have been unlucky — deeply unlucky — but if they don’t find a way to steal at least a few wins early, they could find themselves in too big of a hole for their coming reinforcements to dig them out of.

Get IndyStar’s Pacers coverage sent directly to your inbox with our Pacers Update newsletter.