Indiana Pacers history

A professional team for Indiana

The Pacers began in 1967 as part of the American Basketball Association, a league seeking a place alongside the NBA. The team announced its name on June 16. Its stated ambition was to set the pace in professional basketball. Mike Storen became general manager, Larry Staverman was the first coach, and Roger Brown was the first player signed.

Indiana opened against Kentucky at the Fairgrounds Coliseum on October 14, 1967, winning 117–95. Those early games began a relationship that would survive arena moves, a change of leagues and generations of players. The ABA is the starting point for that story: it was where the franchise built its first championship team.

The ABA dynasty and its defining figures

Bobby “Slick” Leonard took over during the team’s second season and became its defining coach. Championships in 1970, 1972 and 1973 established Indiana as an ABA power. Those are official titles from that league and belong in the Pacers’ record; they should be distinguished from NBA championships.

Mel Daniels supplied interior strength and rebounding and won two ABA MVP awards. Roger Brown spent his professional career in the ABA and was central to all three titles. George McGinnis joined an experienced winning core and helped secure the 1972 and 1973 championships. Their careers, along with Leonard’s, eventually earned Hall of Fame recognition.

The era offers several ways to understand Indiana’s identity: the coach who sustained the project, the center who controlled the paint and the scorers who could decide games. Remembering that dynasty means remembering the collective as well as its trophies.

Changing leagues and securing the future

The move to Market Square Arena in 1974 gave professional basketball a larger downtown stage. In 1976, Indiana entered the NBA alongside Denver, San Antonio and the New York Nets after the ABA closed. Admission brought financial obligations and a difficult sporting adjustment.

A 1977 telethon helped keep the franchise afloat. That effort deserves its own place in the history: the team’s survival also depended on its community. Ownership changes and uncertainty followed before Mel and Herb Simon bought the club in 1983. Institutional stability became a foundation for rebuilding the basketball operation.

Building the Reggie Miller era

Recovery required time and players to build around. Chuck Person won Rookie of the Year in 1987. That year, Indiana drafted Reggie Miller with the 11th pick. Miller would spend all 18 of his NBA seasons with the franchise.

Continuity is central to his significance: successive versions of the team retained a recognizable reference point. Outside shooting and the willingness to take decisive possessions became his signature. Over time, an Indiana game carried a particular sense of possibility when the ball reached him late in a close contest. His eventual Hall of Fame induction recognized a career inseparable from the Pacers’ name.

New York and an era-defining rivalry

With Larry Brown coaching, Indiana reached the 1994 Eastern Conference finals. The Knicks won that series in seven games. Their meetings established a rivalry that would return at decisive points in both franchises’ histories, with Madison Square Garden providing one of its defining settings.

On May 7, 1995, Miller scored eight points in 8.9 seconds against New York in Game 1 of the Eastern semifinals. Indiana won the series before losing a seven-game conference final to Orlando. Miller’s burst took on a life of its own in basketball memory. Placing it within the full playoff journey also gives credit to a team that had established itself among the East’s contenders.

Larry Bird and the challenge to Chicago

Larry Bird’s arrival on the bench gave an experienced group a new framework. In 1998, the Pacers pushed Michael Jordan’s Bulls to a seventh game in the Eastern finals. Miller’s winning three-pointer in Game 4, which tied the series at 2–2, remains one of its lasting images.

That run shows how close Indiana came to overcoming one of the decade’s great teams. It also explains the project’s persistence: the 1998 defeat was followed by another conference-finals appearance in 1999, against New York. Miller’s generation was accumulating experience in long series, hostile arenas and games capable of deciding an entire season.

The first trip to the NBA Finals

The 1999–2000 Pacers finished the regular season 56–26. They defeated Milwaukee, Philadelphia and New York to reach the Finals. Miller played alongside Jalen Rose, Mark Jackson, Rik Smits and Dale Davis, among others, giving the team several routes to offensive production and a presence around the basket.

Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers won the championship series 4–2. For Indiana, the appearance was that generation’s high point. Rose led the team in regular-season scoring; Jackson supplied playmaking, Smits interior offense and Davis rebounding. Considering those roles helps explain how the finalist was built alongside the story of its most recognizable star.

A new contender and a painful rupture

Roster renewal overlapped for a time with Miller’s presence. Jermaine O’Neal and Ron Artest became central figures in the next contender. Coached by Rick Carlisle, Indiana won 61 games in 2003–04 and reached the Eastern finals, losing to Detroit in six games.

The November 19, 2004 fight involving players and spectators at the Palace of Auburn Hills profoundly changed the following season. Suspensions removed several players from Indiana’s lineup; Artest was suspended for the rest of the campaign. The violence and its sporting consequences warrant serious treatment rather than spectacle. Miller’s career also ended in 2005. The franchise faced a transition involving both roster change and the departure of its defining NBA-era figure.

Danny Granger and the rebuilding years

Danny Granger arrived in the 2005 draft and developed into an offensive reference point. In 2009, he became an All-Star and won Most Improved Player. His development gave Indiana a player around whom to organize a rebuilding period.

These seasons deserve space in the narrative because they show the work that sustains a franchise between its major competitive cycles. Individual growth, new combinations and the effort to regain competitiveness do not always produce a moment as memorable as a winning shot. Granger connects Miller’s departure with the group that would return Indiana to the conference finals.

Paul George, Frank Vogel and the Miami challenge

Paul George made a decisive leap and won Most Improved Player in 2013. Under Frank Vogel, Indiana built one of the league’s strongest defenses. The 2013–14 team included George, Roy Hibbert, David West, George Hill and Lance Stephenson, a core offering size, experience and distinct responsibilities at both ends.

The Pacers played Miami in consecutive Eastern finals, losing in seven games in 2013 and six in 2014. The 2013–14 regular season ended at 56–26. In this archive’s reading, the period represents a particular way of competing: protecting the rim, sustaining defensive possessions and contesting the physical control of a series. Another generation had brought Indiana to the threshold of the Finals.

Recovery and the end of a cycle

The broken right leg George suffered with the United States team in August 2014 interrupted his trajectory. He returned in April 2015 after missing almost the entire season. That comeback belongs in a sporting history also shaped by lengthy recoveries.

His departure in 2017 opened another period of roster building. Changing central figures required finding new on-court leadership and resetting expectations. Between the conference-finalists and the following generation came a transition involving personnel decisions, physical recovery and opportunities for other players.

Oladipo, Sabonis and another rebuilding path

The Paul George trade brought Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis from Oklahoma City. Oladipo won Most Improved Player in 2018. That team won 48 games and took Cleveland to seven games in the first round, showing how quickly a rebuilding project could regain competitiveness.

Oladipo’s January 2019 knee injury interrupted that continuity. The project’s development also depended on player availability and the search for new answers. Following the movement of its pieces helps explain the period: players arrived together, developed in Indiana and eventually became part of decisions that would again change the team’s direction.

Carlisle returns and Haliburton arrives

Rick Carlisle returned as coach in 2021. In February 2022, Indiana acquired Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield and Tristan Thompson in the trade that sent Sabonis to Sacramento. Haliburton became central to the new construction, providing a young reference point for running the offense and moving the ball.

Reaching the inaugural In-Season Tournament final in December 2023 gave the project a different level of exposure. Indiana lost the championship game to the Lakers 123–109 in Las Vegas. The run placed the Pacers in a nationally watched knockout setting. That tournament became an important precursor to the next stage, when the team would again sustain a deep playoff appearance.

Siakam and the return to the Eastern finals

Pascal Siakam arrived from Toronto in January 2024. Indiana then eliminated Milwaukee and New York to return to the Eastern finals. Its 130–109 Game 7 win at Madison Square Garden featured 67.1 percent shooting, an NBA playoff single-game record.

Boston subsequently won the conference final 4–0. The run provided a concrete basis for assessing the new team: it had won a seventh game on the road and carried its offensive approach into the later rounds. The Knicks rivalry again linked very different Pacers generations. The arena associated with Miller’s playoff moments had become the setting for another Indiana advancement.

Back in the Finals, twenty-five years later

Indiana finished the regular season 50–32 and defeated Milwaukee, Cleveland and New York to win the East. Haliburton and Siakam led a rotation capable of producing different protagonists. Twenty-five years after the 2000 breakthrough, the Pacers were again playing for the NBA championship.

Oklahoma City won the Finals 4–3. Haliburton left Game 7 in the first quarter with an injury; a torn right Achilles tendon was confirmed the following day. The Thunder won the deciding game 103–91. The defeat and injury belong in the account of that campaign alongside the path that took Indiana to the Finals.

The return links two generations separated by a quarter-century. This historical account concludes with the 2025 campaign; Games and Statistics track the current season. Profiles and detailed game features can continue to expand the historical archive, giving each period room for closer examination.