Grading 2024 NBA free agent moves: What do the Pacers get for keeping Siakam?

The NBA Finals are in the rearview, and free agency has begun with teams now allowed to talk deals with their own players.

The Indiana Pacers kicked things off Wednesday with two-time All-Star Pascal Siakam intending to sign a four-year, $189.5 million maximum contract with the team. The deal is on the heels of Siakam and the Pacers making a run to the Eastern Conference finals this past season.

Siakam is just the first domino to fall in what should be a busy free agency window this summer. LeBron James, Paul George and James Harden are all unrestricted free agents this summer, so stay tuned as the future of the NBA takes shape.

ESPN insider Kevin Pelton reacts to the latest free agency signings and analyzes what free agency means for the league this summer.

30-team guide | Buzz

Indiana extends Siakam

Deal:

Grade: B-

The Pacers re-signing Siakam has been telegraphed since the moment they dealt three first-round picks to acquire him in January, so it’s unsurprising that he’s the first player to take advantage to the change to the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement allowing free agents to negotiate with their own teams beginning the day after the end of the NBA Finals.

It’s also no surprise that Siakam got a deal starting at the maximum 30% of the cap for a player with eight years of experience, although Indiana did manage to hold the line on a four-year deal rather than the five years for which Siakam could have re-signed.

On one level, a 30% max — currently projected at $42.3 million, though subject to change when the salary cap is set on June 30, with the possibility that an unusually short set of series in the conference finals and Finals could mean the NBA’s basketball-related income for this season falls short of expectations — is surely an overpay for Siakam, who has made just two All-Star Games in his career and wasn’t a serious contender this season.

For a franchise like the Pacers that is rarely a player for stars in free agency, however, it was going to be tough to get more mileage out of the cap space they used to sign Bruce Brown last summer and send him to the Toronto Raptors as part of the matching salary for Siakam. Had Siakam chosen to test unrestricted free agency, it’s reasonable to think one of the handful of teams with cap space would have thrown a max offer his way given the paucity of gettable star players.

Beyond that, Indiana is betting the increase in the salary cap with the NBA’s new TV deals set to begin in 2025-26 will help this contract age well. The cap is set to increase the maximum 10% year-to-year over the duration of Siakam’s deal, and those raises — unlike his maximum 8% raises — are compounded. So while Siakam’s contract will be 30% of the cap in 2024-25, by the end of his deal in 2027-28, it figures to be just 28%.

That’s important, because the biggest concern is how well Siakam will age over the course of his contract. He turned 30 in April, putting this deal squarely in his decline years. As I noted in my rankings of the top free agents available, the players deemed most similar to Siakam saw their per-minute performance decline by 5% the following season. It’s possible that by 2027-28, Siakam is more of a complementary piece than the second star he gave the Pacers alongside All-NBA guard Tyrese Haliburton.

Before that happens, adding Siakam midseason raised Indiana’s ceiling dramatically and was key to the team’s unexpected trip to the conference finals. Siakam’s shot creation was valuable throughout that playoff run, starting with two monster games when the Milwaukee Bucks attempted to guard him with center Brook Lopez (73 points on 31-of-48 shooting) and up through averaging 23.0 points on 57% shooting in the final three games of the conference finals with Haliburton limited and then sidelined.

Retaining Siakam keeps Indiana in the East mix as a second-tier contender but raises for both him and Haliburton will force difficult decisions elsewhere starting this summer, including a $5.4 million player option for Jalen Smith and the non-guaranteed $2.1 million salary of Kendall Brown. The Pacers will enter free agency just $14.4 million below the projected luxury tax line with 12 players under contract.

Given Indiana hasn’t paid the tax since 2005-06, that likely limits what Indiana can offer restricted free agent Obi Toppin to return. If another team came in with an offer greater than the $12.9 million non-taxpayer midlevel in the wake of Toppin averaging 10.9 PPG backing up both Siakam and center Myles Turner during the Pacers’ playoff run, Indiana would have to choose between letting him walk or entering the season in the tax.

Down the road, as Turner and key reserve T.J. McConnell see their contracts expire, Indiana won’t be able to maintain the depth that was so important to the team this season. After trading for and re-signing Siakam, the Pacers are into a new stage of their building process, and it’s one that affords less margin for error filling out the roster.