by Dustin Dopirak
INDIANAPOLIS — Jordan Nwora reported to Pacers training camp this week with his body transformed.
The former Louisville All-American played most of last season at 6-7, 225 pounds, but not all of that was good weight. He trimmed down to 215 and feels every bit as powerful and explosive, but he can get up and down the floor faster and also feels quicker going side to side. Nwora sees that as critical because he’s proven at every level that he can score (averaging 13.0 points per game in 24 appearances after he was acquired by the Pacers in February) but he doesn’t have the same reputation as a defender.
“I’ve just been trying to get into shape and get my weight down to where I want it to be which, I’m there now,” Nwora said. “Just staying in the gym, locking in on the defensive end. The biggest thing for (the coaches and front office) was just defense. … That’s going to be the part of my game that will keep me on the floor.”
Nwora’s transformation was inspired by entering the season knowing he has an opportunity he didn’t in Milwaukee, where he was part of a championship team in 2020-21 but was almost hopelessly stuck on the bench for more than 2 1/2 seasons behind the likes of two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, three-time All-Star Khris Middleton and stalwarts Pat Connaughton and Joe Ingles.
However, Nwora is also aware that after he walked into the backup power forward job last season and averaged 24.6 minutes per game in the season’s final two months, the Pacers addressed his position by adding Obi Toppin in a trade with the Knicks and drafting Jarace Walker with the No. 8 overall pick. Nwora proved enough in the most extended minutes of his career to get a shot at time at small forward and power forward and it’s conceivable he can be the Pacers’ starting power forward with a strong enough camp. However, it’s also possible that Nwora could end up the odd man out as the third-string power forward behind Toppin and Walker and end up playing even less than he did in Milwaukee.
Nwora’s situation is emblematic of much of the Pacers’ roster. After finishing 35-47 last season, they’re not considered Eastern Conference title contenders because they don’t have the top-line talent of favorites Milwaukee or Boston, or even playoff squads Miami, Philadelphia, Cleveland or New York. However, without many established stars and without a player on the roster older than 31, they arguably enter camp with one of the most competitive across-the-board battles for playing time in the league. All 15 players with full-time contracts enter the season healthy and have a legitimate argument that they deserve a rotation spot, but teams generally run two units which means the bottom five (at least) won’t get on the floor much.
“Nothing is going to be given to anybody,” Nwora said. “This is going to be different from past years. Guys are going to have to really earn it this year. That’s part of the reason why myself and a lot of other guys have been in the gym a lot this summer. … Outside of (Tyrese Haliburton, Myles Turner and Buddy Hield) no one here is really proven. Everyone here has to earn it.”
The front office and Pacers coach Rick Carlisle will only acknowledge that two spots are solidified. Haliburton, the face of the franchise who just signed a five-year max contract extension this summer that could pay him up to $260 million, will keep his starting job. So too will center Myles Turner, who is the team’s longest-tenured player heading into his ninth season and who has started all but three games he’s appeared in in his last seven seasons. He also recently signed a contract extension that will pay him about $40 million over the next two seasons.
Everything else is up for grabs. Andrew Nembhard, Hield and Aaron Nesmith started at shooting guard, small forward and power forward respectively for most last season, and the Pacers were pleased, and sometimes even thrilled, with the production of all three. Hield finished second in the NBA in 3-pointers with 288, breaking Reggie MIller’s franchise record, and he shot 42.5% from 3-point range, which was the second-best clip among players who made at least 200 3-pointers behind only Stephen Curry, who made 42.7% of his attempts. Nesmith and Nembhard drew the top two perimeter defensive assignments every night and handled them admirably. The 6-5 Nesmith performed above his size as a power forward and Nembhard, the No. 31 pick in the 2022 draft, performed above his station and narrowly missed a spot as a second-team All-Rookie selection.
However all three could find themselves technically demoted without doing anything demote-able if the Pacers decide they want to start Toppin, top free-agent signee Bruce Brown and rising star Bennedict Mathurin, who was named first-team All-Rookie last season as the Pacers’ sixth man. And if Nesmith, Hield and Nembhard all move to the second unit, that makes it tougher to find a path to playing time for Nwora and veteran point guard T.J. McConnell, who is coming off the best offensive season of his career.
The 31-year-old McConnell has made a career out of being underestimated, making the league as an undrafted free agent out of Arizona, so this is nothing new to him, but he knows he needs to go all out to stay with Haliburton and Nembhard on the point guard depth chart.
“I’m trying to go into camp to push not only Andrew and Tyrese, but the entire team, just taking the effort level and the expectation to another level,” McConnell said. “It’s all competitive based, but at the end of the day, you guys know me, I’m going to scratch and claw and fight to get on the floor and I’m going to be supportive of every player on the roster no matter what.”
And, of course, on top of the perimeter competitions, the Pacers still have the same three-man race for the backup center job behind Turner with Daniel Theis, Jalen Smith and Isaiah Jackson. Jackson and Smith are bigger and stronger than they were a season ago. Theis is healthy after playing just seven games last season and he proved it by helping Germany to a FIBA World Cup title as the country’s starting center.
“This is a bit of a rare situation,” Carlisle said. “We have a roster full of young, talented guys on great contracts. There are a lot of decisions that are going to have to be made in the coming months. Right now, we laid it out (Sunday) night at our team meeting, what we’re going to be about. The term that I like is competitive integrity. If you really want to be a championship teammate, you have to do all the hard things. You gotta be a tenacious competitor defensively. You have to fight like hell competing against a guy you’re directly competing for for minutes and then you have to encourage him if he’s playing ahead of you.”
This is not to say that previous seasons didn’t include competitive camps, but last season for instance, they had key pieces out with injuries when camp began, including Turner and Theis. Mathurin and Nembhard were rookies, and James Johnson Jr. was on the roster much more for veteran leadership than on-court production. This team is healthy and young and they all hope to play, and it’s been clear throughout non-mandatory work that the competition is having a positive effect.
“You’ve seen that through the whole summer,” Haliburton said. “I think guys understand that guys are going to be fighting for minutes. I think you’d rather have that than know what your set nine or 10 are and everybody else is kinda loafing through camp. You want guys competing and fighting for minutes.”
But despite the fact that these Pacers will be fighting for rotation spots and minutes, which ultimately means they’ll be fighting to continue to have a place in the league, they don’t expect the competition to have a negative effect on the chemistry that was such a strength for last year’s team.
“We’re all going to go in to camp and fight and help one another,” McConnell said. “It’s competition based, but we’re all trying to work toward a common goal here. We want the best for everyone and we have great guys in this locker room. I say this every year but our front office, they bring in great players but they bring in great people too and that makes it a lot easier when you have great people in the locker room.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star