Pacers Young Wing Pushed Rick Carlisle to Make Him a Starter This Year

A key Indiana Pacers swingman urged head coach Rick Carlisle to start him in 2025-26.

During a conversation with 93.5 & 107.5 FM The Fan Indiana's "Morning Show" hosts Kevin Bowen, Jeff Rickard and James Boyd, Carlisle explained how reserve shooting guard/small forward asked him to be promoted to a starting role this season.

An opening arrived in the most unfortunate way possible: through a devastating injury to a star player.

Two-time All-NBA point guard Tyrese Haliburton ruptured his Achilles tendon in Game 7 of the NBA Finals this past June, with the Pacers leading the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first quarter. Indiana managed to maintain its lead without him, at least through the second quarter, but the Thunder rallied to take over in the third frame, and went on to win the whole thing.

Who knows what would have happened with a healthy Haliburton? It will remain one of the cruelest "what-if" scenarios in Pacers lore for a long time.

Haliburton is now expected to miss all of 2025-26 recovering. 3-and-D starting center Myles Turner abandoned Indiana to sign a lucrative four-year deal with the Milwaukee Bucks, and so far the Pacers have opted to replace him piecemeal, with reserves Isaiah Jackson, James Wiseman and Tony Bradley competing against trade acquisition Jay Huff for minutes in training camp. Wiseman and Bradley are both on non-guaranteed deals.

"It's important to Ben to be a starter. I know that, he's told me that. You can see that, [with] the way that he plays," Carlisle said. "Why wait? He's the starter on Day 1."

The former No. 6 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft is set to replace former starting shooting guard Andrew Nembhard along the perimeter, as Nembhard takes over Haliburton's old starting point guard spot.

A New Challenge for Bennedict Mathurin

Mathurin, Carlisle argued, will need to step up his game to conform to the pace-and-space system that has brought Indiana to two straight Eastern Conference Finals over the last two years.

"The caveat to that is he's gotta continue to move his game in the direction of being a highly functioning part of the Indiana Pacers, and that's gonna mean that he's gotta continue to play faster and faster," Carlisle added. "He's gotta run faster, run harder, he's gotta play up with quick decisions, he's gonna guard a lot of great players."

"Andrew Nembhard guarded the best perimeter player almost always [last year] — either he or [Aaron] Nesmith," Carlisle added. "But with Tyrese out, it's gonna put [Andrew] on different matchups sort of organically, and now Ben is gonna be guarding" more high-level perimeter players, Carlisle noted.