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The Indiana Pacers are in the middle of what has been an exciting season, led by Tyrese Haliburton and the newly acquired Pascal Siakam. They have mostly weathered the storm of Haliburton being out and managed to get through a brutal January schedule with a winning record. Siakam specifically has been instrumental in the Pacers beating the Suns and the 76ers.
On Monday’s edition of The Ride With JMV, Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan joined the show. Chad gave his thoughts on the Pacers acquiring Siakam.
“We’ve been big fans of Pascal for quite some time, for me even dating back to his college days, and always felt like he was a guy who played basketball the right way, he played hard on both ends of the floor… As we watched him over the last few years, and once we acquired Ty and we saw how we were going to play with him…he just felt like a natural fit with our system. So far it’s been everything we hoped for.”
Chad also talked about if the Pacers expect to be able to resign Siakam at the end of the season when he becomes a free agent.
“Since he’s been here I think he’s been very, very happy. It’s been what he had hoped it would be, and I think he has been what we hoped he’d be, and it feels like a natural partnership. Nothings every 100% certain obviously, but I don’t think we would have made a trade with the intention of playing a guy for 40 games and not trying to bring him back for a long term relationship.”
Chad also gave a bit of insight into what the Pacers might do with the NBA trade deadline fast approaching.
“Well, we’ve had a pretty active month before we got to the trade with Pascal, and this time of year when you make a major change like that, you don’t want to get to anxious to do a bunch of stuff. That was a pretty big jolt to our team, adding Pascal, and we’re excited about the new addition obviously, and we’re kind of excited about some of the young guys and where they’re growing with their development. We’re not in a big rush to try to totally revamp the roster because we’ve seen some good things from this group. If we get calls on deals that make sense for us, and help the team be better, we’re obviously going to listen, but we’re not being super active at this point.”
Listen to JMV’s full conversation with Pacers GM Chad Buchanan down below, and tune into The Ride With JMV weekdays from 3-6pm on 93.5/107.5 The Fan!
