Pacers Preparing Max Contract Offer For Pascal Siakam

May 29, 2024

The Indiana Pacers are set to try to reward forward Pascal Siakam for helping them reach the Eastern Conference Finals.

Per Shams Charania of The Athletic, the Pacers intend to offer a max contract to Siakam. Bringing him back is Indiana’s “highest priority,” Charania added on FanDuel TV’s Run It Back.

“They understand it’s a maximum level contract commitment you’re going to have with Pascal Siakam,” Charania said. “That’s what they’re preparing to offer him this summer. He wants to be there. There’s mutual interest in getting a deal done.”

Siakam will become an unrestricted free agent barring an extension.

“It does however follow that the Pacers would only have made the move for Siakam were they willing to re-sign him for a high price point, and in all likelihood, the max,” wrote Mark Deeks of HoopsHype. “The Raptors did not think that was worth the price of business; Indiana, clearly, does. And were they not confident they could re-sign him, the deal would not have been made either.”

Siakam also became the leader that the Pacers had hoped for when they acquired him from the Toronto Raptors in a January trade.

“It’s different because I’m usually not a talkative person,” Siakam said, via Dustin Dopirak of the Indianapolis Star. “And it’s something that, maybe in the past, in different situations it was always, ‘We hope you talk a little bit more.’ But I thought I was challenged a little bit with this group to just continue to talk, and it feels better when you feel like your voice is received well, and the guys, once you talk, they’re looking and they’re hearing you and it feels like they want to get any information you have. Especially for a person like me. That’s not really what I do.”