NBA Finals
Rick Carlisle has been around the NBA long enough to see what’s over the horizon.
When the now 65-year-old began his second head-coaching stint with the Indiana Pacers in June 2021, he could tell the league was undergoing a paradigm shift.
The prior decade was defined by LeBron James and Steph Curry forging a superstar era that left little room for anyone else to hold the Larry O’Brien Trophy. But the league’s titans were beginning to age out of contention, and the NBA’s burgeoning parity era was forming a superstar vacuum that would open up new ideas of roster construction.
Carlisle had a bold idea that has now become fundamental for many of the league’s top teams: He wanted to discard the playbook.
