The Pacers were a surprise team last year. They went from a middle of the pack playoff team in the East to making the finals and taking by far the best team in the league in the Thunder to 7 games. In game 7 though, the Pacers best player, Tyrese Haliburton, tore his achilles and was not only out for the rest of that game, he was confirmed to be out for the entire next season. The Pacers were still thought to be a team that was in the mix of being in the playoffs. As of right now, the Pacers are 6-18 and the second worst team in the eastern conference. This begs the question. How much of an effect does one player have on a whole team?

The NBA is usually a team sport with all 5 guys contributing on the court at the same time. Most winning NBA teams have multiple players that are around the same level and they all coherently work together to win. Teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder have a MVP player in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander but they also have plenty of guys that range from defensive specialists in Alex Caruso and Lu Dort, three point snipers in Isaiah Joe, Aaron Wiggins and Cason Wallace, and they even have other all star level players in Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren. The Thunder are the perfect example of a team that thrives off of being able to play 8-9 guys in a game and not miss a beat because they all work great together. Other teams don’t have the same luxury as the Thunder and they don’t have the depth. But there can be a case to be made that they don’t need the depth.

We will look now at the team that the Thunder played in the finals last year, the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers, as I said earlier, are led by Tyrese Haliburton. The Pacers still have guys that can play, such as players like Andrew Nembhard, Benedict Mathurin, TJ McConnell, and Pascal Siakam. The problem with the Pacers right now is that they don’t have that guy in Tyrese Haliburton who flows the whole offense together and averages double digit assists a game. Without him, the Pacers rank 28th of 30th in the league in offensive rating, when previously they were top 10. No guys for them can draw the defense in and their offense has become very stagnant and a lot of the offense has come from Pascal Siakam down low instead of moving the ball around the perimeter like they did with Haliburton. This now begs the question, would the Thunder be the same team without Shai Gilgeous-Alexander?

Now, Shai has not had a significant injury during his time with the Thunder. But recently, he did sit out a game in the regular season due to a hip issue. Without Shai, the Thunder would still beat the Jazz by 30, with Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren both scoring 25 in his absence and the offense still looked like it hadn’t missed a beat. The Thunder are much more built to be able to play well without Shai unlike the Pacers without Haliburton. The Pacers’ whole offense was built around Haliburton facilitating and passing to shooters and down low to Siakam. Without him, they don’t have a guy that can give everyone the ball and a lot of the team takes bad shots because they don’t get as open. The Thunder without Shai still moved the ball around and got even scoring from everyone. So if your offense is built around one player and you lose that player, your team will take a dip. But if you have an offense that spreads out evenly and you lose your best player, you can still play at a high level. 

In conclusion, a star player does help a lot, but if everything you do isn’t revolved around the one guy, your team should still be able to play at a high level without them. Star players aren’t needed to win games if you play as a team.