Pascal Siakam got star treatment from the team as they commemorated his new contract with a media day. The Pacers celebrate their players as well as any organization and the love was on full display for Spicy P.

According to Rick Carlisle, "[Siakam] is easily the biggest free agent signing in the history of this franchise." I feel like that statement is slightly misleading on account of the three first round picks we traded to get him, but hey, who cares? Inking Pascal is something to be joyous about no matter how you slice it.

When you get a walking double-double who buys into the team concept, you count your blessings and move forward.

Team USA

Haliburton is in Las Vegas with the Team USA squad as they prepare for the Olympics. He figures to be an important piece for the team as his distribution and shooting make him a natural glue guy who can make life easier on the myriad of stars surrounding him.

I doubt he'll start but he's taken at least a few reps with the "first team" in practice. If nothing else, being surrounded by the best players on the planet will hopefully help Haliburton grow into his new status as the alpha dog on one of the best teams in the league.

Below is extended footage of practice. Hali comes in about halfway through and mainly defers to his teammates. But if you want to get an early look at the Olympic squad, the clip below is as good as anything you'll find on the World Wide Web.

Summer League

The Summer Pacers are off to Vegas themselves, with their first game this Friday at 8 PM EST.

Rookie Johnny Furphy has a lot of fans in the building. His size and shooting are already garnering comparisons to big time players.

According to Carlisle, the team had him ranked as the 14th best player in the draft. Sufficed to say, the Pacers feel like they got first round value at 35.

For as interested as we all are to get eyes on Furphy, the main attraction of the Summer Squad is undoubtedly Jarace Walker. Rick Carlisle went on local radio and talked candidly about the former top-10 pick. The whole conversation is great but the Jarace stuff starts at around the 10 minute mark.

In essence, Carlisle said that everyone is watching Jarace closely this summer. What they want from him is to prove that he has the fight to play for the Pacers. The team will not be grading him on what he does offensively, but on 1) his motor, 2) his defensive effort, 3) his rebounding, and 4) his conditioning.

They felt that Jarace came into last season expecting a spot in the rotation and didn't play with enough effort to earn it. Carlisle pointed out that the Pacers played full-court press defense for most of the post-season and they need Jarace to be able to hold his own in that kind of a system.

To his credit, Walker worked for three weeks with Jim Boylen doing football style conditioning workouts leading up to Summer Camp. Both IJax and Stix did the same thing last year and Carlisle credits the work for the successful seasons both players had. Rick also recognized that Jarace has the positional size to really help the team defensively and stated that if Walker can play with the kind of effort they expect from him, he'll be a major part of the rotation.

It will be interesting to track just how physical and energetic Walker plays this weekend.

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