INDIANAPOLIS — Obi Toppin’s introduction in Thursday’s starting lineup was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation from the Gainbridge Fieldhouse crowd and a flying chest bump from T.J. McConnell that served as a substitute for a pre-game handshake.
The joy continued when Toppin made an impact on game’s first two possessions. The Pacers forward ended the Hornets first offensive possession by grabbing a defensive rebound off a missed 3-pointer from Brandon Miller, then scored on the Pacers’ first offensive possession with a drive from the right elbow for a layup.
After the game’s first 35 seconds, Toppin scored just one more point and grabbed one more rebound to finish with three points on 1 of 4 shooting and 2 rebounds. He did add a slick assist and a steal, but he was on a tight minutes restriction as coach Rick Carlisle suggested in pre-game. Toppin played just 8 minutes and 29 seconds, all of it in the first half. The Pacers lost control thanks to a brutal second quarter and lost 133-109 for their fifth straight defeat to stay in last place in the Eastern Conference at 15-45.
Still, the mere fact that Toppin was back on the floor was something worth celebrating in a season where Pacers fans haven’t had much to cheer for. Four months and a day had passed since Toppin’s last game on Oct. 26 against the Timberwolves in Minnesota. After that, he was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his right foot that required surgery, and in the 56 games since, the Pacers saw their season disintegrate. Still, Toppin was determined to get back on the floor even in a doomed campaign and he finally pulled it off.
“I’m super-blessed,” Toppin said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been out there on the floor, but to be on the floor today, it felt amazing.”
Toppin’s return and the crowd’s reaction drove home exactly how much the Pacers missed him in all the time he was gone. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said earlier in the season that Toppin’s impact on the team’s offensive system had been “underrated.” He was one of three players the Pacers lost to injury in the first three games of the season after they had already lost All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton for the year with an Achilles tendon tear suffered in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. The others returned in a manner of weeks, however, and Toppin has been on the shelf longer than anyone other than Haliburton.
“He’s our engine,” McConnell said. “He brings energy on both ends of the floor. To have him back, it’s just such a positive for our team. We’ve missed him dearly. He’s worked tirelessly to come back. … It just didn’t look like he missed a beat. It looked like he was having fun out there and I was just really happy for him.”
The injury that kept Toppin out for the last four months wasn’t actually the injury that took him out of the game on Oct. 26. After the game, Carlisle said Toppin was dealing with a hamstring injury, but two days later, prior to the Pacers’ game against the Mavericks in Dallas, the injury was listed as a right foot issue. Not long after, Carlisle announced that Toppin would go to New York to have surgery to have a screw inserted into his fifth metatarsal and would be out until at least February. The surgery was done by Dr. Martin O’Malley, the same doctor who performed the surgery on Haliburton’s Achilles tendon.
Toppin confirmed Thursday that he actually did think he had a hamstring problem when he left that game against Minnesota. However, magnetic resonance imaging testing showed something else.
“When it first happened, it definitely was a hamstring,” Toppin said. “But then they realized there was nothing wrong with my hamstring. So they were trying to figure out what the other problem was and MRI’d my foot and seen that crack in my bone. So as a group, we felt like it was best to get the surgery, not have to think about it or even worry about it coming back. So got the surgery and worked extremely hard to get back where I am today.”
Toppin’s absence was damaging at first simply because it was part of a larger wave. McConnell had suffered a hamstring strain in the first preseason game and missed the first 10 regular season games. Aaron Nembhard, who shifted from shooting guard to starting point guard in Haliburton’s absence, strained his left shoulder in the season opener and missed the next seven games. Wing Bennedict Mathurin — who was traded to Clippers earlier this month at the trade deadline — suffered a great toe sprain in the season’s second game and missed the next 11. Toppin became the third rotation player in three games to suffer an injury.
But Nembhard, Mathurin and McConnell all returned and the Pacers still struggled, starting 1-14 and 2-16 and then suffering a 13-game losing streak that made them 6-31. Toppin’s absence wasn’t nearly as big of a reason for the suffering as the Pacers missing Haliburton, whose elite ball-distribution is foundational to Indiana’s hyperkinetic offense. However, it was clear the Pacers were missing Toppin’s production, particularly as a transition finisher, and without him they couldn’t approach the potency they had in 2023-24 and 2024-25 when they reached the Eastern Conference Finals twice and made their first NBA Finals appearance in 25 years.
When their offense is operating at its highest level, they are dynamite in transition and there are few players better at running ahead on the break and scoring than Toppin is. Prior to Thursday’s game, Toppin was averaging 10.5 points per game and 18.4 points per 36 minutes in his Pacers tenure since he was acquired from the Knicks in a trade in July, 2023. He was shooting 54.7% from the floor, making 69.8% of his 2-point shots and 37.7% of his 3-pointers. He made a remarkable 79.7% of his attempts within 3 feet of the basket — in part because he has 178 dunks with the Pacers — and his .636 effective field goal percentage was the best on the team in that stretch.
In Toppin’s first season, the Pacers were the NBA’s highest scoring team in 40 years, ranking second in offensive efficiency, first in field goal percentage and second in pace. Last season, they increased their focus on defense, but still finished seventh in scoring, third in field goal percentage and ninth in efficiency.
This year, mostly without him, they rank 28th in scoring, 29th in field goal percentage and 30th in offensive efficiency. They’re also 21st in fast-break points after finishing in the top five the past two seasons.
“His versatility is unique,” Carlisle said. “He can really play three positions. He’s played some 3 (small forward) here. He’s played a good amount of 5 (center.) His speed, the way he moves with the game, he’s a movement maker on the floor. He has a natural knack for it. He fits really extremely well into what our philosophy of the game is. He’s been missed in a lot of ways. When you have a 6-10 guy that can run and finish and pass. Now he’s become a high-level 3-point shooter as well. He stretches the floor. That’s an important part of your team.”
Though missing him as long as they did ultimately doomed their season, Toppin still considered it important to get back on the floor, both for himself and for his teammates. The Pacers still have 22 games left to play and though they arguably have more incentive to lose to enhance their draft lottery odds than win, he sees value in getting back on the floor to get his feet back under him and to spend more time on the floor with teammates who are getting more minutes than usual.
“I always want to be out there on the floor,” Toppin said. “I wasn’t rushing to come back, but I definitely want to go out there. We’re still a team. We still want to find that rhythm. We’re not having the greatest year this year, but to find that rhythm and connectivity with the team. We have standards, we have things that we go by, so going out there and playing the right way for the team, whether that’s for this year or next year, we still have a lot of games coming up. Just continue to play the right way and show the younger guys how this goes.”
The example Toppin has set by zealously pursuing a return has set an example by itself. All of the defeat could have easily given Toppin reason to simply shut it down and focus on 2026-27 when the Pacers could re-set. He still has two seasons left after this one on a four-year, $58 million contract, so he’s not in the position of needing to prove anything.
“I think it just says a lot about Obi,” McConnell said. “I’m not necessarily in the meetings about him coming back, but for him to push himself the way we saw hi push himself to get back and build that chemistry and help our young guys and be an inspiration for the group, it just speaks volumes to who Obi Toppin is.”
Carlisle was clear even in pre-game Thursday that Toppin will be limited. He said he expects him to spend the last 22 games of the season on a minutes restriction of some kind. It clearly will still take him a while to rediscover his comfort with the pace of the game.
“It’s clear that this is gonna be a slow process of getting him gradually back up to speed,” Carlisle said.
Still, Toppin came out of it feeling good about his foot and Carlisle felt good about the idea of having him around. As always, he showed he can blend in with any collective of players. He showed a willingness to attack and create off the dribble with several of the Pacers usual top scorers missing, including All-Star Pascal Siakam, but he also kept the ball moving. He found guard Ben Sheppard cutting to the basket on a slip for a layup with a bounce pass that counted as arguably the prettiest assist of the evening.
At the moment, the Pacers. are missing forwards Pascal Siakam, Aaron Nesmith and Johnny Furphy and the newly acquired center Ivica Zubac so any bodies are helpful, particularly in the frontcourt. But Toppin in particular helps because he’s one of the team’s brightest personalities and they need any help they can get to finish a dark season.
“Just the reaction of the crowd was heartwarming,” Carlisle said. “He’s a guy that brings energy to our team and our situation. … We need him.”
Dustin Dopirak covers the Pacers all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Pacers Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Obi Toppin’s return brings some joy to Pacers: ‘A light for all of us’
Reporting by Dustin Dopirak, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
