Indiana
Indiana Pacers conference opponent offseason check-in: Philadelphia 76ers
No team in the NBA had an offseason as splashy as the Philadelphia 76ers.
Philly, a team that the Indiana Pacers struggled to take down prior to this past season, managed their resources incredibly well. President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey entered the summer in a unique spot, rosterting two All-Stars and holding a ton of cap space, and he left the summer with a dramatically improved roster.
From last year’s team, the Sixers only have six holdovers: Joel Embiid, KJ Martin, Kyle Lowry, Jeff Dowtin, Tyrese Maxey, and Kelly Oubre. The rest of the roster has landed elsewhere because their contract expired, they were traded, or they were waived in the name of generating more cap space.
It’s rare that a good team has enough cap room to bring in a major talent, but that’s what Philadelphia did — they were able to sign star forward Paul George to a four-year, maximum value contract in the offseason. George, a former Pacer, was by far the best player to change teams this summer, and that instantly rocketed the 76ers up a tier or two in the East.
Then, through a combination of salary cap exceptions and clever moves, Morey added Andre Drummond, Eric Gordon, Reggie Jackson, Caleb Martin, and Guerschon Yabusele. The franchise also drafted Jared McCain and Adem Bona. They have a totally new feel, yet all of their additions have a chance to be impactful.
Many have graded Philly as a big winner of the summer because of all their moves. They lost several good players to make all this happen — Nic Batum, Robert Covington, Mo Bamba, Tobias Harris, Buddy Hield, De’Anthony Melton, Cam Payne, and Paul Reed all have new homes. That list of players alone is a decent roster. But to get George and additional talent around him is a home run even when considering those departures.
The 76ers now have perhaps the best big three in the current NBA. George, Maxey, and Embiid are all incredibly talented, and they should fit well together. Embiid and Maxey already were a good pairing — now George’s defense, shooting, and overall skill will be added to that mix.
Some combination of Oubre, Martin, Gordon, and Lowry should round out a rock solid starting five. That group will be tough to topple. The Sixers kryptonite in past seasons was the minutes without Embiid on the floor, but being able to toss out Jackson, Yabusele, Drummond, McCain, and others in those moments will make for a dangerous team.
Indiana went 2-1 against Philadelphia last season. Every game was incredibly high scoring, and they likely will be again in the coming season. Both teams have a ton of firepower.
Philadelphia added more. They should be a top team in the Eastern Conference, and the Pacers will have to be at their best to take down the 76ers. Last year, the two franchises won the same number of games. The margins between them were thin. Indiana will have to grow internally to keep up with a splashy summer in the City of Brotherly Love.
These employers were recognized by the annual Top Workplaces employee survey conducted by Energage, working in partnership with IndyStar.
Top large companies
- Progressive Insurance
- Eight Eleven Family of Companies
- Shepherd Insurance
- LEL Home Services
- Merchants Bank / Merchants Capital
- Tendercare Home Health Services
- Rohrman Automotive Group
- Team Rehabilitation
- Wabash Center, Inc.
- Brighton Hospice
- Mainscape
- The Indianapolis Public Library
- Greenix
- Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers
- Indiana Members Credit Union
- Celigo
- Round Room LLC
- Freedom Mortgage
- Thompson Thrift
- Kirby Risk
- Ren
- Morgan Properties
- American Specialty Health, Incorporated
- Towne Properties
- New Palestine Community Schools
- Planes Companies
- Panda Restaurant Group
- Fifth Third Bank
- Flaherty & Collins Properties
- Indiana Department of Revenue
- Republic Airways
- RCI
- Cox Enterprises
- PERFICIENT
- Grand Appliance
- PT Solutions
- Centerstone
- Peterman Brothers
- Groundworks
- Damar Services
- Kloeckner Metals
- CBIZ
- Graybar
- Resultant
Top midsize companies
- Paradigm Health
- SEP
- New Hope of Indiana
- Scopelitis Law Firm (Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary)
- Bath Experts, LLC
- Opportunities for Positive Growth
- Hensley Legal Group, PC
- TBC Hotels
- The BAM Companies
- BSA
- Northview Church
- Northwestern Mutual
- Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine
- Dauby O’Connor & Zaleski, LLC
- Quality Plumbing & Heating
- Meyer Najem
- The Garrett Companies
- Commonwealth Engineers, Inc.
- Family Express
- GVC Mortgage
- Hays + Sons
- InPwr Inc.
- Kinetic Advantage
- Schahet Hotels, Inc.
- LER TechForce
- Envelop Group
- Unified Group Services, Inc.
- Knowledge Services
- Key Benefit Administrators
- Reynolds Farm Equipment, LLC
- ARBOR HOMES
- Total Quality Logistics – TQL
- North Mechanical Contracting & Service
- Indiana Donor Network
- Royal United Mortgage
- Perfection Group
- Eye Surgeons of Indiana
- ALOM
Top small companies
- Bailey & Wood Financial Group
- Indesign, LLC
- Children’s Therapy Connection
- Vaco Indianapolis
- The Peterson Company
- Express Employment Professionals
- ProKids
- Pension Fund of the Christian Church
- Mission Mechanical
- Robert Dietrick Co., Inc.
- Loren Wood Builders
- PulteGroup-IN
- BGBC, a Springline company
- NCW
- Visit Indy
- WorldTrips
- Aerocore Technologies LLC
- Vikan North America
- ready-2-xecute
- DirectEmployers
- USI Consultants
- SJCA, Inc.
- Indy Auto Man
- Kirkpatrick Management Company
- Indiana Biosciences Research Institute
- Engaging Solutions, LLC
- Exos
- Indiana Health Information Exchange
- Patterson-Horth
- Office360
- Netfor
- Haggard & Stocking Assoicates
- National Trade Supply
- Fairchild Communication Systems
- Adelta Logis, Inc.
- EMC Precision
Special Awards
APPRECIATION
Criteria: I feel genuinely appreciated at this company.
Winner: Scopelitis Law Firm (Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary)
BENEFITS PACKAGE
Criteria: I am very satisfied with my benefits package.
Winner: PulteGroup-IN
CLUED IN SENIOR MANAGEMENT
Criteria: Senior managers understand what is really happening at this company.
Winner: Indesign, LLC
COMMUNICATION
Criteria: I feel well-informed about important decisions at this company.
Winner: New Hope of Indiana
DIRECTION
Criteria: I believe this company is going in the right direction.
Winner: Paradigm Health
DOERS
Criteria: At this company, we do things efficiently and well.
Winner: Children’s Therapy Connection
LEADERSHIP
Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.
Winner: Quinn Shepherd, Shepherd Insurance
LEADERSHIP
Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.
Winner: Mike Wood, Bailey & Wood Financial Group
LEADERSHIP
Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.
Winner: Andrea Schwartz, Opportunities for Positive Growth
MANAGERS
Criteria: My manager helps me learn and grow. My manager cares about my concerns.
Winner: REN
MEANINGFULNESS
Criteria: My job makes me feel like I am part of something meaningful.
Winner: LEL Home Services
NEW IDEAS
Criteria: New ideas are encouraged at this company.
Winner: Progressive Insurance
VALUES
Criteria: This company operates by strong values.
Winner: BSA
WELL-BEING
Criteria: This company does a great job of prioritizing employee well-being.
Winner: The Peterson Company
WORK/LIFE FLEXIBILITY
Criteria: I have the flexibility I need to balance my work and personal life.
Winner: Merchants Bank / Merchants Capital
The latest effects of Caitlin Clark’s presence in Indianapolis were revealed in a new report from Sportico.
According to Sportico, since drafting Clark in 2024, the Fever’s franchise valuation has jumped from $90 million to $560 million entering the 2026 season. The Fever’s franchise valuation ranks third in the WNBA, trailing only the Golden State Valkyries ($850 million) and the New York Liberty ($600 million).
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That is a 522% increase and means the Fever are worth six times as much now as compared to before they drafted Clark.
The Fever open their 2026 regular season on Saturday, May 9 from Gainbridge Fieldhouse against Paige Bueckers and the Dallas Wings. With Clark back and healthy, the Fever’s franchise value can be expected to grow even further.
Indiana’s season opener against the Wings tips off at noon CT and will be nationally broadcast on ABC.
Contact/Follow us @HawkeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes, and opinions. Follow Scout on X: @SpringgateNews
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This article originally appeared on Hawkeyes Wire: Indiana Fever franchise valuation has skyrocketed with Caitlin Clark
Noah Bontrager is Indiana’s first sub-4-minute high school miler
Noah Bontrager is Indiana’s first sub-4-minute high school miler
Special to IndyStar
TOPEKA, Ind. – Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute mile is not from Indianapolis or its collar counties. Nor from the population centers outside Chicago, Cincinnati or Louisville, Ky.
Noah Bontrager has instead been influenced by the Amish culture of the state’s northeast corner. The 18-year-old lives in Shipshewana and is a senior at Westview High School, enrollment of 343, almost small enough to be in the smallest of Indiana’s four basketball classes.
The LaGrange County school is 15 miles south of the Michigan border, located on County Road 600 W., where horse-drawn buggies clip clop along the pavement. The track is fenced off from farmland. Horses graze nearby, and a cow once delivered a calf in an adjacent pasture, right in the middle of practice.
Running has evolved since 1954, when Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute barrier at Oxford, England. Now it is a sport of high tech, featuring propulsive supershoes, biomechanic analysis, wavelights for record attempts, and the Strava app tracking workouts,
Yet tech doesn’t break records. Runners do.
This sport rewards simplicity and industriousness, two characteristics of the Amish lifestyle. Bontrager said he marvels at junior high runners who do chores before school, attend classes and track practice, then do more chores after school.
“I like to say they work all day. I think I got that from them,” he said. “And from my mom and dad.”
Bontrager is a Swiss-German Mennonite/Amish family name, originating from the German Bornträger, meaning transporter of liquids.
Noah’s paternal grandmother, Judy Bontrager, died in 2020 after a seven-year fight against pancreatic cancer. She once set trusses on a barn while a softball-sized tumor grew inside her.
Noah’s grandfather, Josey Bontrager, had dyslexia and never learned to read. He started a small-scale manufacturing business, Shipshewana Hardwoods, in the early 1970s. He built it into a company that became PalletOne, which was acquired for $232 million in 2020. Noah’s father, Lyle, still speaks Dutch to the grandfather.
“How do you build a multimillion-dollar business when you can’t read. How do you do that?” said Lyle, who is Westview’s cross-country coach.
“Stuff like that is ingrained inside of him somewhere. Just determination and grit.”
How Noah Bontrager became Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute
During the 2000s, other Indiana boys had ambitions to run a sub-4-minute mile: Austin Mudd, Cole Hocker, Lucas Guerra, Kole Mathison, Martin Barco. None made it, with Mudd’s outdoor 4:01.83 standing as a state record since 2011.
Bontrager had thought about it for a couple of years. At state last year, he set a 1,600-meter meet record of 4:02.60, equivalent to a 4:04.02 mile. Yet it was startling when he actually broke through.
For one thing, he was ill at the end of cross-country season, finishing second at state, behind Springs Valley’s Calvin Seitz. Bontrager was 43rd in the Brooks nationals Dec. 13 at San Diego – close to last place – and was 78 seconds behind winner Jackson Spencer of Herriman, Utah. It was such a pitiable run that Spencer consoled Bontrager afterward.
For another, Bontrager said skeptics didn’t think he should run the mile March 15 at the New Balance indoor nationals.
“Really, the mile? You should do the two-mile,” they told him.
Bontrager, a drummer, had a concert on Friday of the two-mile and declined to abandon Westview’s band. He would chase the dream on Sunday. Except when he arrived in Boston, meet officials told him he might not be racing the top milers. Maybe the second-to-last heat, they said.
One runner dropped out, and Bontrager was in the fast heat. He was all-in.
He was in third with 400 meters left, then seized the lead by running the last two laps in 58.57 seconds. Usually undemonstrative, Bontrager thrust his right index finger in the air as he broke the tape. His time – 3 minutes, 59.48 seconds – was a meet record and made him No. 7 on the all-time high school indoor list.
Sitting with his father in a restaurant afterward, enjoying a “juicy hamburger,” he was still processing it all.
“I was kind of in shock, even three hours after,” he said.
Perhaps more shocking?
In three subsequent meets, all in the Indianapolis area, Bontrager has sent vibes that sub-4:00 is just one step on a long journey. He could be on a world stage as soon as August.
Multi-sport athlete
Growing up, Bontrager was immersed in running culture but wasn’t confined to that. He played youth basketball and baseball, including a travel team with the latter. His peers went on to reach the Class 2A state basketball title game this year and baseball semistate last year.
“I do actually have hand/eye coordination, unlike the stereotypical runner,” he said.
His parents, Lyle and Erin, are former runners who were track coaches at the junior high. Noah discovered he was better at running than at other sports. Running was “the norm,” he reasoned. At Westview, it was.
Westview’s track coach, Matt Jones, and Lyle Bontrager are cousins.
Jones was seventh in the 1988 state cross-country meet, leading the Warriors to fifth as a team. Besides coaching, he is an electrician in the recreational vehicle industry and farms 350 acres.
Another Westview runner, Andrew Begley, was a four-time state champion in the mid-1990s before joining NCAA championship teams at Arkansas. Westview was third in the state in cross-country in 2017, behind champion Carmel, whose enrollment was 13 times greater.
And when Bontrager was an eighth-grader, he helped Westview win a state title in middle-school cross-country.
“Jumping the fence” is a phrase used to describe an Amish person, often a teenager, leaving the lifestyle to live in the modern world. Following the 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Yoder, Amish children are exempt from compulsory high school attendance.
Noah and three siblings were not raised Amish. Their Christian faith remains foundational, even though the parents attend one church and Noah another.
“He will give glory to God for the gift he’s been given,” his mother said.
No one in the family has graduated from college. Noah is committed to Notre Dame. His brother, Cole, 19, who ran 1,600 meters in 4:32 in high school, is a freshman at Rose-Hulman Institute.
Outsprinting the treadmill
Determination and grit – and talent – aren’t solely responsible for Noah Bontrager’s rise. Although his father and Jones are eager for him to join a sophisticated regimen at Notre Dame, it would be hard to identify better high school coaching.
No wonder Bontrager said he trusts in the training.
He runs perhaps 55 miles a week in the fall, 45 in the spring. He doesn’t do junk miles – i.e. slow runs for volume. Weight training is reflected in the pecs on his 5-8, 130-pound frame.
One workout is two sets of three-mile tempo runs at a 5:05-mile pace, with two minutes of rest between sets. For context, that is fast enough to be all-state in cross-country once, then twice, all in less than 33 minutes.
He did such a workout on a treadmill on a recent rainy day, then finished with 300-meter sprints. The machine maxes out at 16 mph. He was outsprinting the treadmill.
“His workouts are unreal,” Jones said. “Whatever I throw at him, he just does.”
Similarly unreal has been Bontrager’s assault on records:
>> March 28, Fall Creek Pavilion. He set a small-school meet record of 9:08.35 in the 3,200 at the Hoosier State Relays, running the last 800 in 1:59.33. Eighty minutes later, he ran a 1:50.88 anchor to bring Westview from ninth to fourth in the 4×800 relay.
Remember his devotion to band? He played drums until the third quarter of Westview’s 2A basketball title game against Parke Heritage at Bankers Life Fieldhouse that day, then hustled to the track.
>> April 17, Franklin Central. He set a Flashes Showcase record of 4:02.48, winning by six seconds. It was fastest mile ever run by a high schooler on Indiana soil.
>> April 24, Carmel. He ran the 3,200 in 8:42.18, just a tenth off the state record, closing in 57.89 – or eight seconds faster than Seitz’s last lap.
Bontrager could repeat his double win in the June 5 state meet at North Central. But he might skip the 1,600, focusing on a fast time in the 3,200. (Fastest in the nation is 8:31.80 by Spencer.)
Beyond that, there is the 3,000 in the under-20 nationals June 18-19 at Eugene, Ore. That selects a team for the U20 World Championships, set for Aug. 5-9, also at Eugene.
“That’s the goal,” Bontrager said.
He once thought he was no sprinter, but that was dispelled when he ran 400 meters in 49.78 two days after the Hoosier State Relays.
International racing requires closing speed. He has that now. He already had the worth ethic.
That’s a way of life around here.
Contact David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com.
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