ESPN, via their NBA staff, recently published thier predictions for the Eastern Conference standings during the 2024-25 season, and they ranked the Indiana Pacers in seventh place.

The standings prediction has the Pacers finishing with a 46-36 record, which plants them right between the Miami Heat and Orlando Magic. Last season, Indiana reached the Eastern Conference Finals and finished in sixth place in the East.

It took all 82 games for the blue and gold to secure their postseason berth. They won on the final day of the season to earn the sixth seed in the East — they were close to being in the play-in tournament but avoided it before they toppled the Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks in the playoffs.

ESPN predicts that Indiana will win one fewer game in the coming season. The Pacers are bringing back largely the same team from 2023-24, and a big reason they are able to feel comfortable running it back is that they have a young roster. Many of the team’s key players are under 25 years old.

Because the team is younger, internal development alone could push Indiana to win more games in the coming season. But it’s reasonable to believe that the Boston Celtics will still be on top of the East, and the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks added major talents this offseason.

Add in small, yet smart, moves from the Milwaukee Bucks and the Magic, and it’s easy to see why the top of the East is ranked as it is. Getting 47 wins in the Eastern Conference will be harder in 2024-25 than it was last season.

The ESPN standings prediction has the Pacers one win behind the Magic and one victory ahead of the Heat. The blue and gold are about to enter their first full season with Pascal Siakam, who they acquired in January via trade, so they are justified in thinking that they will be an improved squad in the coming season.

There are eight teams in the East who have a right to believe that they can be among the conference’s top-six teams, so every win will be important next season as teams push for a postseason berth. ESPN‘s full Eastern Conference standings prediction can be found here.

What did Indiana’s women’s basketball team get in Czech guard Valentyna Kadlecova? Someone with the potential to be a shooter with a bit of distribution to go along with it.

Indiana announced on Thursday afternoon that the 6-foot freshman would be a part of Indiana’s roster in the 2024-25 season.

Kadlecova (prononuced CA-lech-UH-kov-ah, according to Indiana athletics) most recently played for the Czech national team in the U20 European championships.

Kadlecova averaged 12.1 points, 3 assists and shot 42.9 percent from the floor in that tournament. She has also appeared with the Czech Republic at the FIBA U19 World Cup, FIBA U18 Championships and FIBA U16 European Championships. 

Kadlecova was the designed 3-point shooter for the Czech Republic team. In seven games during the tournament, 40 of her 49 shot attempts were from 3-point range. She made 27.5% of those shots.

Kadlecova’s production peaked in a 76-66 win on July 6 over Switzerland in the Czech Republic’s opening game. She scored 23 points and had four assists against the Swiss.

Kadlecova was also one of the primary distributors for a Czech Republic team that went 3-4 at the U20 European Championships. She topped four assists or more three times in the tournament.

She played club basketball with DSK Levhartice Chomutov in 2023-24, a team in the top division of the Czech Women’s Basketball League, where she averaged 11.6 points 2.7 rebounds, 1.8 assists and shot 43.9 percent from the floor and 74.7 percent at the free throw line in the regular season.

Kadlecova only had eight games out of 26 where she failed to reach double-figure scoring for Chomutov.

Kadlelcova was streaky from 3-point range for Chomutov. She went 0-for-10 from long range in her first two games and had another stretch mid-season where she was 0-for-14 over three games.

However, she also drained 6 of 11 from deep in a January game against KP Brno, part of a 30-point effort that nearly doubled her best scoring effort from any other game in the 2023-24 season. Kadlecova made 23.3% from 3-point range over the 26-game season.

In EuroCup action, she averaged 11.8 points, 2.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.3 steals in six games.

Kadlecova is the fifth newcomer to be added to Indiana’s 2024-25 roster by coach Teri Moren.

Guard Shay Ciezki and forward Karoline Striplin transferred to Indiana from Penn State and Tennessee, respectively.

Kadlecova becomes the third freshman on the roster. She joins forwards Sydney Fenn and Faith Wiseman.

Kadlecova is also the second foreign-born player on the Indiana roster. Starting guard-forward Yarden Garzon is from Israel.

There will be no rush to get Kadlecova into action for the Hoosiers. With starters Garzon, point guard Chloe Moore-McNeil and guard-forward Sydney Parrish returning from a 26-6 team, those positions are set. Ciezki is expected to also be part of the main rotation.

Also back with Indiana playing experience is post player Lilly Meister and guards Lexus Bargesser, Henna Sandvik, Lenée Beaumont and Juli LaMendola.

Indiana’s women’s basketball team will play its first exhibition game on Oct. 30 against Maryville. The Hoosiers will open their season against Brown on Nov. 4.

Henry and Minh Cheng are jewelry wholesalers who have done business across the U.S. for over three decades, but one state they have never been to is Indiana. That hasn’t stopped Indiana from taking more than $42,000 from the couple without charging them with a crime. How did the state end up with their money? By intercepting packages at a busy FedEx shipping hub at the Indianapolis airport.

Civil forfeiture is often derided as “policing for profit,” but what is happening in Indiana hardly qualifies as policing. The hub in Indianapolis is the company’s second busiest in the U.S. Some 99,000 packages are processed per hour.

For at least several years, police have pulled packages from conveyor belts, run K-9s over them, gotten warrants to open the parcels, and seized money when they find it. Prosecutors for Marion County then file civil forfeiture cases to keep the money. Property owners find themselves fighting for their cash in a court that could be hundreds or thousands of miles away from home.

Indiana prosecutors file these cases without alleging any specific violation of Indiana law. Instead, they say the cash is proceeds of “a violation of a criminal statute.” To get their money back, property owners have to affirmatively defend against allegations that their property is linked to a crime. It is American justice flipped on its head.

For Henry and Minh, shipping products is standard but shipping cash is out of the ordinary. They work with Asian retail jewelers across the country and had shipped gold chains to a regular customer in Virginia. The retailer was slow to submit payment, and a few months after the sale the customer said she could pay promptly in cash. So the bill would be paid right away, Henry and Minh agreed to accept the cash payment and sent her a FedEx shipping label.

The money never got to the Chengs in California. What they got instead was a civil forfeiture notice. At this stage, many people simply give up, as the cost to pay an attorney can quickly equal the amount of money lost. Some who do get a lawyer choose to cut a deal with prosecutors to get only some of their money back.

But the Chengs were upset. They had done nothing wrong and they needed that money for their business. They found attorneys with the Institute for Justice and are fighting back in court.

However, the Chengs are not just defending their money. Their lawsuit also seeks to end Indiana’s FedEx hub scheme.

There is a lot wrong with civil forfeiture, but what Indiana is doing is unusually predatory. First, packages are deemed suspicious by police based on innocuous features. For instance, police have said a package was suspicious because it had tape on the seams. But FedEx actually tells customers to tape seams securely.

Second, getting a drug dog to alert to a package of cash is easy. At least one study showed that 90% of U.S. bills have traces of cocaine. If packages contain only money, no contraband, a dog alert doesn’t reasonably indicate the money is criminal proceeds. Every cash register in America is full of bills that would cause a dog to alert.

Third, Indiana prosecutors don’t allege what specific Indiana law is linked to the money. For the most part, the money seized is in Indiana only by happenstance. The origin and destination of the package are in other states. For Indiana to take someone’s property, it has to say what Indiana law was violated and thus justifies forfeiture.

Indiana police and prosecutors simply aren’t interested in uncovering crimes or arresting criminals. But they like the easy money. So far, since 2022 more than $1 million has been raked in with another $1.5 million working its way through the courts.

Now the Chengs’ lawsuit will put Indiana police and prosecutors in the hot seat for how they are violating Indiana law and the federal Constitution. No one should have to effectively prove their innocence to keep the money they’ve worked hard to earn.