INDIANAPOLIS — While the Indiana Pacers are currently pushing through a training camp marked by continuity, a few new players on the roster are involved in a roster battle for the final spot(s) on the team.

As it stands right now, the Pacers have 19 players under contract. When the regular season starts, that number has to be 18, at most — a maximum of 15 players on standard contracts and three players on two-way deals. By October 19, Indiana will have to cut at least one player so they clear the waiver process by the Monday before the regular season starts.

Multiple Indiana players are signed to contracts that are not fully guaranteed for the coming. Kendall Brown and the newly-added Cole Swider won’t earn money unless they are on the Pacers roster come opening night. “He’s a guy competing for the 15th spot,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said of Swider. James Wiseman ($500k) and James Johnson ($750k) have partial guarantees in their contracts for the 2024-25 season. In theory, any of them could be involved in the battle for the last spot on the roster.

In reality, it likely comes down to Swider, Brown, and perhaps the players on two-way deals. Currently, the guys on a two-way contract in Indiana are Quenton Jackson, Tristen Newton,and Enrique Freeman.

Freeman has shown the most among that group. He stood out during summer league play, and Indiana signed both Jackson and Newton to a two-way deal at the same time. The Freeman agreement came a few weeks later only after other considerations were sorted out, which suggests that the Pacers were considering him for a standard contract before agreeing to a two-way deal.

As things stand now, though, it would appear as if the Pacers battle for the 15th and final roster spot comes down to Brown vs Swider, with other players in the mix pending extreme performances during training camp and preseason — good or bad.

Production will matter in the coming weeks to settle the battle for the final roster spot(s). “Just how all these all these guys competing for it play,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said of the key factors involved in the decision. “How they compete, how they manage game situations when they have chances to play.”

Both Swider and Brown are technically two-way eligible, so there are a lot of moving parts, but their willingness to take a two-way deal is unknown. Their contracts can’t be directly converted. As it stands, Swider’s expert shooting ability and Brown’s athleticism and potential are competing to stand out during upcoming action. Even before the blue and gold added Swider, Brown’s summer league play created questions about the back end of Indiana’s roster.

The 21-year old Brown was drafted by the Pacers with the 48th overall pick in 2022. They have seen him develop across the last two seasons, which were both spent primarily on two-way contracts. In March, he inked a three-year deal with the franchise, but only the first year contained guaranteed money.

Swider, meanwhile, has been with other teams (the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat) on two-way deals in recent seasons. Both players are inexperienced. Swider is older and more of a specialist — his three-point shooting has been exceptional in the G League and during summer league outings. Brown is fast and can jump out of the gym, and his game is being built out from his athletic tools.

“Whether it’s him (Swider), whether it’s Kendall, or whether it’s one of the guys that’s presently on a two-way [deal]. That’s kind of where that is,” Carlisle said of the Pacers final roster spot. “I’m anxious to see how these guys compete.”

Swider’s cap hit is ever so slightly smaller than Brown’s, but that difference is negligible for the Pacers’ planning. They will be under the luxury tax with either player — and if a two-way player earns the final roster spot, their cap hit would be even smaller. Financially, there is no issue for Indiana, and they can reconsider things ahead of the league wide contract guarantee date in January.

“It’s not [certain] that we [will] keep a 15th person. Someone’s got to earn that spot,” Carlisle said.

Tonight, the Pacers begin preseason play. It’s one of the first chances for the players competing for a spot to show what they can do, and the battle for the Pacers final roster opening will be a story throughout training camp.

Americans expect more from political debates than we often get. This year is quite an exception.

I watched the first Indiana gubernatorial debate with great interest on Oct. 2. The hour-long event featuring Jennifer McCormick (D) and Mike Braun (R) was only a few minutes in when I could tell this was likely going to be a good night for Democrats. Only a few minutes later, I found myself disappointed because I knew this important moment was not going to be seen by as many Hoosier voters as it should have been.

Both presidential debates delivered, at a minimum, a clear contrast between the participants that should drive decision making for voters. President Joe Biden’s awful debate performance in late June led to a rallying cry from many in his own party for him to drop out of the race. The performance illustrated his greatest vulnerability; that he was just too old for the job.

Importantly though, polling data after that bad night didn’t move all that much. One could conclude it didn’t matter as much to voters as it did to the political class. More likely though, it confirmed pessimism about Biden’s ability to inspire movement in his already sagging position.

His eventual and historic withdrawal from the race, and the rallying around Kamala Harris drastically changed everything.

Debates can do that, though they rarely do. Usually, the contests are exercises in bias confirmation. Dr. Conor Dawling, professor of political science at the University of Buffalo wrote, “Debates can help solidify, or reinforce, choices for folks who are already fairly to very certain which candidate they intend to support.” Yes, this is what we normally get out of them.

However, this year’s battles have delivered more than that several times now.

Gubernatorial contest

The McCormick/Braun debate last week is one of them. Any objective viewer should have been able to see several things. McCormick had a better grasp of the details of the job. She was better prepared for the predictable questions, and she was confident in her delivery from start to finish.

Braun gave, at best, a lackluster performance that raised more questions than it answered. I first wrote that the Republicans were running a campaign about nothing in its quest for the governor’s office last October. This is the third time I will remind Hoosiers of that sad truth.

I have seen gubernatorial campaigns, and the governing strategies that followed, which seemed to be designed around a “don’t make any mistakes” sort of game plan. Former Gov. Evan Bayh was committed to the strategy, and it served him well. Former Gov. Mike Pence was also committed to it, though he did make a few large, damaging mistakes during his one term in office.

Braun’s biggest mistake last week, on admittedly a much smaller scale, was comparable to Biden’s June failure. He appeared unprepared for the predictable questions, and his lack of sharpness made him appear old, a critique that he has largely avoided so far. His non-answers to one specific item made it abundantly clear to me that he would not be defending recent comments made by his running mate, Republican lieutenant governor nominee, Micah Beckwith.

Vice presidential contest

Which leads me to the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz. This battle was mostly weird, to use one of Walz’s favorite descriptors, in that they were incredibly polite to each other. Walz was nervous and misspoke in a few cringe-worthy ways. Vance was slick and comfortable in the delivery of what amounted to a fact-checkers dream. Again, to the objective viewer, I would have to say that Vance appeared to “win,” if truth-telling didn’t matter.

But a funny thing happened in the post-debate polling. While many viewers saw it my way,

Walz’s favorability went up more than Vance’s did. Huh? The conclusion was that his every man persona was enhanced by his lack of comfort in that environment. So, did he win by losing, or was this a true exercise in a contest that had no prize to give?

I have never thought that the best arguer was a designation or talent that always equates to the best leader. If that were the case, I know some litigators who would thump every single person mentioned in this column like that giant bass drum the Purdue marching band drags around.

However, I am a believer that conversations are the best way to get to know a person. This belief drives my teaching philosophy to my speech students. I want them to connect with their audiences and make sure those audiences know them better, not just their topic, when they’re through.

With that goal in mind, the debates this year have been fantastic.