Indiana
Quenton Jackson Gets Indiana Pacers Final Two-Way Deal Before Deadline
On Monday, the Indiana Pacers announced that they had signed guard Quenton Jackson to a two-way contract. The 25-year old guard is in his second season in the NBA.
Jackson, who attended Texas A&M and spent three years in the NCAA ranks, had time with the Washington Wizards on a two-way contract last season. He averaged 6.2 points and 1.7 assists per game for the Wizards, and he appeared in nine games.
To be eligible for a two-way contract, a player must have fewer than four years of NBA experience. Because Jackson only has one year of service under his belt, he was eligible for the agreement. Two-way deals are contracts that can be transferred between the NBA and the G League throughout the season, so Jackson will spend time with both the Pacers and their G League affiliate team, the Indiana Mad Ants.
The timing of this deal is related to a deadline. March 4 was the final day that teams were permitted to sign players to a two-way contract, and the Pacers had one such deal available to offer after promoting the contract of young wing Kendall Brown, who was previously on a two-way agreement. Now, the Pacers have a full roster — 15 players are on a standard contract with the team, and three others have two-way deals.
Players on two-way contracts receive half of the rookie minimum for their salary. For a full season, that number would be about $560,000, but Jackson’s deal is prorated to the day he signed his contract.
With Jackson officially signing on March 4, his salary will be roughly $135,000 with the Pacers this season. Players on two-way deals are allowed to appear in 50 games during a full NBA season, and that number is prorated as well. Jackson can be active for 12 of the Pacers final 20 games.
The blue and gold have been all about flexibility and options this season. They kept roster spots open when they needed to and didn’t use their exceptions until late in the campaign. That made it easier to grab Brown on a more favorable deal, and they were able to use the open two-way slot to add Jackson.
“Some of it is trying to keep flexibility with our roster. We wanted to have the ability to maybe look at some other players with our last roster spot,” Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan said of his team’s moves and waivers just after the trade deadline.
Jackson spent his first day in the Indiana organization practicing with the Mad Ants. “I’m just high-spirited, goofy,” Jackson said, per the team. He thinks his energy will fit in anywhere, including with his new squad.
This season, Jackson has been with the Chicago Bulls organization. He played with the NBA club for preseason action, where he appeared in three games, but he was waived prior to the start of the NBA campaign. He landed with the Windy City Bulls in the NBA G League.
In 38 outings for Windy City, Jackson averaged 16 points and 5.8 assists per game. As a bigger, scoring guard, he can slot in as an off-ball starter for the Mad Ants once he is up to speed. The Pacers’ G League affiliate team will have a quality guard rotation with Isaiah Wong, Elfrid Payton, and Jackson all getting playing time.
Jackson reached 19 points in his most recent NBA outing, and he averaged 11.3 points per game in his final four appearances for Washington. He has proven to be a good scorer at the pro level — he will hope to grow in other ways with the Pacers.
Wong and Oscar Tshiebwe occupy Indiana’s other two two-way deals. The Mad Ants next play on Thursday, so perhaps Jackson makes his debut in the organization on that date. The Pacers, meanwhile, will have to decide when to use his 12 available games in the NBA — if they use them at all.
Indiana
Man found dead in tanning bed at Planet Fitness days after he was reported missing
A man was reportedly found dead inside a tanning bed at an Indiana Planet Fitness days after he was reporting missing by family.
Police are conducting a death investigation after a man who was reported missing on Friday was found dead in a tanning bed Monday morning at the south Indianapolis facility, NBC affiliate station WTHR reported.
In a statement to the publication, Planet Fitness said they were “deeply saddened by the passing of one of our members” and noted the owner of the franchise was working with authorities on the investigation.
“At Planet Fitness, we have robust operational brand protocols in place, as the safety and well-being of our members is our top priority,” Chief Corporate Affairs Officer McCall Gosselin told the publication. “We are working closely with our local franchisee to ensure they are upholding those brand protocols.”
Witnesses told the station they noticed a foul smell in the building near the tanning rooms.
A sign on the door of the building noted that “tanning was currently unavailable,” WTHR reported.
Family told the station 39-year-old Derek Sink was identified as the man found in the bed, saying he went into a tanning bed on Friday and was found dead there Monday morning. They said he struggled with drugs and a needle was found in the room with him, though no cause of death has been released.
Relatives said Sink was wearing an ankle monitor at the time.
Indiana
Pacers News: Watch Former Top Draft Pick Dominate for Indiana Mad Ants
The Indiana Pacers’ G League affiliate squad, the Indiana Mad Ants (formerly the Fort Wayne Mad Ants), are off to a 1-1 start on their young 2024-25 regular season.
The club’s opening night roster included two Indiana legends, in two-time Big Ten All-Defensive Team Purdue guard Dakota Mathias and ex-Warsaw High School and Indiana Wesleyan combo guard Kyle Mangas.
But the biggest name, by far, suiting up for the Mad Ants is Jahlil Okafor.
Following a title-winning, one-and-done 2014-15 NCAA season with the Duke Blue Devils, the 6-foot-11 center was selected with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft by the Philadelphia 76ers, still in the midst of their “process” teardown era, as navigated by beloved former general manager Sam Hinkie. In Philadelphia’s draft history, Okafor was the lottery selection in between 2014 draftee Joel Embiid, the eventual 2023 league MVP, and 2016 draftee Ben Simmons, who blossomed into a three-time All-Star before he became a semi-tantalizing, often-hurt expiring contract.
Okafor never reached the heights of either of those comrades, although on paper he had the pedigree to potentially get there. The cousin of former 10-year NBA vet Emeka Okafor (who himself was the No. 2 pick in the 2004 NBA Draft), the younger Okafor was seen as a top prospect coming out of Mike Krzyzewski’s system. It never quite worked out, as his offensive game was stuck in the 2000s — full of back-to-basket moves but missing longer jumpers.
He never developed a reliable 3-point shot, but wasn’t the kind of rim-protecting big man who instilled fear in the hearts of opposing players. Essentially, he was in no man’s land, and some early meniscus trouble also hampered his development.
After an infamous departure from Philadelphia in 2017, Okafor played for the Brooklyn Nets, New Orleans Pelicans, and Detroit Pistons. He hasn’t suited up in an NBA game since 2021, but has played for the CBA’s Zhejiang Lions, the Mexico City Capitanes of the G League, Spanish club Casademont Zaragova, and Puerto Rican squad Capitanes de Arecibo.
Now, Okafor is making the most of his opportunity with the Mad Ants. In two contests with the Mad Ants, the 28-year-old is averaging 14.5 points on .684/.500/1.000 shooting splits (that 3-point rate is arriving on a fairly low 1.0 attempts and seems a bit fluky), 5.5 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 0.5 steals a night.
Okafor’s performance against the Cleveland Charge, NBAGL affiliate of the Cleveland Cavaliers, was especially appetizing.
In that 122-114 Mad Ants win, Okafor scored 21 points on 10-of-16 field goal shooting (63 percent) and pulled down nine rebounds.
Mad Ants sixth man De’Vion Harmon led the club with 25 points on 8-of-16 shooting from the floor (1-of-4 from the 3-point line) and an immaculate 5-of-5 shooting from the foul line. All five starters (including Okafor) scored in double digits.
Combo forward Cameron McGriff was the team’s third 20-plus point scorer, with 21 points on 8-of-13 shooting from the floor (4-of-8 from long range), along with nine rebounds and two assists.
More Pacers: Indiana Stars Rave About Bennedict Mathurin After Young Star Posts Ridiculous Stat Line
Indiana
Indiana man is found guilty of murder in the 2017 killings of 2 teenage girls
DELPHI, Ind. — A former drugstore worker in the small Indiana community of Delphi was found guilty of murder on Monday in the killings of two teenage girls who vanished during an afternoon hike.
Jurors convicted Richard Allen of two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the 2017 killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14.
Allen wasn’t arrested for five more years, while the case drew outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts. His trial followed repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of Allen’s public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Reporters inside the courtroom said Allen, 52, showed no reaction as the verdict was delivered, but he looked back at his family at one point. Allen is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 20. He could face up to 130 years in prison.
Outside the courthouse, people on the sidewalk began to cheer as word of the verdict spread.
Indiana State Police spokesman Capt. Ron Galaviz told The Associated Press that the judge’s gag order remains in place and he believes it will until Allen is sentenced. Allen’s lawyers left the courthouse Monday without making statements.
A special judge oversaw the case — Superior Court Judge Fran Gull who along with the jurors, came from northeastern Indiana’s Allen County. The seven women and five men were sequestered throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in the Carroll County seat of Delphi, the girls’ hometown of about 3,000 residents in northwest Indiana where Allen also lived and worked.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland noted in his closing argument that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the killings — in person, on the phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he replayed for the jury, Allen could be heard telling his wife, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
McLeland also said Allen is the man seen following the teens in a grainy cell phone video recorded by one of the girls as they crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called the Monon High Bridge.
“Richard Allen is Bridge Guy,” McLeland told jurors. “He kidnapped them and later murdered them.”
McLeland said it was Allen’s voice that could be heard on the video telling the teens, ” Down the hill ″ after they crossed the bridge on Feb. 13, 2017. Their bodies were found the next day, their throats cut, in a nearby wooded area.
An investigator testified that Allen told him and another officer that on the day the teens vanished, he was wearing a blue or black Carhartt jacket, jeans and a beanie — clothing similar to what the man recorded on the bridge wore.
McLeland said an unspent bullet found between the teens’ bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun. An Indiana State Police firearms expert told the jury her analysis tied the round to Allen’s handgun.
But a firearms expert called by the defense questioned the analysis, and attorney Bradley Rozzi dismissed it as a “magic bullet,” saying investigators had made an “apples to oranges” comparison of the unspent round to one fired from Allen’s gun.
Allen was arrested in October 2022. He had become a suspect after a retired state government worker who volunteered to help police in the case found paperwork in September 2022 showing that Allen had contacted authorities two days after the girls’ bodies were found. That paperwork indicated that Allen had told an officer he had been on the hiking trail the afternoon the girls went missing, according to testimony.
Allen’s defense argued that his confessions are unreliable because he was facing a severe mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being locked up in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and taunted by people incarcerated with him. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months in solitary confinement could make a person delirious and psychotic.
But Dr. Monica Wala, Allen’s psychologist at the Westville Correctional Facility, said Allen shared details of the crime in some of the confessions, including telling her he slashed the girls’ throats and put tree branches over their bodies. She wrote in a report that Allen told her he abandoned his plans to rape the teens when a van passed nearby. A man whose driveway passes under the Monon High Bridge testified that he was driving home from work in his van around that time.
That van, McLeland told jurors in his closing, was a detail “only the killer would know.”
During cross-examination, Wala acknowledged that she had followed Allen’s case with interest during her personal time even while treating him and that she was a fan of the true-crime genre.
Rozzi said in his closing arguments that Allen is innocent. He said no witness explicitly identified Allen as the man seen on the hiking trail or the bridge the afternoon the girls went missing. And he said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence links Allen to the murder scene.
“He had every chance to run, but he did not because he didn’t do it,” Rozzi told the jurors.
Allen’s lawyers had sought to argue before the trial that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group known as the Odinists who follow a pagan Norse religion, but the judge ruled against that, saying the defense “failed to produce admissible evidence” of such a connection.
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