It is Locked-on NBA Game Night for the night of Tuesday, August 19th. On today's show, the Pacers extend their head coach ahead of a gap year. Why do it now? And John Wall officially retires from the NBA, raising questions about his career. Plus, Knicks versus Caves face off in our weekly verses. All of that and more coming up on Locked-on NBA Game Night. When that final buzzer rings, you know it's time for Locked-on NBA Game Night.

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All right, welcome to an off-season edition of Lockedon NBA Game Night.

West Goldberg here with Tony East.

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Thanks for making Lockdown NBA your first listen every day. Today's episode is brought to you by Monarch Money. Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use the code locked on NBA at Monarch Money.com for 50% off your first year. Got a jam-packed show for you today. John Wall has announced his retirement from basketball when we pin the Knicks and Cavaliers against each other. But first, let's start with the news out of Indiana that the Pacers have extended head coach Rick Carlisle. The timing of this, Tony, I think is interesting considering that they're going to be without Tyrese Halliburton for the season and are taking a bit of a gap year here. So, Tony, as the host of Lock on Pacers, nobody better to have on talk about this.

What can you tell us about why the Pacers are doing this now?

The timing actually speaks to the reason that Carlisle has become a better coach with the Pacers,

right? They hired him, as is well documented, to win, right, with the Brogden-Sabonis teams.

And they pivoted off of that very quickly to the current era that they have.

But what's changed about Rick Carlisle being hired as a winning coach is he has become a much better,

him and his staff, player development coach, that whole group has.

I remember him really talking about when they re-signed Jalen Smith years ago of all the players

to remember this with how much he has started to love that process of like really working

with players individually and helping them with skills like that.

And it's remarkable how many players have come to the Pacers in recent years.

They were either in like a wobbly situation with their old team or just for kind of like looking for their footing in the NBA and have become awesome with the Pacers in recent years. They were either in like a wobbly situation with their old team or just were kind of like looking for their footing in the NBA and have become awesome with the Pacers, right? Jalen Smith being one of them, Erin Neesmith being another, Obitopin being another, lots of guys have had that happen to them. And that doesn't even account for, you know, the guys that were either already good or that they drafted that have gotten better. Halliburton, Nemhard, Seacum from Toronto to the Pacers, has improved, right? All sorts of players that you could keep going on, T.J. McConnell, obviously, among others, and players have talked about how much you're at Carlisle meant to them development-wise. So pushing to the side, the gap, your part, like they just made East Finals and the NBA Finals, that is clearly a situation you'd like to keep intact to the extent you can. So that resume alone, because the last time he extended was before that 23-24 season. So one, duh, but two is the fact that he is both a good winning coach who has kind of like pushed forward the NBA with the Pacer's style and as good at development does make his staff, even for a gap, you're the right staff because you'd want them to be the ones continuing to develop the players they have on their team, regardless of it's this core they continue to have or if they bring in new players at some point. Yeah, it's buy-in, right? It's, hey, you're here

long-term, so take a long-term vested interest in the franchise. And we know Rick Carlisle's

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