Rick Carlisle and Malcolm Brogdon Look to Take the Pacers Back to the Playoffs

UVA Alumni Carlisle and Brogdon Hope to Win Indiana’s First NBA Championship

Photos by Streeter Lecka and Michael Reaves via Getty Images

After a thirteen year run and a NBA championship in 2011 as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, Rick Carlisle stepped down in June and was hired just a week later to be the head coach of the Indiana Pacers, uniting him with fellow University of Virginia alum Malcolm Brogdon.

Carlisle played for the UVA men’s basketball team from 1982 to 1984. He was teammates with Ralph Sampson in 1983 and co-captained the 1984 Cavaliers who made it to the Final Four. Carlisle played just five years in the NBA but won a championship in 1986 with Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics. His coaching career began in 1989 and eventually, Carlisle became the head coach of the Detroit Pistons from 2001-2003, then the Indiana Pacers from 2003-2007, before his long and successful tenure as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks.

Carlisle returns to coach an Indiana Pacers franchise that has not reached the NBA Finals since 2000 and has never won an NBA title. The Pacers are led by Caris LeVert, Domantas Sabonis, and former Rookie of the Year Malcolm Brogdon. Brogdon’s career at the University of Virginia was nothing short of legendary. He led the team to an ACC Regular Season and Tournament Championship and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament in 2014, the breakthrough year in the Tony Bennett era of UVA men’s basketball. In 2015, Brogdon was named first-team All-ACC and led UVA to another ACC regular season title and a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. In his senior season in 2016, Brogdon was awarded both ACC Player of the Year and ACC Defensive Player of the Year as Virginia earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and made it to the Elite Eight. Brogdon’s jersey number 15 was retired just one year after he graduated from UVA.

Brogdon was selected with the 36th overall pick in the second round of the 2016 NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks and went on to win Rookie of the Year, becoming the first player drafted in the second round to win the award since 1965. In his third year in the NBA, Brogdon recorded a 50-40-90 season (meaning he averaged a 50% field goal percentage, a 40% three-point field goal percentage, and a 90% free throw percentage), becoming just the eighth player in NBA history to achieve the feat.

The following offseason, Brogdon signed a four-year, $85 million contract to join the Indiana Pacers. Last season, Brogdon led the Pacers in scoring with an average of 21.2 points per game.

This is not the first time that Rick Carlisle has coached a fellow alum of the UVA men’s basketball program. Brogdon’s former teammate at UVA, Justin Anderson, was drafted by Carlisle’s Dallas Mavericks in 2015 where he played for two seasons.