NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 09: Quenton Jackson #29 of the Indiana Pacers dribbles during the first half against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center on April 09, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Jordan Bank/Getty Images)
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INDIANAPOLIS – With decisions made regarding Micah Potter and Jalen Slawson’s contracts, the Indiana Pacers next free agency deadline actually comes next month. Reserve guard Quenton Jackson has a partially guaranteed contract with Indiana that becomes fully guaranteed if he is not waived by mid-July.
More specifically, the contract will hit the Pacers books in full if Jackson isn’t waived by July 15. He signed a three-year deal with Indiana back in February, but only the first season was fully guaranteed. The second season (2026-27) comes with $275k guaranteed, and the third season is fully non-guaranteed.
“Quenton’s been awesome,” Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan said of Jackson. “He’s a big part of our culture in our locker room.”
Jackson originally signed a two-way contract with the Pacers back in 2024, then signed two more across the last few seasons. He had to battle through the G League to get opportunities with Indiana, but he made the most of them. This past season, the 27-year old averaged 9.1 points and 2.9 assists per game across 49 appearances. Notably, 49 of his 89 career games came during the 2025-26 season.
Now, the Pacers must decide if they want to keep Jackson around on a standard contract. If Jackson is not waived in the next 16 days, he will be on Indiana’s books for $2.584 million, just a shade over the veteran’s minimum. That’s a small contract, especially for a player that has given the Pacers rotation minutes at times.
Truly, Jackson’s contract is so small that this decision may be a no-brainer. He fits well in Indiana’s system, has impressive speed with the ball, fights on defense, and has improved quite a bit as a jumper shooter. He’s knocked down 36% of his outside shots with the blue and gold, a tidy figure.
If the Pacers needed to look for a reserve guard in free agency, one that has Jackson’s skills would be an ideal target. So it stands to reason that keeping him would be prudent for the 2025 Eastern Conference Champions.
“My offseason is going to be the same every year, just trying to be strategic in the work that I put in, letting the body heal. It’s a balancing act,” Jackson said of his summer with a partially guaranteed contract. “Just trying to come back with a better shot, better confidence, better everything, Better wind to make something happen for next year.”
Indiana guard Quenton Jackson (29) shoots in front of Philadelphia forward Jabari Walker (33) during the second half of an NBA basketball game in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)
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Is there any reason for the Pacers to move on from Quenton Jackson?
While Jackson is a good player and a good fit with Indiana, things are rarely that simple in the current era of NBA contracts. There are always other considerations.
For the Pacers, those considerations are primarily based on financials. With free agency underway, their team salary number is about $2.8 million below the NBA’s latest luxury tax projection. That’s hardly any wiggle room, and the team has to fill at least one roster spot in free agency – perhaps two.
Of course, the Pacers could push their team spending over that luxury tax line. But waiving Jackson could be a way for Indiana’s front office to get slightly more wiggle room to bring in a different player.
That said, very specific circumstances would be required for a Jackson waiver to actually give the Pacers any additional financial flexibility. Because the four-year pro has $275k guaranteed in his contract, letting him go would only give the Pacers about $2.3 million in spending power – and that number is below the NBA’s veterans minimum for the coming season. So if the Pacers wanted to fill Jackson’s roster spot with a different vet, it would actually end up costing the team more money.
If the Pacers instead filled Jackson’s roster slot with a player who has zero (would have to be the recently-drafted Braden Smith) or one year of service and signed them to a minimum contract, they would save some money – albeit a small amount. But that would make the team’s depth worse, and depth has been an important superpower for Indiana in recent years.
“I think the reason we had successful playoff runs was because of the depth of the team,” Buchanan said last week. “We want to get back to that depth that we had on those runs.”
In that way, waiving Jackson to sign a worse, cheaper player makes little sense. The Pacers could opt to stretch Jackson’s $275k cap hit out over multiple seasons, and that would allow the team’s front office to bring in a veteran’s minimum player while saving an incredibly small amount of money against the cap. But Indiana would then be paying Jackson over multiple years and wouldn’t be able to re-sign him – this string of transactions would only make sense if the team’s decision makers are able to sign a significantly better player, or fit, with limited resources.
So while there are paths for the Pacers to get a small amount of financial flexibility by moving on from Jackson, those paths come with an important opportunity cost – they would lose Jackson and have trouble using the added flexibility more effectively. For that reason, the most likely course of action seems to be the Pacers keeping Jackson on the team through mid-July and having his contract become fully guaranteed.
Guarantee dates, and dollar amounts, can be altered. But with the deadline being more than two weeks into free agency, Jackson and the Pacers continuing their partnership using Jackson’s current deal makes the best sense for Indiana.