Only One of Five Injured Pacers Has a Return Date On or Before Saturday

The Indiana Pacers list five players on the report, and every one of them is marked Out. The dates are staggered rather than bunched: 7 Nov, 9 Nov, 13 Nov, and then two players on 2 Jan. That is four different dates for five players.

Sorted by expected return, the list reads like a timeline instead of a roster. Three players are listed to come back inside the next eight days or so, counting from Thursday 5 November: Oubre, McConnell and Haliburton. The other two, Furphy and Sheppard, are a long way off.

Oubre's expected return is 7 Nov, the same date as the Nuggets game. Read that carefully: he is listed Out, and the date is an expectation rather than a confirmation. Nothing on the report says he will play on Saturday, and we are not saying it either.

What we can say is what he has done when healthy. Across 7 games Oubre is averaging 23.2 minutes, 9.4 points and 2.6 rebounds, shooting 42.9% from the field and 25.9% from three. Those are the numbers Indiana is waiting to get back, at least on the page's calendar.

McConnell is next, with an expected return of 9 Nov. The page gives his status and that date and little else, so there is no stat line to weigh. He has not played a game this season per the figures we have, which is why his row in the Pacers table shows dashes.

Haliburton is the bigger name on the third date. The page's reporting is that his hamstring injury will cost him at least the next two weeks of action, per Shams Charania of ESPN, and his expected return is 13 Nov. He is listed Out, so he is not expected to play on Saturday 7 November 2026. The page also notes that hamstring injuries are tricky, and that his absence could run past the two-week window.

Haliburton leads the Pacers in points a game at 21.8 and in assists at 9.5. The next-best assist figure on the roster is Andrew Nembhard at 6.9, a gap of 2.6 per game (9.5 minus 6.9). In points, Pascal Siakam sits just behind at 21.3.

One caution before reading too much into that: Haliburton's figures cover only 4 games, so they are an early snapshot, not a settled average. Siakam's cover 8 games and Nembhard's 7.

The page's player notes point in the same direction. With Haliburton out, Nembhard and Siakam are expected to get a usage bump as they take over more of the playmaking, and there should be more minutes for Jackson. Nembhard already leads the team at 33.4 minutes a game, with Haliburton second at 33.0 and Siakam third at 31.9.

Obi Toppin averages 14.5 points in 22.2 minutes while shooting 41.4% from three, the best three-point percentage of the six players in the table. Jackson's 2.7 assists a game is the fifth-highest on the roster, which gives a sense of how much creation would have to shift.

For the lineups that result, the Pacers depth chart is where to look.

Johnny Furphy and Ben Sheppard share the same expected return of 2 Jan, the longest absences on the list. Both are listed Out. This is the one place where the Pacers list is not about the next week at all: it is about the next two months.

The page gives no per-game figures for Furphy, who has not played this season. Sheppard's line is a single game of 12.2 minutes and 3.0 points, too small to say anything from. So the useful question is who is playing the minutes in the meantime.

From the table, the rotation players on the floor include Jarace Walker, at 23.8 minutes, 7.2 points and 6.3 rebounds in 9 games, and Jay Huff, at 19.2 minutes, 8.0 points and 0.9 blocks in 8 games. The Pacers depth chart shows how those minutes are laid out.

Denver list three players, all Out, and again the dates are staggered. DeMar DeRozan has the same 7 Nov expected return as Oubre. Spencer Jones follows on 11 Nov and Julian Strawther on 29 Nov. As with Oubre, those are expected dates, and both teams' statuses are worth rechecking on game day.

The page gives Strawther's profile: he is 24 and has appeared in 172 regular-season games for the Nuggets since entering the league in 2023, averaging 7.1 points, 2.0 rebounds and 1.1 assists over 16.2 minutes per contest. He was in line to compete for an expanded role during the 2026-27 campaign. For DeRozan and Jones, the page gives only status and return date here.

You can see the Pacers and Nuggets injuries side by side on one page, and the Pacers vs Nuggets preview covers the game itself.

Set the lists next to each other and the shape is clear. Indiana have five players Out, Denver three. Each team's earliest expected return is 7 Nov, Oubre for the Pacers and DeRozan for the Nuggets. The latest is 2 Jan for Indiana (Furphy and Sheppard) and 29 Nov for Denver (Strawther).

The Pacers have gone 3-6 over their last 9 games, and on this report they would be missing their highest-scoring and highest-assist player through at least 13 Nov.

Both reports move, and this one was last updated Thursday 5 November at 1:40 AM ET, so recheck before tip-off. For the latest, check the latest Pacers injury updates, and see the league-wide injury report for every other team.

Most injury lists tell you who is out. The better question is who comes back first. On the Pacers injury report, last updated Thursday 5 November at 1:40 AM ET, five Indiana players are listed Out, and their expected return dates run from 7 Nov all the way to 2 Jan.

Only one of the five has a return date on or before Saturday's tip-off: Kelly Oubre Jr., expected back 7 Nov. T.J. McConnell follows on 9 Nov and Tyrese Haliburton on 13 Nov. Johnny Furphy and Ben Sheppard are not due until 2 Jan.

Saturday's opponent, the Denver Nuggets, list three players of their own, and DeMar DeRozan shares Oubre's 7 Nov date. Here is the whole picture, sorted by return date.

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