It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the Indiana Pacers missed the NBA playoffs this year.

Yet I seem to be somewhat in the minority when it comes to being disappointed that they didn’t at least slip into the eighth and final spot for the postseason, which begins Saturday.

I know that many feel like having a mathematical chance at the first lottery pick, however small, beats the notion of getting drilled in the opening round.

That logic is understandable, but flawed in my opinion.

From where the Pacers were sitting going into Wednesday night’s season finale against New York, there was just .8 percent chance they would get the top pick.

Be sure to understand that is less than a 1 percent chance. The odds would have been better that they would knock off the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.

The chances are .95 percent to get the second pick and 1.15 percent to get the third pick.

It would have been much better if Indiana had gotten its young players some playoff experience to build for a future that all Pacer fans hope includes many postseason excursions.

Jim O’Brien did a good job in his first year as the Pacers’ head coach. I don’t believe many coaches in the NBA could have coaxed more wins from this team given the lengthy injuries to Jermaine O’Neal and Jamaal Tinsley.

What O’Brien wasn’t good at was leaving hints at what he might want team president Larry Bird to do about his personnel for next season. At times it seemed that Shawne Williams might be on his way out, but then there was a late-season stretch where Williams played pivotal roles in the fourth quarter.

Many times, David Harrison appeared to be working his way into more minutes, only to find him sitting for several consecutive games. Kareem Rush would look like the answer to the team finding another consistent scorer. Then he would look like the answer to the team’s need for a bench anchor.

So I really don’t have much of a clue about what will happen to the roster between season’s end and next fall.

But here’s what I hope will happen. I hope O’Neal and Tinsley are still there. Both can still contribute, and neither is that old. The other factor is that, with both players sitting out a considerable part of this season with injuries, this would be a poor time to try and get reasonable market value for either of them.

I could see Jeff Foster and Harrison both being out of the picture by next season. Foster would be a sad departure because he has always been among the team’s top effort guys. But with defense not a high priority, it seems folly to keep one good defender who has such a big offensive downside.

Certainly it would be great to get help from the college draft, and this one appears to be fairly deep. But the draft is nearly always a roll of the dice.