INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Pacers didn’t need this guy, this giant from Georgia, this Goga Bitadze. He’s the young 6-11 post player they drafted Thursday night 18th overall in the 2019 NBA Draft. Does any of that sound familiar? Here, let’s try that again, emphasis mine:

The young 6-11 post player they drafted Thursday night …

In a league moving away from size in the post and headed toward skill on the perimeter, the Pacers already had one young 6-11 post player. Well, no, they already had two of them: Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis, 6-11 bigs already on roster, guys who cannot play together. The Pacers went into the 2019 NBA Draft with a clear mandate: To get better on the perimeter, to add firepower to Oladipo and, well, nobody. Because the Pacers don’t have anybody else on the perimeter.

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The Pacers just drafted another 6-11 post player?

In Pacers president Kevin Pritchard we trust, but this looks weird. Actually, it looks temporary. It looks like the Pacers just started a three-man game of musical chairs, with Turner and Sabonis and Bitadze circling two chairs, waiting for the music to stop and the deal to be announced that will send one of them out of here ...

Because one of those three is getting traded. I mean, right? Anything else is insanity, stupidity, and the Pacers are not the Phoenix Suns. The Pacers are not run by unhinged dummies. Speaking of that …

Pritchard robbed the Suns blind earlier in the day. He sent Phoenix cash considerations, and in return he received an 18-ppg scorer (6-8 forward T.J. Warren) and the No. 32 pick in the draft. That’s why I wrote what I wrote earlier, in Kevin Pritchard we trust. When a guy has earned it, you give him the benefit of the doubt.

And Pritchard has earned it, putting together rosters that won 48 games each of the past two seasons, turning an unhappy Paul George into Oladipo and Sabonis. That was two offseasons ago. And then on Thursday, Pritchard turned the Pacers’ cap space into T.J. Warren. He knows what he’s doing.

But Goga Bitadze? Unless someone is getting traded – and someone is getting traded – I don’t know what he’s doing. Listen, I’m not the only one here without a clue as to what’s going on. You don’t know anything about Goga Bitadze, either. Guess who else didn’t know a thing about Goga Bitadze until a few minutes before the Pacers drafted him?

Nate McMillan.

He’s the coach of the Pacers, and he knew next to nothing about Bitadze until front-office officials cued up some tape moments before drafting him.

“I didn’t study him because we didn’t think that he would fall to us,” McMillan said. “From what I was told, he is ready to play now.”

From what you were … told?

Listen, this is weird. And it gets weirder. Before the draft, Bitadze talked to a number of NBA teams. Guess which NBA team never called?

The Pacers.

Let’s just embrace the weirdness, and assume it might even work out. And before you get too unhappy about this, let me tell you what happened seconds before NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced the Pacers’ selection of Goga Bitadze:

An ovation inside the Pacers’ draft room at the St. Vincent Center.

People like me, the media, we were set up down the hall from the Pacers’ draft room. It was quiet in there, down the hall, until seconds before the draft pick was announced. Then the room went nuts.

And then Silver announced the Pacers’ selection of Goga Bitadze.

“He’s very similar to Sabonis,” McMillan said, which is a nice thing to say about any player, certainly, but a damned weird thing to say about a player your team just drafted. Considering your team already has Sabonis.

And Turner.

And the league is going away from playing two big men together. Lord knows the Pacers tried to do that anyway last season, getting minutes for Sabonis and Turner, but ultimately deciding the defensive deficiencies weren’t worth whatever bang for the offensive buck such a pairing might give.

But McMillan was adamant Thursday night: These guys can fit on the roster together. Well, he was as adamant as a head coach can be about a player he’s never seen play.

“From the conversation in the (draft) room, he’s ready to play now,” McMillan said of Bitadze. “So we have three bigs that can play and will play.”

We’ll see about that.

Whatever happens, this draft-day makeover of the Pacers started two hours before the 7:30 p.m. draft began, with the news breaking at 5:26 that the Pacers had acquired Warren and the No. 32 overall draft pick from the Suns in exchange for cash considerations.

This deal, which cannot be made official until the new league year starts July 6, was Pritchard utilizing his biggest asset: cap space. He was able to acquire a young, improving scorer in Warren – and the No. 32 overall pick – for the simplest of reasons: Because the Pacers had room to absorb Warren’s contract, which has three years and $35 million left.

That’s not a bad contract, either. Not for the Pacers, who are adding a 25-year-old player coming off an 18-ppg season in 2018-19. Warren’s scoring went down from a career-high 19.6 ppg in 2017-18, but his efficiency went up. An occasional and not terribly effective 3-point shooter his first four years in the league, Warren was a higher-volume marksman last season – connecting on a career-best 42.8 percent on 3-pointers while shooting from distance almost three times as often (4.2 per game) as in any of his first four seasons.

Warren’s offensive production last season was nearly identical to that of the small forward he could be replacing in the Pacers lineup, Bojan Bogdanovic (18 ppg, 42.5 percent on 4.8 attempted 3-pointers per game last season), a free agent drawing considerable interest. What’s not comparable is their defense; Bogdanovic is an above-average defender the Pacers had guarding LeBron James in the 2018 NBA playoffs; Warren is an indifferent defender, at best.

Warren also could play power forward. We’ll see. That’s a question for training camp.

One question we’ll never have answered: Would the Pacers have taken home-state star Romeo Langford with the No. 18 pick? Odds are: Of course they would have. But Brad Stevens and the Boston Celtics ruined the drama by picking Langford, the IU star who won IndyStar Mr. Basketball at New Albany in 2018, with the No. 14 pick. That also prevented New Orleans Pelicans No. 1 overall pick Zion Williamson, who made his Duke debut in Indianapolis and is the zaniest college player I’ve ever seen, from getting to play with his AAU buddy Langford.

And it left the Pacers to look elsewhere, all the way to Georgia – not the one near Alabama – for their first-round pick. They chose Goga Bitadze, a player “very similar to Sabonis,” according to Pacers coach Nate McMillan.

Actually, McMillan said a few other words. Here’s the rest of that sentence:

“The things he can do, he’s very similar to Sabonis, a player we currently have, a guy who can step out,” McMillan said.

Sabonis is a player you currently have?

Start the music. Remove one chair. The dance starts now, with Turner and Sabonis and Bitadze circling two chairs, waiting like the rest of us for the music to stop, waiting, waiting …

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.