Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle is away from the team and will not coach Friday’s game in Washington DC. Assistant coach Lloyd Pierce will serve as the acting head coach, just like he did for a few games last season.

It is the Pacers’ only nationally televised game this season, airing at 7:30 p.m ET on ESPN. It can also be seen locally on Bally Sports Indiana.

Carlisle returned home to Dallas for a previously scheduled event recognizing his daughter, Abby. She’s a captain of the cheerleading squad. It is homecoming and the final regular-season home football game of her high school career.

Here’s a photo Carlisle passed along from the school pep rally Friday morning.

Abby was born in Indianapolis on May 7, 2004 when her dad was previously the Pacers’ head coach. It was between Games 1 and 2 of their second-round playoff series against the Miami Heat. The Pacers won both home games and ended the series in six games.

In June of 2021, Carlisle elected to return to the Pacers for his third stint, his second as head coach. But it meant that he would be away from his wife, Donna, and from Abby during her final two years of high school.

A few days after accepting the job, he had this to say during an introductory press conference held over Zoom from his basement office in South Carolina:

"The people that held her in their arms,” he pauses for an affectionate laugh as he thinks back 17 years, “when she was one, two, three years old aren’t going to believe how she’s grown up. She’s 17 years old and has been driving for a year now. When you talk about family, Indiana has been a really big part of our journey as a family.”

Time flies, doesn’t it?

There are things bigger than basketball and this is one.

Note: Carlisle plans to rejoin the team on Saturday in Brooklyn for the final two games of this five-game road trip.