Time to pull incompatible team apart
A couple of weeks ago, Indiana Pacers president Larry Bird was asked if he ever considered blowing up the team and fielding a lottery-bound team for a couple of seasons in a bid to rebuild.
"I don't think we could do that here,'' he said. "I don't think we could afford to do it.''
Well, I'm not privy to the team's finances, and while I know the Simon brothers could buy and sell me many thousands of times over, I don't know how willing they are to field a sub-standard team that doesn't produce home playoff purses.
From a purely competitive standpoint, though, that is exactly what the Pacers need to do.
Blow it up. Tear it down. Start over. Play the lottery. Get busy in free agency once the big contracts -- notably the Austin Croshere deal -- expire. Take two steps back, maybe three, before taking the largest steps forward.
What? You want a few more seasons of 45 victories? And no chance to compete for a championship?
Yes, it is astonishing the Pacers have made the playoffs in 15 of the past 16 years, and Donnie Walsh deserves all the credit for continuing to field a competitive team during a period of massive transformation after the 2000 season. He committed abject thievery during those years, getting Jermaine O'Neal, dealing for Ron Artest and Brad Miller.
That, though, is not a magic act easily duplicated. Most teams fall completely out of sight for a while before re-emerging as contenders. And that, I believe, is what must now happen with the Pacers.
It's probably counterintuitive to Bird, who is too competitive to let his team fall off the map. And it's not the way Walsh, who is expected to retire at the end of next year, would want to leave the franchise.
But tinkering is a half-measure the Pacers can't afford to take. They've tried tinkering. They tinkered and brought in Stephen Jackson. They tinkered and mistakenly signed Sarunas Jasikevicius. Tinkering hasn't worked. And tinkering hasn't gotten this city excited, as evidenced by the empty seats at Conseco Fieldhouse this past week.
So they get rid of Jamaal Tinsley. What do they get back? Maybe a second-round draft choice.
So they move Jackson. Is he going to bring an impact player in return?
There is only one player on this roster who has the potential to bring the Pacers a star player in return, and that's O'Neal. But given all the injuries the past two years, the lack of production and the fact he's got a lot of miles on him at a relatively young age, how many teams are going to go strong after O'Neal? (Besides Isiah Thomas, that is.)
As for Peja Stojakovic, here's the deal: I believe the Pacers will bring him back if it's at the right price, in large part because they don't want to have dealt Artest for nothing. My feeling, though, is he's a one-trick pony, and if the Pacers opt to rebuild with youth, there's no place for him and a long-term deal.
It's time to think of the long-term future; it's time to think in terms of bringing in players who will give the Pacers cap space down the line. Already this summer, the franchise will drop Scot Pollard's and Reggie Miller's salaries from the cap, and they expect to get relief after the Jonathan Bender retirement. Next year, they will get out from under Croshere's salary, a mistake that turned into a huge albatross around the team's neck.
A couple of more sage moves, moves made with an eye on freeing up cash for free agents, and the Pacers will be sitting pretty in the years ahead.
Of course, it's a risk. Sometimes, teams get intentionally bad and stay bad for a very long time. But you look at the teams remaining in the playoffs, and all of them had to survive some lean years.
The Detroit Pistons were a second-division team until Joe Dumars made several brilliant trades and got a free agent named Chauncey Billups.
The Phoenix Suns fell off the map, then signed Steve Nash, brought in coach Mike D'Antoni and made several key additions through trades.
Cleveland, Dallas, New Jersey, Miami -- all had to pay a price for a time to get in position to build a championship-caliber team.
A lot of people would look at the empty seats and say, "If Indy won't support a playoff team, how would they hang tough for a few years winning 30 games?''
Clearly, though, this town is no longer interested in having a team that's just good enough. I think management can sell the city on a vision of the future that involves a little bit of suffering.
And while we're talking about rebuilding, one more thing: They Pacers have got to join the rest of the 21st century NBA and take advantage of the glut of foreign players. While the surviving playoff teams are loaded with foreign talent -- Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki, New Jersey's Nenad Krstic, San Antonio's Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, Cleveland's Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao, and many others -- the Pacers have done next to nothing overseas. Take the past six years, for instance. Primoz Brezec. Bruno Sundov. Sarunas Jasikevicius. The Pacers are 0-for-Europe.
Tear it down. Build it back up again.
Pacers fans haven't had to suffer like so many of their NBA brethren. Now, though, it's time to pay that price.
performance looked painfully familiar
In one corner of the Indiana Pacers' locker room, Stephen Jackson sat silently, a white towel draped over his knees, his head resting forlornly in his left hand. He knew the truth: His team had blown it, having thrown away the one real chance they would have to steal this series.
A few lockers down sat Jermaine O'Neal, reclining in his chair, soaking his tender left ankle in a bucket of ice, reading the stat sheet from Saturday's 97-88 Game 4 loss to the New Jersey Nets. He, too, knew the truth, even if it wasn't written in bold face in the final box score: His underdog, undermanned team had just undermined its only real chance to pull the series upset.
The scoreboard now reads: Pacers 2, Nets 2, with this first-round series returning to East Rutherford, N.J., for Game 5 on Tuesday. But here, the numbers are deceiving. The Pacers handed this series over to the Nets on Saturday, letting them off the ropes one time too many. If there's a single game they will regret in this generally regrettable season, it was this one.
At three games to one, the Pacers might have been able to close out Jersey even without Peja Stojakovic and, we're just assuming here, Jamaal Tinsley. But now? Best of three, with two in Jersey?
No deal, Howie.
The Pacers had their chance. And, like Anthony Johnson as he innocently dribbled out the final seconds of the game, only to knock the ball out of bounds off his shin, they turned it over.
"Everyone was very conscious of the magnitude of this game, and if we won, it would have given us a great advantage," Austin Croshere said. ". . . I don't think anybody let down, let up or felt overconfident. Everyone was certainly aware of the situation. But they (the Nets) came out understanding the same thing. And it was just like Game 2, the turnovers and them converting on those."
Before the game, the Pacers shared memories of last year's second-round series with Detroit, when they led two games to one, had a chance to crush the reigning champions at home in Game 4 and laid a sizable egg.
Then they went and did it again against the Nets.
If that performance looked painfully familiar, like something we saw about 40 times this season, that's because it was. This, quite honestly, was the team Indiana has come to know and generally revile.
Game 3 of the Pacers-Nets series
It was less than an hour before Game 3 of the Pacers-Nets series, an hour before one of the most important games of Jermaine O'Neal's career, and the Indiana Pacers' star was sitting in front of his locker sporting a wry smile.
"Come back after the game,'' he said, deflecting questions about the silly $15,000 fine the NBA dropped on him for his innocuous post-Game 2 comments about the officiating. "After we win, I'll have plenty to say.''
Maybe the league ought to drop a fine on him before every game. Because after two dreadful games in New Jersey -- he had as many rebounds as personal fouls -- O'Neal came back Thursday in Game 3's 107-95 win over the New Jersey Nets with arguably the finest and most important performance of his career.
"Devastating,'' teammate Stephen Jackson called him.
This was the O'Neal we often saw three seasons ago, when he finished third in the MVP voting and looked like the Next Big Thing. Over the past two years, though, suspensions and injuries have produced more questions than answers. Could he ever be the franchise player we believed he would become? Would he be worth keeping, or trading, when the Pacers entered the summer?
Then Thursday, after an all-night film session in which he watched both games twice -- "with lots of rewinding,'' he said -- O'Neal took over Game 3 and the series.
Thirty-seven points on just (please note, Vince Carter) 15 field goal attempts. Fifteen rebounds. Four blocked shots.
"Is this the way you felt a couple of years ago?'' he was asked.
He smiled.
"Yeah, but I'm one of my biggest critics,'' O'Neal said. "It felt good to play at that level. Physically, I'm healthy again, but this is one out of three games. So I can't say that until I'm ready to put together a string of games like this. . . . Now I'm going to go home and try to figure out how they're going to try to take me out of the game.''
