The Pacers wasted a lot of opportunities they had this year to easily run away with 1st place. I hope they lose in the 1st round of the playoffs.
***Offical NBA Regular Season Thread***
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The Pacers wasted a lot of opportunities they had this year to easily run away with 1st place. I hope they lose in the 1st round of the playoffs.
76ers also get the Pelicans lottery pick. So 76ers get two lottery picks this year in a stacked draft.
Sounds like there's some trouble in the Pacers locker room:
http://tracking.si.com/2014/03/31/pacers-roy-hibbert-rips-selfish-team/?eref=sihp
Wonder if they would still make the Evan Turner trade today?
http://tracking.si.com/2014/03/31/pacers-roy-hibbert-rips-selfish-team/?eref=sihp
Wonder if they would still make the Evan Turner trade today?
Fair question. He wasn't going to be able to give them much offensively, but it sure looks like Larry Bird sorely underestimated how much of a veteran presence Granger provided in the locker room. I think that their season long pursuit of the #1 seed just finally wore them down. It's hard to maintain that kind of intensity for 82 games. And they're crumbling in the face of adversity.
Not a Pacers fan so I don't know how much Granger meant to the team off the floor, but Turner has been a terrible fit on the floor. In one of Zach Lowe's Grantland column he pointed out that with Turner on the floor the Pacers' defense rates below that of Utah and the 76ers.
Hell, even a lot of Pacers fans (including myself) underestimated Granger's value as a team leader. At the time of the trade I thought it was a good low risk high reward move - Indy took on an expiring contract who could provide some scoring punch off the bench and push Stephenson a little to stay on the straight and narrow and all it cost them was a washed up Danny Granger. But yeah, offensively he hasn't given them much and he's a liability on defense. In fairness to Turner, it's hard to join a team midseason and figure out how to contribute on the fly. But he's not doing much for his upcoming free agency.
Based on the records, neither the Heat or Pacers would get home court advantage throughout the playoffs. The Spurs, Thunder and Clippers all would get it before the two Eastern Conference teams.
Indy's in disarray right now. This must be how Hok fans felt while the basketball team circled the drain last month. I could lie to myself and pretend that the Pacers will turn things around, but they look like a prime candidate for a first or second round playoff exit. And that's a shame; Miami brings out the best in them and vice versa.
I cannot figure out what is wrong with that team. I guess Danny Granger was a bigger influence than people realized.
Zach Lowe laid out a pretty detailed explanation on Grantland yesterday - http://grantland.com/the-triangle/how-to-fix-the-pacers/
It's a long read, but the gist of it is that the Pacers were never that good on offense to begin with and they're really struggling now with a lot of little things like spacing, shot selection, and execution. And the rotation is a mess. Vogel is scrambling to find the right combination of guys to put out on the floor. My own take on it is that they put way too much emphasis on chasing the #1 seed right out of the gate. The NBA regular season is too damn long to maintain that sort of focus for the whole way, and the physical and psychological toll of keeping the pedal to the metal finally caught up with them after the All Star Weekend. More often than not the eventual NBA champs are playing their best ball going into April, not December. Of course there are exceptions to that. Some teams have stumbled at the end of the regular season only to flip the switch in the postseason. But those are usually veteran laden teams with championship experience. The Pacers are neither of those things.
I don't think that's it. He was playing over his head early this season and fans and media prematurely put him among the NBA elite. Once he cooled off the easy excuse was to attribute it to the off court stuff. Scandalous junk like that is fun for fans to talk about but the more likely reason for the dip in numbers is that he's a young and very good player still figuring out how to handle the superstar role. Not great...yet.
He knocked up a stripper who lives in Miami, allegedly offered her a million dollars to terminate the pregnancy, and now there is an unconfirmed story that he got catfished into sending **** pics to a gay man. I won't link to any of the stories but just google Paul George catfish or Paul George stripper and you can get all the details you'd want and then some.
