Season Previews Indiana Pacers

[KG-MVP21]

I don't get it. Weren't Larry Bird and Donnie Walsh on a mission at the end of last season to root-up all of the bad vibes on this team and rebuild from the ground up? Because looking at the team now, it sure doesn't look like it.

Granted, I never really thought this team would part with Jermaine O'Neal, because players like him are just far too valuable to give away, especially since he's still fairly young at 28, and entering his prime at that. But why this team opted to ditch Anthony Johnson and Fred Jones, and then keep Stephen Jackson and Sarunas Jasikevicius is beyond me. I also don't understand their insistence on turning this club into an up-tempo team with Rick Carlisle as a coach, but we'll get into that later.

This Pacer team has actually rounded out better than expected when looked at completed. Marquis Daniels and rookie Shawne Williams give the team an interesting look off the bench (although it says here that it also makes a Jackson trade inevitable if one of them takes off). Darrell Armstrong is certainly a welcome addition to any team he joins, since he personifies leadership and is even able to log some minutes here and there, despite his 38-year-old body. Maceo Baston brings a nice looking game to the team's front line if he can transition his improved play from Maccabi Tel Aviv to the NBA.



The biggest addition (or should I say re-addition) to this team is obviously Al Harrington. Harrington insisted two summers ago that he wanted a team to himself, a nice starting role at a nice starters' salary. Well, he received all of these in Atlanta, and has since realized that ultimately winning is the thing. It took an unexpected (to him) pay cut, mind you, but he's back in Pacer-land to give winning another shot.

Harrington brings a far more polished game to the Pacers now that he has logged heavy minutes and has acquitted himself nicely when he had them. The trick now is to work back into a system where he isn't the go-to guy in the front court. Harrington will most likely play power forward to Jermaine O'Neal's centre, and his main duty will be to keep defenders off of the team leader by playing an effective second fiddle on the offensive end.

But even though this team has shifted around and is probably more talented than last year, it remains to be seen if all of that will translate into winning for the Pacer organization. Remember, the knock on Harrington back in the day was that he was absolutely zero in the playoffs. He routinely came up lame on the big stage and that was a big reason the team was willing to let him walk to Atlanta in exchange for Jackson, one-year removed from a title in San Antonio.

Well, it turned out that Jackson was no more clutch than Harrington, and it isn't like Al has been refining his playoff consistency stuck in the basement with the Hawks. Add to this the fact that point guard Jamaal Tinsley has yet to put together a solid campaign for a whole year, both statistically and health wise, and the fact that with the departure of Johnson, Jasikevicius' role is going to increase despite having what is politely called an underachieving season last year, and there are still plenty of questions to be answered in the Hoosier state.

The hope going into a year like this, then, would generally be Rick Carlisle, who always seems to elevate his boring teams far beyond the sum of their parts. But this year they say they want to play up-tempo. Rick Carlisle couldn't find tempo in a dictionary. His entire offense revolves around slowing the game to a crawl and hoping for the best. His teams routinely go through expansive offensive droughts, and they shoot an even worse percentage in the playoffs than they do during the regular season. Consider, too, that this team let Fred Jones walk this summer, and he was easily their best athlete and perfectly suited to this purported system. In his place, Daniels will be asked to come off of the bench as a sparkplug for this offense, but he couldn't get consistent burn with an up tempo club like Dallas, so what does that say about his chances in Indiana?

Look, the Pacers are a very interesting team this year, but it just seems like the brain trust keeps saying one thing and doing another. Scattered would be a nice way of describing the actions of the Pacers this summer, and while it could turn out to be that this roster has everything it takes to crack into the playoffs and maybe even advance, I just don't see that everyone here is on the same page. If the Pacers had lost out on Harrington this summer, it would have been an unmitigated disaster of an off-season in Indiana. As it stands the summer is something of a wash. They reconfigured a lot less than promised, and the team's play will decide whether it was enough to keep the team afloat for one more year.

PROBABLE STARTING LINEUP

PG - Jamaal Tinsley

How does this guy still have a job? He can't stay healthy for more than a week at a time, he is routinely out of shape, and his game has barely improved since the day he came into the league. He got beat out by Anthony Johnson last year for the starting spot, and did nothing to earn it back, and yet it was once again handed to him when Johnson was traded away. It's laughable to think that Jamaal Tinsley is going to be running an 'up tempo' offense next season, since it takes a stellar and consistent playmaker to make that work, but since I can see Carlisle coaching that style about as easily as I can see Tinsley running it, I suppose he doesn't have much to worry about.

SG - Stephen Jackson

I thought he was supposed to be the root of all of the whining and attitude that was eroding the Pacers locker room last year after Artest was banned from the team. I thought it was Jackson who could never get his game on straight and be counted on to help this team win. I thought many things about Jackson that apparently weren't true, because here we are after Donnie Walsh's cleansing project and Jackson still sits firmly planted in the team's starting five. I guess the organization really dug on the new-look Jackson gave them after Reggie retired; missing clutch shots and being entirely undependable. Clearly I don't care much for Stephen Jackson's game, so I'll just leave it at that.

SF - Danny Granger

I love his game. He might be the true savoir of this team this season, if the team indeed has one. He can play three positions, he can rebound, score inside and outside, he can handle the ball and he is the kind of guy you never want to let get away from your team because you'll never know how much he means to you till you lose him. I think he is going to have a stellar year this season playing off of Harrington and O'Neal, and the three of them give this team hope going into the future if they can ever give them a backcourt worth playing with them.

PF - Al Harrington

I think that I was a lot harder on Harrington than I intended to be in this piece. I actually quite enjoy all of the things he can do on the court, and I just hope that being on a more focused team like this can help his bouts of inconsistency. Even though he had two good statistical years in Atlanta, he still had problems bringing it every night, and having some of that pressure relieved last year by Joe Johnson seemed to help him a bit. If he can find a nice groove in this front court, he may finally find himself comfortable enough to just play his game reactively, which is when he is at his best. He is so versatile, it can sometimes be hard to know what each possession requires of him, but playing between O'Neal and Granger should help him be the kind of guy that just fills whatever gaps they leave for him. If he can do that, I honestly believe he will have earned the salary he agreed to this summer.

C - Jermaine O'Neal

In a weird way this is a really important year for O'Neal. He has lost some of his stature as a premier big-man in the game to people like Dwight Howard and Chris Bosh, and he's going to have to work hard to regain some of that positive attention. For the first time in years his achievements won't be overshadowed by Ron Artest's outbursts, and he can finally assume the role of leader on this team without having to deal with Artest's mental fragility. O'Neal still has the game that got him to where he is today, but he now has to prove that he can use it and lead his team to the playoffs rather than just being a guy who helps get them there. Reggie isn't the guy in the locker room anymore who represents the Pacers, O'Neal is, and he has to slide into that role quickly or risk disappearing from people's memories altogether.