Conseco Fieldhouse is now Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Adjust your life accordingly.

It is interesting that they went with Tupac for the new spokesman though.

This is a fake, joke image.

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As you may have heard, NBA players are still locked out. So there isn’t much going on in real news. But we know you guys need your Pacers fix, so here’s a list of links to marginally interesting goings-on from the past week or two that at least sort of relate to your fine team.

• Watch Al Harrington enter The Octagon and punch a reporter in the head in the the video above. (via Ball Don’t Lie)

• George Hill is going to play an game exhibition with a San Antonio ABA team called the Texas Fuel, but he has yet to make any plans to go abroad — something an increasingly large list of players is doing. Wilson Chandler, who signed to play in China despite not getting any opt-out clause to return to the NBA if the lockout ever ends, is the latest to head international. Oddly, so far, there are still no Pacers prepped to play overseas. And Magnum Rolle is the only player who has ever even been connected among the 41 guys on ESPN’s list.

• A lawsuit filed by a former nanny of Pacers owner Herb Simon is about to be dismissed from court, says the Associated Press. ”It’s hard to infer an anti-family, anti-pregnancy animus from Mrs. Simon when her whole history has been pro-child,” said the judge. The article also mentions that the judge added that Mrs. Simon “runs a foundation for orphans and she adopted the daughter of a sister who died and raised her as her own child even before she married Simon.” I did not know that.

• The four Pacers jerseys every fan must have.

• In related news, today is your final day to bid on an autographed Providence Friars warm-up jacket signed by former Pacers/Friars legend Austin Croshere.

• “Is Reggie Miller to Save Indiana Again?”

• Ron Artest will reportedly be on Dancing With the Stars. Meanwhile, he must pay some outstanding traffic tickets before the state of California will allow him to rename himself Metta World Peace. It should be noted that the Sacramento Bee’s headline for the article I learned this in (“Artest Remains Player to be Named Later”) is tremendous. He is going to change his number to 70 though, traffic violations or not. For the Universe.

• Donnie Walsh isn’t scared of being bored when he retires, saying “Who the hell knows how I’ll fill my time … I’ll fill it, though, I guarantee that.”

• Eddie White talks with Todd Taylor, the Pacers chief marketing officer / chief Sales officer / senior vice president / unofficial guy with too many titles.

• Conseco is the second best arena in the NBA.

• Perhaps the five best Pacers small forwards.

• Indy Cornrows: Now available on your iPhone.

Related posts:

1. ESPN Pacers Chat with Me and David Thorpe
   Tuesday, 2:30 pm EST
2. Some Pacers Links
3. Some Links

The lesson here?

Don’t buy an professional basketball team in a city that starts with the letter M. Or in Indianapolis, probably.

The numbers are of course very troubling, but we knew this already. For now, Herb Simon remains around, and I think there is some semblance of location/ownership stability until he gets on a little further in years and the team becomes either a toy for his heirs or goes up for sale. That’s when things could become truly strained and fans can become truly concerned about the future of the franchise in this state.

Perhaps the impending lockout and the new CBA will do something to reverse the team’s fortunes.

Here are a few charts that Dan Feldman of Piston Powered made based on the Forbes data showing how all the league’s teams stack up financially. (I edited his originals to highlight the Pacers’ rankings.)

Current Franchise Value

Franchise Value Change Over the Last Year

Operating Income

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1. Lost in Translation – Larry Bird: “This Franchise Is FUBAR. It’s Gonna Take a Minute”

Not surprisingly, Andrew Unterberger, who is currently on a 60-day trip to visit every NBA stadium, had (almost) nothing but good things to say about the Pacers home court as well.

Upon stepping into Conseco Fieldhouse, I instantly understood the acclaim. The entry pavilion designed to look like a train station, there was immediately a sort of personality, a distinctiveness that most of the other stadiums I’d visited so far couldn’t seem to have cared less about conveying. Even with the potentially-gimmicky train station motif, the whole thing still looked organic, old-school even, like a stadium that had already lived through several generations of Pacer fans. So many of the other East-Coast arenas seemed intent on pushing a kind of forced modernity that this low-key, high-character stadium felt like Wrigley or Fenway by comparison.

Once I got inside and started to walk around a little, I found that the stadium’s interiors were even more impressive. There were your requisite concession stands, swag shops and kid-attractions, but surrounding all of them was this pervasive sense of history. There were countless displays of Pacer cultural artifacts — classic uniforms, old newspaper clippings, signed photographs, just about everything short of Roger Brown and George McGinnis offering handshakes outside the men’s bathroom. It was educational, it was visually compelling — “Like a museum,” a fan named Bob sitting behind me at the game aptly put it. When Bill Simmons (60/30 Sports Guy Reference Counter: 2) suggests that the Basketball Hall of Fame rightly belongs in Indiana, this is why.

As I mentioned, Andrew will be continuing to tour the nation’s arenas and cataloging his thoughts on The Basketball Jones (which is one of the two or three best NBA blogs in the world and you should be reading anyway).

Related posts:

1. Everyone Loves Darren; Bird’s Not Done Dealing
2. Game #5 Preview: Agent Zero Arrives to Try to Ruin Conseco Fieldhouse’s 10th Anniversary
3. “Winning Time” Arrives Just in Time

The headline in yesterday morning’s Indianapolis Star made many Pacer fans breathe just a little easier: Pacers Getting $33.5 Million to Stay

As with all deals of this nature, it is very complex and leaves many questions unanswered, but it does give the future in Indy just a little more altitude.  Francesca Jarosz and Heather Gillers give a good summary of the highlights.

Highlights of the Deal

• The CIB will give $30 million over the next three seasons to the Pacers.
• The CIB will make a minimum of $3.5 million in capital improvements to Conseco Fieldhouse.
• The Pacers will continue to operate the fieldhouse and keep revenues from game and nongame events.
• If the Pacers move before the 2013-14 season, they will repay $30 million to the CIB by June 30, 2013.
• The amount the Pacers repay will be reduced for each season that they continue to play at Conseco: If they play the 2013-14 season, they’ll repay $28 million; by 2018-19, that would fall to $1 million.

Sources: Capital Improvement Board, mayor’s office

So, on the surface at least, it seems that the Pacers will be here for at least another three years.  There are some real benefits to all — well, most — parties, at least in the short term.  The Pacers get some financial relief that will allow them to see what changes the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) brings.  The city and administration hang on to the Pacers for at least a little while and avoid having to take on the operations of Conseco Fieldhouse.  The fans get some short-term stability.  There are, however, complaints that are both loud and valid about using taxpayer funds to support the Pacers.

Still, this should probably treated as a stay of execution, rather than a full pardon.  The same problems exist today that existed yesterday.  Though something of an oversimplification, the issues can be summed up in the following three bullets:

• Flagging Fan Base
  It’s no secret that the Pacers have fallen from grace with the locals over the last few years.  There’s no reason to recount the mind-numbing series of off-court embarrassments nor the four straight seasons finishing out of the playoffs that explain a large part of the “why.”  To be brutally honest, however, Indy has never really been an NBA town, and it certainly doesn’t help the Pacers that they hit rock bottom just as the Colts were winning a Super Bowl.  Ultimately, It has been easy for Indianapolis sports fans to find alternate places to spend their sports entertainment dollar.

• Shallow Local Pockets
  Indianapolis is not a large city, nor is it growing at any appreciable rate.  It is generally expected that the U.S. economy will turn around, but the truth of the matter is that many cities all over the country have been trying to do too much with too little through both good times and bad for quite some time now.  Regardless of how much the economy rebounds, it is unlikely that future deals like this will ever be any more popular among the vocal tax base than this one was.  About 70% of more than 2,100 respondents to an Indy Star Poll viewed this deal as a “Corporate Bailout.”  There will never be enough money for police and schools and potholes and hoops.

• Aging Ownership Without Any Apparent Succession Plan
  Shortly before Mel Simon passed away, his brought Herb bought him out, becoming the sole owner of the Indiana Pacers.  The Simons have owned the Pacers since 1985, showing an admirable commitment to keeping the Pacers in Indianapolis.  Unfortunately, Herb is 75 years old, and it’s far from set in stone that the next generation of Simons will want to take over the franchise.  Despite comments indicating they have no intention of selling, it’s becoming harder and harder to believe that it’s not a possibility.

Taken as a whole, it seems that unless something drastic changes with either the new CBA or the basic reality of the Pacers in Indianapolis, there will be a semi-permanent state of crisis surrounding the Pacers remaining in Indianapolis.  The right and the wrong of this situation is almost impossible to tell with the available information.  Also, to be honest, I’m not sure I could be objective about it.  I want the Pacers to stay, so I’m kind of biased.

There are definitely things that both the Pacers and the NBA need to do to remove pressure from the situation.

I’ve spent close to 20 years as a Operations and Financial Analyst, and about all I can tell you about the business model under which the Pacers and the rest of the NBA operates is that it is apparently nonsensical.  The payroll for the the Pacers for last season was close to three times their gate revenue.  These two numbers will always be somewhat out of whack, because the NBA stopped being a gate-driven league decades ago (TV contracts), but that ratio is not sustainable — even though the current Pacers’ “unsustainable” payroll is not outlandishly high by NBA standards.

There is reason to hope that the coming year will help considerably on that front.  Two thirds of the Pacers’ salary will expire this coming season.  Also, the owners appear absolutely committed to making major changes to the CBA next year.  A lockout is a near certainty, and I’m sure that Herb Simon isn’t the only owner hoping that the NBA will come out the other side with an agreement that will help small market teams like Indiana to survive and, hopefully, thrive.

It also goes without saying that the Pacers have to start putting a better product on the floor.  It is in everyone’s best interest that the team is able to draw crowds and maintain the interest.  They’ve done a good job of cleaning out the problem children, but now they need to get back to winning consistently.  The 2008-09 season showed promise — with a competitive, often entertaining team despite its record — but much of that progress was erased by a brutal 2009-10 season.  It is difficult to be sanguine about a winning season this year, but there is reason to hope that the team might be able to start progressing at a faster rate after it gets out from under these salaries.

Still, the problems are not one-sided, and I really disagree with the characterization of this agreement as a corporate bailout. I’ve been thinking about this for some time, and I’ve come to the conclusion that spinning this as a handout to billionaires grossly misrepresents the very odd relationship between small-market NBA teams, their owners, their fans and their cities.

What is happening in Indianapolis is a kind of bizarre symbiotic/parasitic relationship where the owners and the city actually conspire to subsidize a hardcore fan base that is too small to support the teams existence in the city during lean times.  In effect, it isn’t Herb Simon that’s getting the handout, it’s me.

And you.

Ultimately, for the Pacers to stay in Indianapolis, they will often rely on both the ownership and the city to fill in the holes during down times.  And down times are virtually inevitable.

But, I want to be clear about one thing: I am not saying that the people who have argued against taxpayer money going to this purpose are wrong.  In fact, it’s almost impossible to argue that point.  The Pacers are a luxury, and, regardless of what economic impact studies do or don’t say, it is probably not a luxury that brings economic benefit to the city.  I like love having the Pacers in Indianapolis, but I cannot financially justify their existence in Indianapolis.

That is why I pretty much believe that today’s deal was simply an exercise in kicking the can down the road.  It was done by a tired owner and a CIB & Administration that probably is putting a little more stock in the cachet of having an NBA franchise than is really warranted.  Decisions to route public funds to the Pacers will always be made on foundations that are more visceral than rational.

It’s also why a large part of me expects to see Indianapolis lose the Pacers in the not-distant-enough future.  The $33.5 million dollars is money the city doesn’t really have.  While I expect major changes in the CBA, there’s no guarantee that the small-market teams will come out of it in significantly better shape.  Though it’s always comforting to say that the economy will come around, that’s really more of a hope than a projection.  The dreary conclusion is that Indianapolis is not a robust — and dedicated — enough market to support both the Colts and the Pacers.

To me, it really all comes down how much longer Herb Simon will stay with this, and whether or not he can find new local ownership that will display the same level of commitment to keeping the Pacers in Indianapolis that he and his brother Mel have had.  This is no mean feat.  Any new local owner would have to be willing to invest a quarter of a billion dollars in a property that is unlikely to generate cash and has been depreciating in value for the last few years.  I don’t how many residents of Indiana fit that description, but I’m guessing there aren’t many.

If none emerge, the ownership will be found elsewhere. And soon enough, the Pacers will be elsewhere, as well.

I’ve seen people downplay this possibility by rattling off a decided lack of cities looking for teams.  That reasoning is a little thin.  What’s more important than finding a city is finding an owner.  Six years ago, would you have thought that a team was going to end up in Oklahoma City by 2008?

Once again, none of this is a plea to save the Pacers.  Nor is this a criticism of Indianapolis and its people.  It is my home, and I love it.  It just seems to me to be the most likely path that we’ll go down over the next few years.

But, for now, we’ve got three years.

I guess I’ll just hope that Bird’s plan can come together, and that Stern and the owners can negotiate a deal that will allow a much more sensible business model.  And with these last few words, I’ll stop worrying about an empty Fieldhouse until I’m absolutely forced to deal with it again.

Too many visible green seats means not enough green backs.

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Glossary: Offensive Rating | Defensive Rating | eFG% | Pace

Gilbert Arenas and his band of merry men come to Indiana on a night when the whole town will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the House that Reggie Built. (Tom Lewis wrote a great tribute on Cornrows.) For a franchise that once had to host a telethon just to raise enough money to keep the team in Indianapolis, the opening of Conseco was a historic moment. The Eastern Conference success foreshadowed by Chuck Person’s late 80s squad and later realized by the Reggie-led rosters of the 90s had turned the Pacers into a legitimate NBA team and transformed Market Square Arena into a raucous environment to watch a basketball game.

And the construction of Conseco was a culmination of that success. The team was in Indianapolis to stay and, not only that, it was now going to play some 50 games per year in a building that is still regarded by many NBA insiders as the best NBA facility in the association.

It’s a fitting occasion for a night when the Pacers are once again trying to establish themselves as an NBA team worthy of respect. The JailPacers Era put a black mark on the franchise that evolved from minor embarrassment to endemic problem as time went on, and once the losing began, the team turned from punchline to afterthought.

That’s where the Pacers are now. The worst should be in the rear-view mirror. I mean, it has to be, right? Now the winning must begin anew, if not simply to help repair the broken bonds with local fans and garner greater national interest for a once-proud franchise than to simply stem the financial hemorrhaging that has to be weighing on the mind of the team’s owner more and more with each passing day.

So let’s set aside real basketball analysis, forgo the player breakdowns and save the stat-talk for after the game is done. Tonight isn’t about any of that. Tonight is about seeing whether or not this roster can be inspired to properly represent the state stitched on their jerseys.

The Pacers need a win. And Conseco deserves a win — if not simply for providing the current players with a hallowed house to shoot hoops than as a hat tip to the past glories that occurred under its roof and transformed the uniforms that today’s players wear into more than just blue and gold mesh. Sure, the problems that got the team to this point aren’t on most of the guys who are now on the team. But it doesn’t matter. They are the only Pacers that matter right now and they are the only ones who can help ensure that the road ahead overshadows the recent past.

So, as silly as it sounds, the only thing Jim O’Brien should say tonight is: Win one for a building.

Related posts:

1. Mel Daniels Fired, Drama Returns to Conseco
2. Game #4 Preview: Need Win, Will Travel
3. Game #1 Preview: Sekou Smith Talks Hawks