I don’t have much to say about the Bobcats. They’re coached by former Indiana coach Larry Brown. They were rumored to have almost traded DJ Augustin to the Pacers last year on the day of the trade deadline. They have one really good player in Gerald Wallace and another pretty solid guy in at-least-one-time-fan-puncher Stephen Jackson. They have Tyrus Thomas who dunks quite often.

And … that’s about it.

Honestly, they rival the Cavs and Pistons for most boring roster in the NBA and seemingly have no interesting future to speculate upon. Sure, last year they made the playoffs and were the best defensive team in the NBA, but so far that hasn’t translated to 2010-11. I’m sure they will pull it together.

But hopefully not this evening.

Pacers vs Bucks By the Numbers

Related posts:

1. Game #11 Preview: Good Day for a Road Win
2. Game #6 Preview: The Night Where We Find Out If Early-Season Trends Are Meaningful
3. Game #3 Preview: The One Where The Pacers Try Not to Get Smacked in the Mouth by Melo

If I had been the director, however, it wouldn’t have even been Winning Time. No, the title definitely would have been “Man, Did This Dude Just Did This?”

This is the exact phrase that John Starks used to describe what was going through his mind after Reggie hit the back-to-back threes that made up 75% of his infamous 8 points in 8.9 seconds outburst in 1995, which, if you’re new around these parts, is the very same sequence for which this blog is named.

Mostly, I would call it “Man, Did Dude Just Did This?” to highlight the true source of greatness for this flick: the interviews. Director Dan Klores spoke with most of the principals from the 1990s Pacers/Knicks rivalry and got some stellar content. But more than just running a camera to record people talking and calling that good, he expertly weaved the comments together to create a fantastic, patch-work, uninterrupted narrative from many different voices that perfectly describes everything the viewer needs to know.

For someone such as myself who knew 90% of the material going in, it is the craftsmanship displayed in this regard that is both the most impressive and the most entertaining part of the documentary.

Insight. Humor. Stage-setting. It’s all there. And there’s so much of it.

Thus, here are my favorite 46 quotes from Winning Time, including the wonderfully grammatically challenged one that could have made this thing a John Starks joint.

On Reggie

Pacers play-by-play announcer Mark Boyle: “The first time I saw him, I was taken aback. The guy looked like Mr. Potato Head on a stick.”

Cheryl Miller: “He’s maddening. He is a maddening human being.”

Patrick Ewing: “He was a great con man. Ya know, he was always crying to the ref, running off, flopping. Ya know, knock you down, smack you and act like he was the one getting smacked. I … ya know … tell ya … I hated Reggie.”

Reggie Miller: “Seventy percent of me talking on the court is personally for me to get me motivated and going. Thirty percent is to see if I can get into the opponent’s head.”

On Cheryl Miller

Reggie Miller: “Cheryl was the king of the block — and that was over the guys and the girls. She jumped the highest. She played the hardest. And she hit the hardest.”

Reggie Miller: “I learned a lot form the beat downs. Cheryl’s tough. Very tough.”

Cheryl Miller: “I would kill him. I loved killing Reggie. And dad would come out ‘Don’t hit your brother’ and all that kind of stuff. But he was … just … that … annoying.”

Cheryl Miller: “I was physically bigger and better than him. So every time that he would come in the middle, I would send it back. And I would laugh about him and give him a hard time and say ‘Alright. Alright, you sissy. This is where the big girls play.’”

On the John Starks Head Butt (Game 3, 1993)

Reggie: “Looking at Oakley, I was like ‘Your boy is really, really dumb. I mean he is really, really dumb. Are you serious?’”

Antonio Davis: “I’m surprised he didn’t have, like, a pack of ketchup and just put it up to his head, and you look and you think he’s bleeding.”

Reggie Miller: “I don’t talk trash. I keep telling you that. I’m a good guy.”

On the Rivalry’s Physicality

Antonio Davis: “Against the Indiana Pacers, you wasn’t coming down the middle. If you came down once, you definitely knew you couldn’t come down again.”

Greg Anthony: “We would say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna win something tonight. We’re either gonna win the game or the fight.’”

Patrick Ewing: “If we knocked someone down, it was a fine to pick them back up.”

On the 25-point Fourth Quarter (Game 5, 1994)

Mark Boyle: “The Knicks were a really strong defensive team. And they had a nice lead going into the fourth quarter. And, you thought it was over.”

Reggie (on Spike): “You pay a lot of money for those seats … OK, you’re gonna be part of the game now … He became part of the game.”

Spike Lee: “I had never ever had any interplay with an athlete before like that. Ever.” *cut to footage of Spike and Scottie Pippen getting into it*

Ahmad Rashad (on Spike): “If you go to playgrounds across the country, there’s always one little guy who can’t play very well, but he stands over there and talks all the crap. He’s the instigator.”

Spike Lee: “I didn’t mind the choke sign, but to grab his nuts. My wife’s sitting right there. C’mon.”

Reggie Miller: “I remember going to the Davis boys and Rik and saying ‘You guys just set screens. I’m gonna make everything.’”

Herb Williams: “I think if Spike had of just sat there and not said nothing, Reggie might have missed his next ten shots.”

Marv Albert: “He had two games going. He had one with Spike. And he had one with the Knicks.”

Larry Brown: “I think as soon as he got over half court, he was in range.”

Spike Lee (on the following game, Game 6): “I’m praying to God, because I know, we lose this game, it’s gonna be hard for me to live in New York City.”

On 8 points in 8.9 Seconds (Game 1, 1995)

Donnie Walsh: “Mel Daniels started banging on the door, and he said ‘Donnie, Reggie just tied the game up.’ And I said ‘Stop screwing with me — I’m not in the mood.’”

Ahmad Rashad: “…presence of mind to not take the two — to step back and take the three. Now that takes … huge … … balls … to do that.”

John Starks: “I’m walking to the free-throw line and I’m thinking, like, ‘Man, did this dude just did this?’”

Greg Anthony: “I had never heard the Garden that quiet. We’ve had shootarounds at the Garden when there was no one there but the janitors, and it wasn’t that quiet.”

Mark Jackson: “We watched John’s eyes. And he wanted no parts of those foul shots.”

Spike Lee (on Anthony Mason fouling Reggie): “Our basketball IQ is not the highest.”

Jeff Van Gundy: “That sequence was the biggest meltdown that I can remember ever seeing in the NBA.”

Reggie Miller: “The joy of them choking, and that satisfaction of doing it in New York? John missing two free-throws at home? That’s the joy of it.

On Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead (Game 7, 1995)

Antonio Davis: “It’s the Garden. It’s New York. You’re just so fired up. You can’t sleep. You can’t eat. You just wanna play.”

Byron Scott: “Rik Smits hadn’t said anything for six games, and we got in our huddle, and Rik Smits said ‘Let’s go out and kick their ass.’ That was it. We was like, ‘Ahh, it’s on.’”

Cheryl Miller: “Going back to New York, no way they win it. I thought it was done. I thought it was over.”

Peter Vecsey: “It was gonna be done again and it was gonna be done in Madison Square Garden … Manifest Destiny.”

Ahmad Rashad: “The whole city of New York was involved. Patrick Ewing. Reggie Miller. The Knicks. The Pacers, their arch-rivals. And it was their peak — their chance. And it hinged on one play.”

Rik Smits: “I’m thinking ‘Wow. The same thing is happening over again. We’re gonna lose.’”

Patrick Ewing (on his failed finger roll): “I see the ball hit — Ba-dupe … Ba-dupe.”

Charles Smith: “That shot put the lid on the basket for all of our careers moving forward.”

Mark Boyle: “Ding dong the witch is dead.”

On Other Stuff

Peter Vecsey: “We used to call it Nap City — probably still is called Nap City — because most players, when they get there, they do go to sleep and wait for the game.”

Spike Lee: “The first season tickets I had, I got the day after we got Patrick Ewing in the Draft.”

Reggie Miller: “Larry Brown is a perfectionist in an imperfect game. You always hear him say ‘Play the Right Way.’ During it? You couldn’t stand him. We all couldn’t stand him. But, in a sense, he was bringing us closer together as a team, because we were all ‘Hey, we can’t stand the coach, but we got to do the right thing.’”

Cheryl Miller: “I didn’t even know Indiana had an NBA team. I didn’t even know they had a franchise.”

Mark Jackson (on being traded from the Clippers the Pacers): “That’s probably the first time somebody was thrilled to move from LA to Indiana.”

Some young, unidentified Pacers fan: “I shaved my head. And … painted it.”

Related posts:

1. “Winning Time” to Air in T-Minus 3 Hours
2. “Winning Time” Arrives Just in Time
3. All Reggie, All Day on NBATV

Actually, most are expecting it to be Roy, given O’Brien’s penchant for veterans.  To me, it doesn’t particularly matter, just as long as Hibbert gets his minutes.  Roy has actually produced more off the bench then as a starter: 13.0 & 6.0 on 50% shooting vs. 10.7 & 5.8 on 49% shooting.

In fact, I think it basically comes down to whether O’Brien wants to lose with a center the fanbase likes (Roy) or one the fanbase hates (Troy).

But…that’s neither here nor there.  The real point of this little missive is to give a quick follow up to a comment made by Hayden in the recap for the Suns Game.

Hey, can you shed some light on why Jim O’Brien changes his starting line-up once every second game or so? Is there a bet on? Is he going for some kind of record? Has he got Memento-style anterograde amnesia? Questions that deserve answers.

Well, there’s a litany of things that can pointed out:

• Granger, Dunleavy, Murphy, Foster, and Hansbrough have all missed significant time.

• T. J. Ford and Brandon Rush have regressed.  (TJ may have actually devolved.)

• Most of the other players on this team (Dahntay, Solo, Watson, Head) simply aren’t starting quality players.

Mostly, however, this is just a bad team with an increasingly desperate coach.  His security blankets from last year (Foster, Granger, Murphy and Jack) are either underperforming or gone altogether.

But, whatever the reasons, real or imagined, he’s piling up some impressive numbers.  If he actually changes the lineup, there’s a pretty good chance that it will be the 17th different starting lineup this season.  Through January 19, only three teams (Golden State, Sacramento and Washington) have had that many different starting units:

As a second way of looking, I took the top two most frequently used starting lineups and calculated them as a percent of total games.  These lineups account for 66% of games started, leaguewide.

The Pacers were dead last at 29%.

This is not something that is unique to this year for O’Brien’s Pacers.  The next new starting combo he uses will be his 60th different one.  Of the 206 games Jim O’Brien has coached for the Pacers, he has used no starting lineup for more than 17 games.  Twenty nine different players have donned a Pacer uniform under Obie, and 25 of them have gotten at least one start.  Those not earning that honor include David Harrison, Courtney Sims, and Maceo Baston.  The fourth, AJ Price, is highly likely to become the 26th different starter at some point later this season.

Basketball-Reference has the starting lineup information for all teams going back to 1987.  In looking at the Pacers history during that time, Jimmy is certainly a leading tinkerer, but he does not have the most different lineup cards.  That honor belongs to Rick Carlisle, who tried a staggering 93 different permutations during his four-year tenure.  Of course, that was greatly inflated by the impacts of the brawl (30 units in 2005) and the Ron Artest trade debacle (31 in 2006).  Bird only started 11 different combinations during his highly successful three-year stint.  Here’s a look at the year by year numbers for the Pacers:

If nothing else, that graphic shows you just how unstable the Pacers have become over the last few years.  While one would hope that it will settle down, it’s not something I expect to happen real soon.  The talent isn’t there.  The health isn’t there.  It’s possible, perhaps likely, that Indy will have a new coach either later this season or going into next.  This pattern probably won’t change with a new inhabitant the hot seat, and it probably won’t change for some time even after they get out from under the contracts shackling them right now.

Perhaps we should make it a drinking game.

All is ready for the final meeting on the starting lineup for tomorrow night’s game at the Palace.

Related posts:

1. Starting Lineup Change for Toronto Game

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

No extensive preview today. It’s Sunday. Daddy’s drinking.

But I wanted to at least throw the pre-game stats up. And, honestly, what else do you really need to know about the Bobcats? Their offense makes even Indy’s look like the 2006 Suns and they now have our boy Cpt. Jack. That’s pretty much the only stuff of even marginal interest about this team other than perhaps Gerald Wallace being fun to watch, them having two decent, diminutive point guards (DJ Augustin and Ray Felton) and the fact that our old friend Larry Brown is running the team. And, oh yeah, they have lost seven straight games so they are probably looking at the Pacers coming to town the same way Indy is looking at going to Charlotte: a good chance to pick up a much-needed win.

Aside from than that, all you need to know is they are one of the worst teams in the NBA and the Pacers should beat them.

UPDATE: Oh yeah. This is also Tyler’s return to North Carolina. I suppose that’s interesting sorta.

Getting back to the above stats for a minute, though, are there other things you would like to see before each game? I added “average scoring margin,” aka, margin of victory, because I think that’s perhaps the best barometer of how well a team is playing in the regular season, but I wasn’t sure about some other stuff. This is still a new, evolving blog after all, and the game previews are more for your benefit than something I get a ton of joy out of doing.

What will make them more helpful/informative? You want other team player breakdowns? More stats? We have a ton of numbers. Are you all cool with eFG% or do you want regular FG%, too? Essentially, eFG% is just FG% that accounts for the fact that 3-pointers are worth more points and, thus, have a higher risk-reward potential. It’s pretty simple really. Just think of it as FG% adjusted for to account for threes. Similarly, yall cool with offensive and defensive ratings? They are good, yet admittedly imperfect, barometers of just how effective a team is on each side of the ball. Would you like to see anything else? Turnovers per game? FTs per game? Rebounding differential? Would you like me to ask more questions in this paragraph?

Ultimately, I don’t want to overload you with stats you don’t find useful or stuff that might confuse people, but we got numbers for days. Any thoughts you have on the matter or any insight into how you prepare to watch a game would be great to hear.

Comment below or shoot me an email to 8pts9secs@gmail.com to let me know about this stuff or any other thoughts you have about 8p9s thus far. We started July 15, so we just hit our four-month anniversary recently and I think we’re starting to get into the groove. But any suggestions, critiques or praise you have about the site would be very helpful, so please do reach out.

Related posts:

1. Game #6 Preview: The Night Where We Find Out If Early-Season Trends Are Meaningful
2. Game #4 Recap: More Brick, But in a Good Way
3. Game #4 Preview: Need Win, Will Travel

UPDATE: I forgot to add what I had tweeted earlier, which is the only thing I really have to say about the whole incident at this point:

“I saw the Malice at the Palace live in an NYC bar that was later destroyed when a 24-story-tall construction crane fell on it. Apropos, I thought.”

(video from FanDome)

Related posts:

1. Ron Talks About the Brawl

Will KG’s knee hold up? How will Shaq fit in with LeBron and company? Was letting Ariza/his temperamental agent walk and signing Artest a good move? How will Vince and a more conventional lineup affect Orlando? Will RJ help the Timmy/Manu/Tony triumvirate win their first even-year Larry O’Brien trophy?

Unsurprisingly, everyone has opinions on all of these thoughts. And even less surprisingly, they are very willing to tell you about those thoughts. Indeed, we have now officially entered the unmistakable eye of the storm that is season preview season — that wonderful time of the year that you will get to hear all about later in the year from those whose outlooks proved correct. Oddly enough, however, those whose proclamations prove incorrect will conveniently forget that this time ever existed. Ah, the wonders of punditry.

In the case of a middling franchise like the Pacers that no longer compels hoops nation, only a handful of analysts have really put a lot of in-depth thought into how the basketball gods will bless or smite Indiana this season. Yours truly will have some more insights to offer over the next week, both in the form of a TrueHoop Network preview and an even longer write-up here. But have no fear Pacer faithful; you can wet your beaks on some appetizer analysis in the meantime from me, Sean Stevenson of Indy Cornrows and Sebastian Pruiti of Nets Are Scorching in Sebastian’s Nets/Pacers match-up preview.

Says Sebastian:

Troy Murphy of last year is what all of us Nets fans are hoping Yi can turn into.  A guy who can hit from the outside and can rebound from the defensive end. Murphy might not duplicate his career year, but he will put up better numbers than Yi.

Ball Don’t Lie was talking Indy the other day as well, and although I’m still a little upset with Kelly Dwyer for overlooking the timeout Larry Brown called to let Conseco honor Reggie for his Top 10 Feel-Good Moments of the Decade, there are few people on this planet who watch more NBA ball than Dwyer, so his opinion is always something to take seriously.

Says the man with the Twitter handle @KDonHoops:

And when you replace the combined 5627 above-average minutes that [Jack, Marquis and Rasho] played last year with … minutes from far, far below-average players in the two Jones’ and Watson this season? You’re going to have a fall-off.

In this case, the fall-off won’t push the Pacers’ win total into the 20s. But it will stop them from making that next step.

He has Indiana pencilled in for a 33-49 record.

Other previews of interest include:

• Indy Cornrows drops some knowledge
• A video breakdown from Tim Legler and Mike Yam,
• Much more from ESPN.com
• Marty Burns of SI’s take
• Joey Whelen of Slam’s Last Emp/comic book-inspired thoughts
• The predicitions of the collective FanHouse braintrust
• Wasteland expectations from BallerBlogger
• Good stuff from The Baseline
• …and a modicum of insight from FoxSports
• UPDATE: Paints in the Point drops some knowledge

Hopefully, all that will tide you over until we drop our official thoughts.

Stay tuned.

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