Alright, Sports Illustrated. I’m fully aware of how bad the Pacers are.
But, c’mon, Chris Mannix … it’s going to take at least 5 more years for Indy to reach 253 losses. (His power rankings have now been fixed, but you can check them out anyway. Power rankings are by definition stupid, but I like Mannix so his are at least insightful for what they are.)
At least the Pacers are still up 55 games on the Wolves in the loss column. Plus, I think they have the tie-breaker if it comes down to that for home court advantage in the Finals.
According to NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo!, the Wolves offered up the promising big who is still recovering from ACL surgery for Indy’s franchise SF, who is himself still recovering from a torn plantar fascia.
Talentwise, this could have been one of the more “our talent for yours” rather than financial-based trades in the NBA of late, but Larry Bird isn’t having any of it. Nor should he, in my opinion. Even though Danny’s struggling badly this season, his two-way ability and his pure shooting stroke are significantly more valuable to an NBA team than Al Jeff’s ability to score and draw a double-team in the post.
And apparently Wolves GM David Kahn feels the same way.
While Pacers president Larry Bird remains determined to build around Granger, sources say Kahn has become increasingly dubious on making Jefferson a cornerstone for the Timberwolves.
So far, Kahn has tried to undo almost everything from the Kevin McHale regime, and trading Jefferson would be another significant step in that direction.
Woj has some other info on any other potential Pacer deals before the trade deadline.
The Pacers, who are tied for the second-worst record in the Eastern Conference, could be dealers before the trade deadline, but league executives believe Indiana has all but ruled out any moves that would include Granger or center Roy Hibbert. After missing a month with a foot injury, Granger returned to the Pacers’ lineup on Friday. He has become one of the league’s best young scorers, averaging 24 points a game.
Seems pretty obvious. Talentwise, Granger obviously isn’t untradeable. But considering that he represents the one truly positive thing that has occurred in Indiana since November 2004, any deal that allowed Danny to leave the state would probably have to be a much better offer than any other team is likely to make.
Larry Bird not targeting Al Jeff. Get it? “Targetting”? Cause there’s a Target logo in the photo? See it? Whatever. You try writing this crap everyday.
The Pacers destroyed Minnesota just a couple of days ago as Roy Hibbert embarrassed 10,000 lakes and Luther Head dropped 20+ points in his second straight game (which turned out to be the second of four games where he scored 18 or more).
So there’s not really a ton to go over that we don’t already know. The Wolves have only played one game since then and they lost to the Warriors. At home. The Pacers had that embarrassing 43-point loss in Madison Square, but they got back on track against Orlando. And now they have Danny and Troy Murphy back.
So, ya know what that means?
TGIWMF
Thank God It’s Wolf-Murdering Friday.
(I’m not going to bother to copy over all the stats for this one. The rankings haven’t changed much in a week, so if you care to see just how bad both teams are in numeric terms, just check the post from last Saturday. In fact, if you missed it, you should actually check it out since it has a pretty good “State of the Wolves Q&A” with Zach Harper, who knows more about Minny’s sad, sad squad than most.)
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
But mostly, yeah, it just sort of sucked.
I actually dozed off on the couch pretty early in the second half of the Timberwolves game on Saturday (perhaps subconsciously forcing unconsciousness so I didn’t have to watch the inevitable Minnesota comeback?), so the first game of the weekend seemed to be, to me, a giant success.
Those first 24 minutes were by far the best I’ve seen the Pacers play so far this year.
But no matter how well you play in the first two quarters of a game, if you let a 28-point half-time lead turn into a 4-point lead with a minute to play, your performance doesn’t deserve too much praise. Sure, any win that breaks an 8-game losing streak is an overwhelming success, but it would have been nice to see the team be able to step on the collective throat of such a bad team when they had them lying on the ground so battered and ready to die.
(On average, Minnesota scores 10.3 fewer points per game than their opponents, a number only worsted by New Jersey’s 10.7 points fewer. By comparison, the Pacers are also atrocious at 28th in the league in margin of victory, but still “only” score 6.3 ppg less than their opponents. In short, the T-Wolves are really, really, really bad.)
I can’t add any perspective to the dismal second half, but the team played about as well as it possibly could in the first half. Everyone scored a ton and the ball movement was blissful. The jumpers were flowing like wine and everyone from Roy Hibbert to Dahntay Jones was scoring around the hoop.
So even if the game turned back into normal stand-around slog ball on offense and the defense started to allow all kinds of easy buckets, the first half at least gives the team some good film to watch and build off. They at least have some tangible evidence to look at and say “Hey, maybe we can actually score points if we pass well, move around and take good shots.”
Because that first half was great. It was a joyous occasion.
Something that was decidedly not a joyous occasion, however? Last night’s game with the Knicks.
I actually went to Madison Square Garden for that giant waste of time and had there not been a special $9 Beer Night going, I probably would have left even earlier than I did. The line of the night came in the late third quarter (right around the time Pacers were falling down by 40) when I overheard a fan who was clearly upset he paid money to attend this game say “I know Reggie Miller left, but still.”
That pretty much sums it up.
And, unfortunately, much like the first half of the Minnesota game, there really isn’t a lot else to analyze, so I’m not going to waste your time pretending there is. The Knicks drove into the paint with such ease that, five minutes into the game, the whole New York lineup was so comfortable and empowered on offense that every jumper started to go down. The Pacers defense rotated so poorly that almost none of these shots were contested, which was particularly negligent since the team also closed out so poorly that they were beat off the dribble countless times by a simple pump fake or hesitation. Neither one is acceptable, but if you’re giving up wide-open jumpers you should at least not get beat off the dribble, too.
Good teams protect the perimeter and the paint. Bad teams should be able to at least protect one or the other. If you can’t protect either, you’re just not trying.
One thing I do need to note, however, is that Roy Hibbert in particular was an embarrassment. Al Harrington penetrated from the perimeter several times only to be met by Hibbert. And it appeared that all it took to make Roy completely lose all sense of balance or proper defensive positioning was an eyebrow fake from Al. David Lee also walked right by Roy on several occasions, which were eerily similar to the many times he was smoked by Brad Miller the other day.
Of course, the most egregious embarrassment came when Danilo Gallinari drove the lane and victimized Hibbert with an insane facial. That play pretty much summed up Hibbert’s night defensively.
To be fair, of course, that play wasn’t something we can put on Roy individually since Mike Dunleavy and Josh McRoberts should both be just as embarrassed about the “defense” they played on Danilo out on the perimeter. Obviously that play was simply a collective failure to defend in the half court.
And ultimately, that’s all this game was: a collective failure to compete.
So I’ll spare you any more reading on a game that didn’t even deserve watching let along reading (or writing) about, and just leave you with this highlight of The Rooster going cock-a-doodle-doo all over Hibbert’s dome.
