You Don't Know Jack: A Pacers Story

[trekfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by georgiafan

Interesting to see what happens I like the Barnes fit

I do, too. I feel like he'll be the missing piece to getting my team consistently good in the regular season and prepping our squad to be a regular staple of the postseason.

I got the Cavs and another team (forgetting what it is) on a back-to-back at home, then I'll make the trade and we'll see how badly it hurts the team ... I fear we might sabotage ourselves, but the deal the Mavericks is presenting is just good across the board for everyone.

They get youth and cap space for the summer, they unload Barnes, and the team can tank for a draft pick. Barnes will not be part of the next, great Dallas team, but Mudiay and Valentine are young enough that they can be.

[georgiafan]

Quote: Originally Posted by trekfan

I do, too. I feel like he'll be the missing piece to getting my team consistently good in the regular season and prepping our squad to be a regular staple of the postseason. I got the Cavs and another team (forgetting what it is) on a back-to-back at home, then I'll make the trade and we'll see how badly it hurts the team ... I fear we might sabotage ourselves, but the deal the Mavericks is presenting is just good across the board for everyone. They get youth and cap space for the summer, they unload Barnes, and the team can tank for a draft pick. Barnes will not be part of the next, great Dallas am, but Mudiay and Valentine are young enough that they can be.

Yea Barnes best fit is as a #3 option on a good team definitely not a #1 option. I think it works for everyone.

[trekfan]

Ch. 25

The Cavs came into our house at 5-2, we were 6-1, and Cleveland looked like the best damn team in the conference by a mile. Bledsoe, Wade, LeBron, Carmelo, Thompson, Crowder, Rose, Speights, and Osman were a deadly lineup. Just enough three point shooting to stretch the floor (especially with Speights and Crowder on the floor) and having the freight train that was LeBron gave them an advantage.

But we came out and showed no fear. LeBron wanted to run? We stopped that dead — we got up on the boards, we grabbed every loose rebound, and we pounded them inside. If we got doubled, we passed to an open man on the wing, who could shoot. Early on, it was a duel between me and Melo, and Melo was making us look silly.

But every pull up Melo made, I answered right back. I set the tone early with a dunk on LeBron that I’m sure he’s probably forgotten, but I haven't.

We hustled on defense, we jumped the passing lanes, and we made them fear making the extra pass; if they did, it would only increase their chances of turning it over. VO was flying all over the court, deflecting balls left and right.

At the end of one, we were up huge — 35-23, and we felt like we were going to pound the Cavs into the pavement for the rest of the game. My God, were we wrong. Cleveland came out in the second refocused and angry — they chipped away at our lead, outplayed us the whole quarter, and abused the weakness Gramps had pointed out: Glenn Robinson. He was getting matched up on Melo and LeBron, and he was getting torched by both.

At halftime, we barely held onto a four-point lead.

In the third, it got worse. Our bench went ice cold from the field and we struggled to get anything going; the Cavs bench was, frankly, quite talented and stocked with veterans. They knew not to get too high or too low, but we didn’t; our youth, normally an advantage, wasn’t here. The Cavs chipped away at our lead, outscoring us 46-45 in the quarter, and we only had a three-point lead heading into the fourth.

And that’s when LeBron put the hammer down. He had played light minutes in the third, but in the fourth he came out and went into full LeTank mode; he blitzed us on defense, he brutalized us on offense, and we couldn’t stop him. We switched Jabari on him and Jabari couldn’t slow him down, either.

LeBron was in rhythm and he was on fire. He shut us down and we only made the score a little more respectable with some garbage time shots.

We lost and it was a bad loss … our defense didn’t show up, our bench was MIA, and we got abused anytime the Cavs put one of their guys on GROB. It was sobering. It was sickening.

It was exactly the type of game Gramps said we couldn’t win, and he was right. We needed more.

The next day we played the Heat and we amazingly won the game, 136-114; our defense, yet again, was not stellar but we did what we had to. Friday morning, the news came down that there was a trade … I was expecting that. I thought I was prepared.

I wasn’t.

The trade had gone through and Harrison Barnes was ours, him and a two-year contract extension (with a team option on year three). But I didn’t expect ROLO to be tossed into the trade, it wasn’t part of the deal I chose. I marched up to Gramps office to give him an earful, but he met me halfway there.

He was on his way to talk to me and he looked just as unhappy as I felt.

“It was the only way to make the numbers work, Jack,” Gramps told me right after we stepped inside an unused conference room. “We thought the league would let the trade go through as I proposed it, but the number didn’t work; we tried to get them to take other players back for salary purposes, but we would have had to gut the bench. ROLO’s contract was coming off the books anyway —”

“Did you lie to me? Did you *ucking lie to me?” I asked — well, more yelled — at him.

“No,” he answered without hesitation. “I’m sorry, really, I didn’t want to trade Lopez. But, let’s be honest, he wasn’t going to stay here anyway. His agent wasn’t too displeased that he was heading to Dallas — Texas has no income tax, and it’s not like the organization is a flaming pile of *hit. They play in the West, boy … it’s tough sledding.”

We sat there and talked it out for the next two hours … what happened, why it happened. I got an education on the salary cap, the various rules of the CBA, and came away not as pissed. The fact remained that both Mudiay and Valentine would have a chance to prove themselves in Dallas … Mudiay wasn’t stuck there either, if he hated it he could take his qualifying offer and bolt in 2020.

At least, that’s what I told myself. Part of me felt like I had sold out my teammates and failed them. What kind of leader does that?

“LeBron. Kobe. Jordan. Bird. Magic. Do you know how many of the greats saw teammates come and go? You think they just watched, had no input?” Gramps had told me.

He was right … but I wasn’t sure I could deal with the guilt. What if Mudiay suffered a career ending injury in Dallas? Was that on me?

My head was swirling and there was still another 73 games to go in the regular season.

[Jogo]

Jack and "his posse" (as Phil Jackson would say) sure have their way in Indiana!

He takes the league by storm out of nowhere, wins ROY, ...
And now he's acting like a 20 year old player-GM, screwing people over, possibly ruining teammates' careers. Not to mention he's taking barely 1 mill per year so he can surround himself with loads of talent in pursuit of a ring ...

I think I'm starting to become a Tate h8ter. But haters just want to be you, I guess.

Winning a chip usually shuts them up ...

[trekfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Jogo

Jack and "his posse" (as Phil Jackson would say) sure have their way in Indiana! He takes the league by storm out of nowhere, wins ROY, ... And now he's acting like a 20 year old player-GM, screwing people over, possibly ruining teammates' careers. Not to mention he's taking barely 1 mill per year so he can surround himself with loads of talent in pursuit of a ring ... I think I'm starting to become a Tate h8ter. But haters just want to be you, I guess. Winning a chip usually shuts them up ...

Yeah, he's definitely got the run of the Pacers -- that's what happens when your grandfather owns the team.

But, he's definitely all-in for a title and willing to get paid pennies for it. He's taking what Durant did for the Warriors (by taking a paycut to sign with the, essentially) to its logical extreme; if you want to have the best team, you need the best players, and you need to pay them like it.

Jack doesn't need the money -- he's rich -- but he'll gladly pull a Duncan/Dirk who, in their later years, took contracts that paid them like, 5-7M a year. Why not just do that your whole career? It's not like you'll be hurting for money with all the endorsement deals you'll get (and your shoe deals).

The title is the goal. Get the Pacers a title, restore them to the glory of their ABA days (where they were nearly annual participants in the ABA title game) and go down a legend. Ideally, I want the Pacers to be Spurs East (the Hawks had that title, but the losing they've done the last few years IRL strips them of it I think).

The Spurs are constantly in the playoffs, always have a shot, and have the talent/smarts to make players better. That's the model organization in the NBA -- we'll see if I can get there.

[trekfan]

Ch. 26

The trade for Harrison Barnes rocked the team. Guys were a bit blindsided by it, but McHale held us all together — he listed a few occasions where his Celtics squads from the 80s did similar deals early in the season, and went on to be a force in the playoffs, if not winning a title. It calmed things down, but it was still sad to see Mudiay, ROLO, Valentine, and Moore go.

What we got back, though, wasn’t a set of scrubs. Barnes arrived and immediately sought out GROB, who had already been informed by McHale that he had lost his starting spot. Glenn took it very well — he was a *ucking professional if there ever was one and a true team player. Barnes didn’t come in a diva, he came in knowing that he was being given a chance to be on a playoff team again, maybe even a title contender if things broke our way.

He spoke with Glenn, told him he was changing his number to 7 (the number he wore in USA Basketball), so GROB didn’t have to worry about that, and told the team that he was thankful he was back in the Midwest. Barnes came from Iowa, so he was close to his old stomping grounds and was a guy who appreciated the basketball culture in our parts.

HB was a cool guy, chill — he fit in well in terms of our mindsets. On the court, though, the rest of the month of November was a bit *ucked up. Topsy turvy *hit, you know? Some games we played together like we had been on the same team for years. Other games we played together like we had just met that day and didn’t even know each other’s names.

We went 5-5 for the rest of the month, losing three straight once HB arrived, then going 5-2 the rest of the way — we won the last two of the month, then rolled into December with two more wins over the struggling Celtics and Hornets (both teams four games under .500 and causing their fanbases to question existence itself).

We were, somehow, at the top of the conference with a 14-7 record. The East was putridly bad early on … it was like teams couldn’t keep win streaks going. Out West, things were pretty even, but in the East you basically had four solid to good teams, and then a bunch of garbage.

Our matchup on December 6th was against the 11-9 Magic — coached by former Pacers’ HC Frank Vogel. I loved Vogel, I thought he got a raw deal from Larry Bird, and I was glad to see him doing all-right in Orlando. The man had the respect of multiple players around the league. But on that night, we outplayed the Magic from beginning to end.

And it was our defense that set the tone. That isn’t something I expected when we traded for Barnes, but over the 12 games we had him, we were ranked fourth in the league defensively. Our offense wasn’t the only thing carrying us now, which was nice … we needed the balance.

HB’s fit in our offense was still being determined. Since he arrived, I had been trying to figure out the best way to feed him — did he like it in the post? High post? Beyond the arc? Rolling to the rim? Transition? I had to learn him and he had to learn me. Early in the Magic game, we weren’t on the same page for most of it, but we had a few plays.

More than anything, Barnes was a beast do-everything defender. He made life easier for us and that opened up passing lanes, which allowed us to get our favorite type of shot: the corner three.

We were up 32-14 at the end of the first. In the second, the Magic mounted a mini-comeback and tried to climb back into it. But Lance took over the game and kept them from getting too close — he was just punking the Magic left in right, grabbing boards, altering shots, and slamming home dunks over fools.

At the half, we were dominating the boards and the pace of play. But we knew we couldn’t let off the gas. HB was 5-14 at halftime, not a good look at all, but a lot of that was on me; I wasn’t leading him to spots he could work in. I was trying to find him out there, I was looking for him, but it wasn’t working. At the half, assistant coach CJ Wolfe pulled me aside from the main huddle and told me to ease up trying to feed Barnes.

“I want you to let him run the floor a bit, let him feel the ball … he’s used to being the top guy, he needs the ball in his hands some to really get locked in with you guys,” Wolfe told me.

As a point guard, letting someone else run the floor wasn’t exactly natural, but I did it for Victor, I did it for Lance, and I knew I could do it for HB. So, in the second-half I laid off some and let Barnes get a feel for the game.

Wolfe was right on the money. Barnes found life in the second half as a ball-handler and once he warmed up, the Magic got BURIED. We shoveled dirt on their grave in the third and fourth quarters, outscoring them 73-47 in the second half. Our deep bench guys got into the game with 5:22 left and did a good job preserving the lead and scoring some on their own.

It was a life-affirming victory in a way … we had our doubts that we really could figure it out, but that game helped quell them: we were on a five game win streak and it was much needed.

[georgiafan]

Looks like Barnes is starting to play well

[trekfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by georgiafan

Looks like Barnes is starting to play well

He's done better than I thought he would so far -- the team is coming together. We'll see how we do continuing through the season.