Written by Bart Doan at Bloguin
They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. It was built, however.
It’s important to remember that sports isn’t dating, so first impressions don’t mean everything … and often, they mean jack squat. The Indiana Pacers hope so, anyway.
Indiana starts off 0-1 after a woebegone loss to the Toronto Raptors, entering a season as maybe the league’s hardest to predict team. After all, this was a group gutted by defection, chemistry issues, and then injury last season when Paul George … who was a top 10 player in the league when he went down … played only six games.
Still, the Pacers game within the final week of a playoff berth in what was honestly one of the more inspiring team stories over the course of the season, sort of like in “Free Willy” where the whale finally makes it out to sea, only the final scene is one where he gets harpooned by fishermen.
Early on, the new look Pacers looked good. The team clearly made the transformation from slow, plodding, half-court outfit to one with a smaller lineup, willing and able to run and needing to do so. Roy Hibbert and David West, who treated hustling back on defense the way someone working a double shift for no extra pay would on a nightly basis, were gone.
The defense seemed alive. George was hooking to the hoop hard like a man fully mentally over the fact that he had a leg injury, and the team was getting open shots they simply weren’t last season. Everything seemed like a scene from “Hostel” when it came to offense for the Pacers.
To continue reading this article, click here.
