Hoops Habit
Fansided

Putting the Indiana Pacers’ unbelievable season into perspective

By Jonathan Macri

Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr./Getty Images
Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr./Getty Images /
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No one thought they’d be here, but here they are, knocking on the door of the best teams in the NBA. It’s time to pay the Indiana Pacers their due.

It’s 8 p.m. on Oct. 17, 2017. You, an Indiana Pacers fan, are sitting in your living room. The television is tuned into Boston Celtics-Cleveland Cavaliers for the start of the NBA’s regular season.

You’re pumped…but subdued. You know this season will feature some great basketball. It just won’t be played by your team. Baby steps, you tell yourself. In a few years, we’ll be back.

All of the sudden, the rear of your house starts to vibrate. You get up, look out the kitchen window, and with a flash of light, a flying DeLorean blazes a trail of fire in the sky down to your backyard.

Out pops Doc Brown, somehow looking exactly the same as he did 30 years ago. He’s clearly frazzled. “What’s wrong?” you ask.

“I don’t…believe…what I’ve just seen…” His eyes stare through yours as if you weren’t even there.

“What is it? Are we in trouble? Should I go stock up on toilet paper? Two ply?” Nothing. “Speak, damn you, speak!”

He snaps out of it. “It’s the standings…they don’t make any sense.” With that, he hands you a newspaper from March 12, 2018, opened to the sports pages, and passes out. You’re relieved to know they still have newspapers in the future, and glance down. What you see, indeed, doesn’t make a lick of sense.

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The Pacers, who you fully expect to engage in the franchise’s first ever tank job, are… in first place in the division? Ahead of the Cavs? And third overall in the East, with the sixth-best record in the league?

This can’t be right. There must be some explanation. Luckily, in the future, all newspapers have every imaginable sports stat you could possibly want to see, so you first check on how many games LeBron James has missed. To your surprise, you see that for the first time in his career, he’s played in every single regular season game.

Next you turn to the transaction log. Surely Indiana traded four future first round picks to acquire Anthony Davis or Damian Lillard? Nope. Their biggest acquisition of the year was signing….Trevor Booker. You’d have thought the future would have weeded out such players, but there he is, taking up space on the bench.

Unreal, except it isn’t

It doesn’t make any sense. None of it. How could a team that Vegas projected to win a grand total of 30 games be less than a month away from hosting a first round playoff series?

Welcome to Crazy Town, where the oddest thing about the Pacers’ sudden and unexpected rise to prominence is that nothing about it seems all that odd.

Did anyone project that Victor Oladipo was going to be a fringe MVP candidate and be very much in the discussion for a spot on an All-NBA team? Of course not. But is his overall game this year something that’s always been a semi-reasonable projection given his talent, work ethic and pedigree? Kind of, yeah.

Outside of Oladipo, is anyone on this team blowing away expectations? Domantas Sabonis has been a revelation, but he was also a lottery pick that everyone knew had a special offensive repertoire lurking within. He just threw us all off his scent last year playing the role of one of Russell Westbrook’s bag men.

Myles Turner has taken a small step forward, but if anything he’s been a slight disappointment relative to the expectations of some optimists. Lance Stephenson has been…sane. Thaddeus Young has been what Thad Young always is: solid yet unspectacular. Ditto for Bojan Bogdanovic, Darren Collison and Cory Joseph.

There’s no secret formula. It’s not smoke and mirrors. They’re just good.

Can it last?

“Solid but unspectacular” would be a perfect motto for this team, come to think of it. Ditto for the head coach, who has done a fine job. Most figured Nate McMillan might not last the season. Now he’s in the running for Coach of the Year.

How is that? Simple: His guys play energetic, mistake-free basketball night after night after night. They know their roles and execute. It’s not complicated.

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You wouldn’t think that practicing basic basketball competence on a regular basis would get you very far, but in a league where a third of the teams can’t get out of their own way, where major injuries occur to superstar players more than they should and where nominal contenders like the Cavs and Thunder have to adjust to wholesale roster adjustments, “solid but unspectacular” can actually take you quite a long way.

This fairy tale is still far from happily ever after (a playoff series win would certainly qualify). The Pacers have nine road games left and just six at home. Of their 15 remaining tilts, only one comes against a team currently not trying to win games — the Sacramento Kings — although they end the season with a home-and-home against the Charlotte Hornets, who could be trying to move up a smidgen in the draft order by then.

In two weeks, we’ll know a lot more about how high Indiana will finish. Seven of its next eight games come against teams currently in the playoffs, and the eighth is against the Los Angeles Lakers, who have won seven of their last nine games.

There’s still time left for them to hit a bumpy patch, fall a few spots in the standings, and be first round playoff fodder for a team with far loftier expectations. For now, though, fans in the Hoosier State should puff their chest out and hold their nose up to the rest of the NBA, if only just a little.

Next: 2018 NBA Draft - Early March Mock Draft

No one thought you’d be here, but here you are. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

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