For a while there, it was ugly.
Where to start, or more appropriately, when? A brawl that sent a season with championship aspirations swirling into oblivion? A constant barrage of criminal shenanigans from players like Jamaal Tinsley, Shawne Williams, Stephen Jackson and Marquis Daniels? Jim O'Brien's "stretch 4" era, in which the paint may as well have been a mixture of sharks and molten lava given how Pacers bigs approached it?
Or maybe, more recently, just the way Indiana approached the offensive side of the game, clanking clock-strained jumpers with all the urgency of a Galapagos tortoise?
To really appreciate where the Pacers are, and how far they have come, you have to start with the past. You have to know what it was like to dread the morning news, to be on the business end of every SportsCenter highlight reel.
It's a story most Pacers fans don't want to tell—or rather, relive. Too much time toiled away in basketball prison, literal and figurative. Too much history re-written by the victors, because for a good stretch there, nobody quite embodied the endless cycle of losing—off the court, and on& ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by Collin McCollough
How the Pacers Climbed Back from Basketball Hell and Became Contenders
June 4th, 2013 by Collin McCollough Leave a reply »
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