If the sleep walking Pacers don’t wake up,

what started as a possible dream season will end in disappointment.

 

 

The Indiana Pacers find themselves down two games to one to the eighth seeded Atlanta Hawks who finished the season six games under .500.  After going to game seven against the eventual champion Miami Heat last year, it was championship or bust the Pacers coming into this season.  The Pacers lived up to that billing early in the year, but something is clearly wrong with this team.

 

The actual problem is tough to pin down with this team.  Roy Hibbert has disappeared, Lance Stephenson, it seems, can’t get along with anyone and it turns out now Frank Vogel is coaching for his job.  Are these problems really going to lead them to be eliminated by an Atlanta team that couldn’t even win 40 games though?

 

Roy Hibbert is a total mystery.  He is not a rookie who got off to a hot start and has faded and just can’t find his game.  Hibbert is a guy who has been in the league for years and should not be slumping this much pure and simple.  However, Hibbert is not a good matchup for Pero Antic in this series anyway, so benching him is a simple solution to this problem.

 

Players not getting along is never a positive.  That being said, whatever rift is going on between Lance Stephenson and his teammates is not the first time guys have not gotten along and won’t be the last.  In 2012, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo were not getting along on the Celtics, and that team took the eventual champion Heat to game seven of the conference finals.  Granted Allen and Rondo were much more veteran players than guys on the Pacers, but that shouldn’t cost them against Atlanta.

 

Now, onto the players quitting on Frank Vogel.  Anytime a coach loses the locker room things can spiral out of control in any sport.  If this was in February, this could be a problem that would be solved by firing Vogel, but that just can’t be done in the playoffs, the season is too far along.  While Vogel is going to go down with this ship, the fact is that this team is now in the playoffs.  They don’t have to play for Vogel, they are playing for themselves.  If the players are sabotaging their championship hopes to get Frank Vogel fired, that is one of the most extreme versions of cutting off their noses to spite thy faces.

 

The Pacers are not done yet.  It doesn’t look good for them, and they need to come together immediately.  Childish behavior like this should not be happening at the professional level for a team that for most of the season was a championship contender.

 

Indiana can put everything to rest very easily.  They are more talented than Atlanta and can still easily win this series.  If they can start winning games then their confidence will come back, and when their confidence is back, they can play like the team that started out the season with such promise.