Jim
O’Brien is out as coach of the Indiana Pacers, and that’s probably about
right.
At 17-27, the team had been sliding terribly. Obie’s crew
had lost more coin-flip games than was to be expected, but the group’s strength
of schedule was in the middle of the pack, and the offense wasn’t getting any
better. Not the best news for a coach that had been brought in to amp up the
Indiana offense, and try to teach some defense along the way.
O’Brien’s Pacers had developed a defensive edge over the
last season and a half, ranking eighth among 30 teams in defensive efficiency,
a point often lost because the team ran so much offensively, which skewed the
way its defensive aptitude was regarded. Indiana’s offense this season, despite
a rotation seemingly made up entirely of shoot-first types, had stunk on
Indianapolis ice. The Pacers ranked 24th of 30 teams, and not all that great even when
semi-franchise guy Danny Granger wasn’t slumping and Roy Hibbert wasn’t
thinking twice about every half-hearted hook he tossed up.
Pointing out those go-to men helps O’Brien’s case moving
forward, as he searches for perhaps one more head-coaching gig (the longtime
assistant took over for Rick Pitino when the former Kentucky coach flamed out
in Boston 10 years ago, and had presided over a rough turn leading the
Philadelphia 76ers a few years later). Bird has not been good as a personnel
man. He’s made some sound moves in the draft, but by and large his trades haven’t
worked out, and Indiana has been stuck in a nebulous not-rebuilding/not-winning
strata for years.
And while handing Danny Granger (at best, your second-best player on a pretty good team)
over to a coach as the go-to guy seems like an invitation to fail, understand
that even the most well-meaning of Pacers fans had lost faith in Obie as a guy
to trust on the sideline.
His rotations seemed curious at best. The Pacers
continuously let games slip away late in the proceedings, and while you have to
cast a dubious eye on the players first, second and 14th for letting a close
game get out of hand, you’d also like to think the coach could take over for at
least a few of those close contests and make a difference. Granger, Tyler
Hansbrough, Josh McRoberts and Brandon Rush have seemingly rose to the ranks of
good-to-passable under O’Brien’s tutelage, but you also get the feeling that
this group would have ended up there regardless of a coach’s influence. And Hibbert’s confidence issues under Obie cannot be dismissed.
Indiana’s struggles may not have been O’Brien’s fault, but
it’s clear that at the midpoint of the 2010-11 season, he certainly wasn’t
helping either.
The Pacers will move forward with Frank Vogel at the helm,
and by all accounts he’s a tape-watching son of a gun. A real ‘X’s and ‘O’s
guy, though at first glance it doesn’t appear as if the Pacers need any help in
the "here’s-what-the-Bucks-like-to-run-in-this-situation" category, as this
crew needs guidance and a steadying hand more than anything.
Adrian Wojnarowski points
to the idea that the Pacers could be leaning towards trying to pick up
former Cavalier coach Mike Brown as the team’s new head man, which sounds about
as typical and obvious and boring and as uninspired as many of Bird’s moves in
his 7 1/2-year run as personnel boss.
Brown is another game-tape guru, but he also wasn’t great
shakes as Cleveland’s head man. It probably wasn’t much of a picnic in
Cleveland as LeBron James ignored every bit of guidance tossed his way, but
dealing with superstars properly is what sets top NBA coaches apart, and even
though the Pacers don’t have a star to call their own (which, again, isn’t a
good thing), it doesn’t seem wise to tie your fortunes to a man who just reeks
of a top-level assistant, and little else. Brown doesn’t really have the same
whiff that Rick Carlisle or Tom Thibodeau ran with before they took over their
first head-coaching gigs.
Worse? Though the Pacers will have cap space this offseason,
nobody knows what this offseason will look like after the NBA’s labor issues
sort themselves out, and the (available to sign, at least) free-agent crop isn’t
much to get excited about. Nor should Pacer fans hold out much hope for Bird in
that regard, even as he takes to his first chunk of cap space without Donnie
Walsh’s guidance (sign Al Harrington!) helping run things.
In all, these can’t be good times for Pacer fans, as they
spiral toward the lottery. And even a clean slate on the sideline and impending
cap space this summer can’t make up for what has been a wasted half-decade in
the franchise’s five-year playoff drought.
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