<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Before this NBA summer is over, the Indiana Pacers could end up bringing back Al Harrington, bringing home Bonzi Wells or bringing in someone else. It is too early, really, to pass judgment on the job team president Larry Bird and CEO Donnie Walsh have done repairing this broken team. But if you're asking me right now, this moment, just days after the Pacers' curious draft and Peja Stojakovic's exodus, the Pacers have had a pitiful summer, and they are looking at a winter that leads them right into the Greg Oden lottery. This is a very bad basketball team, worse than Eastern Conference foes Detroit, Miami, New Jersey, Orlando, Cleveland, Chicago and Washington, and maybe even Boston (assuming it gets Allen Iverson). The draft offered them a gift named Marcus Williams, a computer-literate Connecticut point guard who would have been their backcourt leader the next five years or more. Instead, Bird selected forward Shawne Williams, who hopes to be Danny Granger when he grows up. The pundits said it was a reach. Bird said Williams -- Shawne, that is -- was the player he'd had his eye on all along. If it turns out the pundits were right, the Simons will have some decisions to make. Then came the beginning of the free agency period, and a series of events that left the Pacers with no good options but plenty of egg on their face. Stojakovic, the man Bird coveted for years and did back-flips over when he finally obtained him from Sacramento for Ron Artest, bolted for the crazy money being offered by the Hornets. So do the math: The Pacers traded Artest for a half-season's worth of Stojakovic. Ouch. Now, as somebody who suggested moving Artest was tantamount to addition by subtraction, as someone who would have dealt Ron-Ron for a bent rim, I am ineligible to trash the Pacers for having dealt for a half-season rental. It's hard to imagine that even with diminished leverage, the Pacers couldn't get someone who gave them more than a half-season's worth of work, but again, I've forfeited the right to scream about this one. I am eligible, however, to blast them (again) for the way they coddled and protected Artest all those years, and the fact they failed to deal him while he still had trade value after the 61-victory 2003-04 season. (C'mon, I haven't gone on this rant in months now. I think I'm due.) How is it everybody could see that Artest was going to force their hand, except, of course, for the people who really should have known better? The minute I saw Larry Legend standing behind his man on the cover of Sports Illustrated, I knew it was doomed. Artest played the Pacers like fools, and by the time he was quitting on them once again, he was leaving them with absolutely no choice but to move him. Does the deal to land Stojakovic leave them looking foolish? Absolutely. Were there a lot of good options out there? Not really. Wells was also looking at free agency. Corey Maggette was feared to be damaged goods. I will, however, give them credit for this: They were smart to wave Peja goodbye when the Hornets came calling with that ridiculous sum of money. If Stojakovic is worth $12.4 million a year, then I'm an underwear model. Anyway, haven't the Pacers already been too charitable with their own players in recent years (the most notable being Austin Croshere)? The dumbest thing the Pacers could have done was throw good money after bad, compound a mistake by trying to save face and overpay Stojakovic. He wasn't a bad player; in fact, he was essentially the player the Pacers figured they were getting. But he was one-dimensional, and for $12 million and change, I want somebody who can pass, rebound and defend, too. And when his knee started acting up during the playoffs -- ironically, just months before free agency started -- more than a few Pacers grumbled about their teammate's priorities. What matters now, then, is what they do with the savings. The Pacers say they want to follow the NBA crowd and play a more up-tempo, free-wheeling game, but they don't have the players to play that way. Not yet, anyway. By my current accounting, the Pacers have no speed in the backcourt, no real center, a couple of players who look and play like Granger (including Granger) and no 3-point shooting, unless Sarunas Jasikevicius buys a GPS system this summer. The addition of Harrington would make the Pacers a more competitive team, but by adding another plodding, back-to-the-basket scorer, it's hard to see how that might make the Pacers Phoenix East. Same with Wells, Jermaine O'Neal's pal and the guy J.O. wanted during the Artest sweepstakes rather than Stojakovic. Another back-to-the-basket, isolation kind of player, and we're not even mentioning all the baggage. Somewhere, I'm semi-reasonably sure, Bird and Walsh have a master plan drawn up, and a lot of this will make better sense as the NBA summer churns along and many more moves are made. In the meantime, though, today's Pacers are headed one place only. The lottery. </div> link: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...0396/-1/ZONES01
