<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">They left their problems behind. Families, too. For more than a week, the Indiana Pacers flew together, stayed in hotels together, ate together, played together. They won three games, too, but said their longest trip of the season was successful for another reason. "This road trip has brought us together," Pacers forward Jermaine O'Neal said. "This allows you to step away from your everyday problems at home. You get on the road and really understand and focus on what the situation is." The Pacers are back home and open a three-game stand tonight against Dallas. Their chemistry, questioned again during a loss to Atlanta on Nov. 25, wasn't an issue on the West Coast swing. Fred Jones' mother cooked a team dinner for them in Portland. Stephen Jackson took teammates to an uncle's soul food restaurant in Seattle. Afterward, that group joined remaining teammates at a sports bar the players rented to watch the Jermain Taylor-Bernard Hopkins middleweight title fight Saturday night. "We try to hang a little bit when we have time," point guard Anthony Johnson said. "We definitely had a lot of bonding time on this trip." Forward Austin Croshere thought beforehand the trip would be beneficial. He said the five-game trip didn't feature a lot of "character-building games," but going 3-2 brought confidence. "Any time you can come home with a winning record on the road," he said, "it's big." The Pacers got a lift on the trip by getting center Jeff Foster, the team's most energetic player, back, only to lose point guard Jamaal Tinsley (groin) and Croshere (lower abdomen) with injuries. Tinsley, who has dealt with injuries the past couple of seasons, could be out several more games. Rookie Sarunas Jasikevicius started the past two games and ran the offense effectively. Jasikevicius averaged 15 points, 5.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists in his two starts. He flirted with a triple-double against Seattle, finishing with 16 points, nine assists and seven rebounds. The disturbing statistic was that Jasikevicius' seven rebounds nearly matched the combined eight rebounds from O'Neal, Jackson and Ron Artest. "I feel like there's been some growth and we've made some strides, but we still have a lot of strides to take to get better," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. "This is a tough process we're still going through. Expectations are high and we have high expectations for ourselves. We showed a lot of improvements in a lot of areas. Understanding the things that allow us to win is a big part of being a successful group. The defensive end of the court is certainly a big part of it."</div> Source
