No team wants to start the season on a bad note, especially the squads that had high hopes for this year and teams that many expected to be pretty good. There are always those teams that underachieve and fail to reach their season goals and show us their full potential. The Indiana Pacers is that team so far in this, still young, NBA season.
They made some changes over the course of past year. Larry Bird decided that it’s time for this squad to play an uptempo style of basketball, get up and down the court and score points. He knew that defense would suffer, but he expected that his offense would make up for it and make them even better.
Well, he was right, the defense is worse now in Indy. But, the offense is failing to cover their new deficiencies. They traded George Hill for Jeff Teague as a part of that plan to play faster and score more. Hill has had a career year in Utah so far, while Teague didn’t meet the expectations up to this point.
Monta Ellis can’t defend to save his life, and he looks like he lost a step this season on the offensive side of the ball. And on top of that, their best player is not as aggressive as he should be. The biggest problem is that he is not setting the example for the rest of the crew.
When you add up all this, you get a squad that should be one of the leading teams in the East. Instead of that, they are barely at .500 record as of right now. Hopefully, for them, pieces of their puzzle will all get together, and they will start working like a well-oiled machine.
