The Brawl As An Excuse?

FortWayneFlash · Post #1 » by **FortWayneFlash** » Sat Jan 2, 2010 2:06 am

I often read that The Brawl was the start of the Pacers demise. I don't quite get that.

Denver had a similar situation a few years ago in New York (Melo & JR Smith) but subsequently went to trhe WCF and are currently leading thier division.

Why is the Pacers plight and the Nuggets current position so vastly different?

Nutty Nats Fan · Post #2 » by **Nutty Nats Fan** » Sat Jan 2, 2010 2:30 am

There really wasn't a brawl in NY. They're definitely was in Detroit.

pickaxe · Post #3 » by **pickaxe** » Sat Jan 2, 2010 2:39 am

One involved players on fans, the other involved players vs. players. One was fists flying in an all out fight, the other was more fronting and actually a player response to a dangerous hard foul.

J Smitty · Post #4 » by **J Smitty** » Sat Jan 2, 2010 6:46 pm

Well there was a similar reaction by both franchises, in that they ended up making trades soon after and more or less as a result of those incidents. The biggest difference is that the Pacers brawl was much more severe, and they ended up completely dismantling that team in an effort to 'change the culture' there. In the process, they've attempted to go from a ghetto team to an all-white school choir team, which hasn't exactly helped basketball wise.

And honestly, if we weren't able to then flip Iverson for Billups, there is a good chance we would be a lottery team right now too.

pickaxe · Post #5 » by **pickaxe** » Sat Jan 2, 2010 8:20 pm

I don't think flipping Iverson for Billups turns us into a lottery team. Iverson still plays hard so you're going to get tons of effort somehow and we'd still hover around 45 wins as in past seasons. Look at Chris Paul and the Hornets.....they were breaking out and now not so much. Our other 4 guys + bench has been adequate to bring us to playoff contention (along with superstar melo).

Billups is the guy that gets us to elite status.....that takes us farther than just the first round or second round.

We just don't have a lot of side stories while Billups is down. If we did we'd be talking about so and so is playing and not how our team sucks.

J Smitty · Post #6 » by **J Smitty** » Sat Jan 2, 2010 9:25 pm

My main thought there was that we wouldn't have re-signed AI. But that's hard to really say for sure. He was still playing well and you're right that we still would have made the playoffs last year with him. But another first round exit would have been in the future for sure.

And at that point I think the chances of us just blowing it up would have been pretty high, which would have included not re-signing Iverson. Who knows how well Birdman would have played and/or if re-signing him would have happened, given his age. Hard to say what else would have changed, or if we still would've ended up with Lawson.

Still, our team looking something like this...

PG: ?
SG: JR/Weems
SF: Melo/Balkman
PF: Martin/?
C: Nene/Hunter

...might not have been that far off had we not made the move for Billups. We could have had a payroll in the range of 55-60 million, but it's hard to say whether more changes would have come, or if we'd even be able to make the playoffs with that kind of roster(and judging by our play as of late, probably not).

granger05 · Post #7 » by **granger05** » Mon Jan 11, 2010 9:30 pm

I'm a Pacer fan and I definitely point to the brawl as the start of the Pacer decline. I don't recall any suspension details of the Nugs/Knicks fight, but I looked it up and Carmelo got 12 games and there were 47 total games of suspensions doled out.

In the Detroit brawl, the Pacers received 137 games of suspensions (versus 9 for Detroit players). Artest counted 86 of those (73 regular season plus 13 playoff games). Stephen Jackson got 30 games, Jermaine O'Neal got 15 games, even Reggie Miller got a one games suspension just for good measure I guess.

I recall that this seemed to lead to an injury cycle for the whole season. Guys that weren't used to big minutes were suddenly asked to play them since so many players were out. Then by the time the starters came back, the bench was starting to break down physically and so the starters were playing more minutes and then they started dropping like flies too. It seemed like both Jamaal Tinsley, and Jermaine O'Neal were never the same.

The next year Artest demanded a trade (because he's kind of crazy) and the Pacers decided to oblige, eventually trading him for Peja Stojakovic. Then came the various other shenanigans (nightclub altercations and shootings) with Stephen Jackson, and Jamaal Tinsley. That turned off fans and they started staying away in droves which led to a few trades to clean up the team's image and saddled us with bad contracts and a mediocre (at best) team.

The Brawl isn't fully responsible for any of this, but it was certainly an event that seemed to kick everything else off. I don't really see any parallels at all with the Nuggets situation.

JR_SMITH_23 · Post #8 » by **JR_SMITH_23** » Mon Jan 11, 2010 10:13 pm

meloivynene wrote:I don't think flipping Iverson for Billups turns us into a lottery team. Iverson still plays hard so you're going to get tons of effort somehow and we'd still hover around 45 wins as in past seasons. Look at Chris Paul and the Hornets.....they were breaking out and now not so much. Our other 4 guys + bench has been adequate to bring us to playoff contention (along with superstar melo).

Billups is the guy that gets us to elite status.....that takes us farther than just the first round or second round.

We just don't have a lot of side stories while Billups is down. If we did we'd be talking about so and so is playing and not how our team sucks.

We're (Hornets) on a 6 game winning streak baby! Fall baaaaaaaack!