Crash and burn

Many factors behind Pacers' self-destruction

Total meltdown.

To Pacers fans, that’s the only way to describe their team’s postseason.

From blowing a big lead in Game 1 to Ron Artest’s tantrum after Game 6, it was one long hoops Chernobyl for fans in Hoosier land.

It wasn’t just that Indiana went down in six games to Boston, becoming the first higher-seeded team in this year’s playoffs to bite the dust. It was the way the Pacers lost.

They couldn’t shoot. They couldn’t stop Paul Pierce. They had no ball movement on offense. Coach Isiah Thomas couldn’t seem to find the right combinations.

Indiana didn’t look at all like the team that started out the season 37-15 and led the Eastern Conference at the All-Star break.

To cap it off, Thursday night’s Game 6 was a fiasco from start to finish.

14 Consecutive shots made by the Celtics in the first half to open a 23-point lead on the Pacers. "It's not even thinkable that we can lose this game. If we can win up there in a hostile environment, than we certainly can win here." -- Hornets head coach Paul Silas, about his team's Game 6 matchup with the Sixers in New Orleans. Will the Spurs' domination of the Lakers during the regular season carry over into the playoffs?

It began with the Celtics burying the Pacers under an avalanche of shots (14 straight at one point) to build a 40-17 lead. It ended with Antoine Walker doing his shimmy, Jermaine O’Neal getting ejected and Artest losing a tooth and then getting into a shoving match with former Pacers star Mel Daniels, now a team official, outside the locker room after the game.

To be sure, Boston had a lot to do with Indiana’s woes. Pierce was just too strong and too good to be slowed by Artest, normally one of the league’s best stoppers. Tony Delk, Walter McCarty and J.R. Bremer knocked down shot after shot. Tony Battie led an active Boston defense inside.

But the bottom line is the Pacers crashed like one of those Indy cars at the Brickyard.

Thomas will get most of the blame, but it’s not all his fault. Yes, he probably could have looked to get Reggie Miller -- who was awful -- more involved early in some games. He also probably should have settled on a regular rotation, rather than going with the "hot hand."

But is it Thomas’ fault that Al Harrington, playing in his first real postseason action, developed a bad case of jitters? Is it Zeke’s fault that Brad Miller was never quite the same after his foot injury? Could Thomas have done anything about all those missed Pacers shots, which seemed to demoralize Indiana as much as anything the Celtics threw at them?

Those are questions Pacers GM Donnie Walsh will have to answer. The good news for Indy fans is that Walsh is an experienced hand with a proven track record. If he saw something in Thomas’ work that was deficient, he’ll make a change.

Maybe more than a coaching change, it seems the Pacers need to find some guys who can make outside shots. Right now they have scorers, but not enough pure shooters. If they had been able to bury a few more outside shots against the Celtics, it might have opened things up more for O’Neal inside and been a different series.

As bad as it was, it would be an exaggeration to call the Pacers’ postseason a total meltdown. There’s no disgrace in losing 4-2 to the Celtics, a team that reached the Eastern Conference finals a year ago.

Let’s save the "total meltdown" tag for a team that might deserve it later, like the Pistons -- or perhaps the Mavericks.

But for Indiana hoops fans, it sure must feel like a wasted season.

	AP Stud: Kobe Bryant, G, Lakers Kobe scored 14 of his 31 points in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter to put the game out of the T'wolves' reach.		AP Dud: Brad Miller, C, Pacers Indiana's All-Star center was 0-for-4 in Game 6 and had just two points and two rebounds in 14 minutes.

By giving him a DNP-CD, Pistons coach Rick Carlisle turned his top sixth man into Scoreless Williamson in Game 5. But Detroit probably will need the 6-foot-7 veteran Friday in Game 6, especially if the offense bogs down again. The Lakers might have survived the T’wolves, but only time will tell what toll, if any, the series took on their aging core of veteran players. Turner analyst Jeff Van Gundy sure has been praising the referees a lot during these playoffs. Is he watching the same games we are? Or is he just buttering them up because he knows he’s about to get back on the sidelines?

Marty Burns covers pro basketball for SI.com. Click here to send Marty a question or comment.

 

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