Indiana Pacers

[Babe_Ruth]

Do you guys believe the Pacers will be even stronger than last year? And possibly beat the "Big, Bad, Heat?"

The Pacers have certainly beefed up their awful bench (especially awful offensively) by signing C.J. Watson (over D.J. Augustin) and Chris Copeland (over Tyler Hansbrough). They re-signed David West to a 3-year deal, which is a sufficient reward without committing too far in the future. Plus, Hibbert and West will be in the final year of their deals before Paul George even gets to max money, so there's some financial flexibility that remains.

Thoughts?

 

[Captain Moroni]

I don't feel that Copeland is an upgrade from Hansbrough.
Thing about the Pacers is that people seem to disregard the regular season and judge them solely on their series against NY and Miami. Is that really who they are and how good they are or did they just "Jerome Jordan" peak at the right time.

If Melo and JR were healthy during that series do the pacers even play Miami

 

[Joshua Howe]

Forget about Copeland. The Pacers made a trade for Luis Scola. Don't forget that. That is a HUGE deal. He's good enough to start for a lot of teams and he'll be great coming off the bench for them. Just another big presence; the main weakness for Miami.

Also, Danny Granger will return. Hopefully for them, he'll be healthy by the playoffs and back to a pretty good form.

IMO, they are a SERIOUS threat to Miami. They almost beat them in 7 games this past postseason. They were too big. Thus why Miami signed Greg Oden. The emergence of George is also a concern for Miami, because he'll occupy more of LeBron's time.

Part of the reason Indy lost to Miami last season was their inability to perform on a big stage in Game 7 against the best team in the NBA. They turned the ball over every 5 seconds, leading to getting crushed.

Also, as for the N.Y./Indy argument. You could also say; would the Knicks have lost even worse if Granger had been active? Look, Indy was too good for New York because their defense was stifling and the Knicks depend on offense rather than defense. Shut down their offense, shut down them.

As for Miami, they did a good job defending them for the most part. But the problem in that series lied in their own ability to be unable to score consistently. The Pacer's offense wasn't strong enough to contend with Miami's defense.

 

[StroShow]

The rebuild of their bench could make them contenders. The second unit could not score the basketball last season. It will be interested see if Coach Vogel elects to start Stephenson or Granger. Either way, a second unit of Watson, Stephenson, Copeland, Scola, and Mahinmi is a huge improvement over last year. Not to mention that OJ and Solomon Hill will continue to develop. The Pacers have done all of this while staying under the luxury tax line! Hopefully there will be more opportunities to see the Pacers on national television. With all of these moves, I would hope that the Pacers will get some more national tv time next year

 

[Joshua Howe]

The schedule is out, so you can see how many national games they'll get.

They are an upcoming team for sure.

Side note: I dislike Vogel. He's far too arrogant for my taste; especially towards The King and the rest of Miami.