By MIKE BEAS
Which sounds better, the Seattle Pacers or the Vancouver Pacers? Widening our playing field a bit, there’s always the Las Vegas Pacers, San Diego Pacers and St. Louis Pacers. Don’t forget Brooklyn. And there’s always the Louisville Pacers.
Every time an NBA franchise finds itself immersed in some sort of financial/contractual hot water, no shortage of potential suitors emerges. Some are rumored, others real.
The hope is that the Pacers, who for generations have entertained us with everything from Slick Leonard’s eye-assaulting sport coats to George McGinnis’ one-handed jump shots to Reggie Miller’s bottomless bag of last-minute daggers, stick around. Right now it’s becoming progressively shaky as the franchise has been unable to negotiate a suitable arena deal.
Think about that for a moment. Allow it to digest. The Pacers somewhere else.
I’ve been trying to think why this state’s basketball fans aren’t in full-panic mode, and then it hit me. The Pacers as a basketball product have been marginal at best the past few seasons. In other words, far fewer people would lose sleep over such a departure than, say, any time during the 1990s when Miller & Company were making life a living hell for opponents inside a deafening Market Square Arena.
Don’t think this can happen? Don’t think the Pacers can pull a Baltimore Colts and load the Mayflower for a long journey west? What were the Seattle SuperSonics are now the Oklahoma City Thunder with the major snag for the Sonics being their lease agreement.
The irony in this is that the Indiana Pacers could one day emerge from their blue-and-gold cocoon as the very green-and-gold Seattle SuperSonics, though Vancouver seems the likelier locale should this ABA original pull up its stakes and bolt. Either way, the gaping void of not having the Pacers would sting badly come next fall.
Owners Mel and Herb Simon have been wonderful to and for the city of Indianapolis. That said, business is business and right now business is bad. The bottom-line numbers have all but Googled and printed out a direction sheet to Vancouver for the Simons to use.
Great as loyalty is, it can only be stretched so far before it snaps back and leaves a mark.
‘TIS TO BE JOLLY
A show of hands. How many of you driveway basketball aficionados did the unthinkable during the 1980s by — gulp! practicing your left-handed fade aways, finger-rolls and 12-foot bankers?
Wayman Tisdale, the former Indiana Pacer forward who succumbed to cancer last week at the age of 44, might have done more for hoops ambidexterity than any player in history. While starring at the University of Oklahoma, Tisdale made left-handedness hip, giving notable southpaw successors such as Derrick Coleman, David Robinson and Tayshaun Prince that much more swagger.
But where Tisdale truly served as a pioneer was with his passion for basketball and, for that matter, life. Tisdale was the incredibly rare human being capable of squeezing every drop out of every second spent God gave him. In today’s era of spoiled, high-priced, entouraged professional athletes, the world needs a surplus of Wayman Tisdales now more than ever.
There was only one. And now he’s gone.
• Mike Beas is a freelance writer/columnist who resides in Carmel. He may be reached at mbeas@att.net.
