All sorts of rumors swirled around the Indiana Pacers as they went from the team with the best record in the NBA to a team that stumbled into the playoffs and never really was a threat to the Miami Heat in the East. There were a lot of rumors about personal and clubhouse turmoil among Pacers players (the most extreme ones likely false).
Paul George said it was something far more simple — the Pacers got comfortable and lost their edge.
George, a Southern California native, was back in town for his youth camp and spoke with the Los Angeles Daily News. First the article had to focus on the ridiculous premise in some Lakers’ fans’ heads that George was going to turn down a max extension to his rookie contract to come to the Lakers (he didn’t), but eventually the article gets to the more interesting topic of the Pacers’ last season.“Before we were hungry,” he said. “We started the year off hungry, the bad taste from the year before was in our mouths and everyone was on a mission. Once we started to win, the game was coming too easy. We were running away from our opponents and we just kind of forgot that edge….
“It was a point where we came into games thinking we could just turn it on, regardless if we started bad or not. And I think that kind of put us in a funk to where teams were starting to really play us and get ready for us,” he said.
“We weren’t the team chasing opponents. We were being chased and we couldn’t find that balance between getting that edge back we started the season with.”
Of course, George thinks the Pacers can regain their form and be a threat next season in the East.
That’s going to be more difficult to do without Lance Stephenson and his shot creation, but the Pacers are still in the mix with the Hawks, Heat, Wizards, Raptors, and maybe Hornets and Knicks in the middle of the Eastern Conference (all likely chasing the Bulls and Cavaliers). If the Pacers can get their defense back to form they can win a lot of games.
But they’ve got to get their heads screwed back on first, get past the locker room squabbles and issues with playing with a target on their backs.
