The Pacers have had highs and lows this season. For a team that lost its young star to injury before the season began, and proceeded to watch three other projected starters be sidelined in the first five weeks, to have any highs to look back on at all this early is a pleasant surprise.
But Indiana has had more than just a few highs. There have been victories over the Heat, Bulls and Mavericks already, all on the road. The Pacers have seen young players like Solomon Hill and Donald Sloan blossoming before their eyes. And players that saw little playing time last season are providing key contributions, with Lavoy Allen being the chief example.
As high as the highs have been in the young 2014-15 campaign, the lows have been the type that can really sting despite all the injuries; especially in the valley Indiana tumbled into on the just-completed 0-4 road trip.
The same team that led the defending champion Spurs by five at halftime in San Antonio on Nov. 26, and led the Suns by as many as nine late in the second quarter in Phoenix last Tuesday before losing both contests, nearly upset the Trail Blazers in Portland on Thursday and lost an overtime heartbreaker at Sacramento on Friday.
The combined win-loss record of those teams? 52-28.
With as many close games as the Pacers have lost this season, a team that is 7-13 could easily (counting the games in which Indiana was within three points inside the final minute) be 12-8.
It’s like a book where you choose your ending; had you jumped to the alternate conclusion – in this case, where the Pacers were able to win those winnable games – they would now have a resume that included wins over Chicago, Dallas, Portland, and Washington.
To know you’ve been that close, and could be where the Bulls sit – at fifth in the Eastern Conference – has to be agonizing, right? It has to be tough to move on from these kinds of losses for a team that’s been grinding and overcoming huge deficits only to come up short, no?
Therein lies Frank Vogel’s genius. We marvel at how the young “maestro,” as radio play-by-play broadcaster Mark Boyle refers to him, is able to coax such gutsy performances out of his remaining players while much of the starting five is found in suits on the bench.
“You’ve gotta put it behind you right away,” Vogel said after practice on Sunday as the Pacers look ahead to a home matchup with the Hawks on Monday night. “We talk about moving on to the next play all the time, throughout the course of a game, and the same applies when you lose a game like that.”
What does Vogel say to his team in the immediate aftermath of a loss like Friday’s, when his squad overcame a first-half deficit of 15 points and a second-half deficit of 17 points, only to fall on a Kings put-back with 0.8 seconds remaining in overtime?
“Just staying together,” said C.J. Watson of what Vogel told the group in the postgame locker room. “Staying focused, don’t be poking at other guys or blaming each other. Just try to do your part and do your role, and just try to do the best you can.”
The Pacers can certainly make excuses – they are, after all, just welcoming back veteran power forward David West and backup point guard Watson, while still missing George Hill.
But don’t look for this team to pin a tough loss on any of those factors.
“There were some losses we should have won,” Rodney Stuckey said. “We just fell short. We can’t pin it on guys coming back and guys being out and stuff like that. There are some games we let slip away. There are 82 games. So we’ve just gotta look forward to the next one.”
With the cards the Pacers have been dealt so far this season, their scrappiness, their fight, and their resolve to overcome adversity night in and night out is laudable.
Since the notion of consistency and expectation of a somewhat normal start to the season broke along with Paul George’s lower right leg in August, the Pacers have been shrouded in uncertainty about how competitive they can be in 2014-15.
But one thing has become clear: you can’t keep these guys down.