The Pacers are back, same as they were last year, same as it felt a few years ago. And weren’t they really good a decade ago? Ten years before that? Ten years before that?
It’s true, the Pacers are always around, the Pacers never rebuild, never tank. They simply add Dahntay Jones to the mix and hope the East opens up.
Last year’s Eastern bracket splayed when various Bucks and Knicks fell to injury, this year’s Pacers run features the same caveat. Cleveland, inarguably the East’s best regular-season outfit, is injured at the worst time. The Pacers, however, took three of four regular-season games from the East’s best team. The visiting Pacers were well on the way toward working to the hilt in Game 1 when Evan Mobley started limping around, and then Indiana eased ahead of the hilt.
Did Mobley’s break cause the advantage? Doesn’t matter, the Pacers have it in writing. Up 2-0 with three to play in Indianapolis, the status of Cleveland’s two injured All-Stars uncertain.
What is in question is the query those inside and just outside Indianapolis are asked, year after year, season after season, spring forward or fall back.
What time zone is Indianapolis in? Actually, what time zone is Indiana in?
Feels like a Central, doesn’t it? “Indiana,” flyover, middle of nowhere, mid, middle, “central.” But it is Eastern.
Eastern? Eastern, like, Manhattan?
Indianapolis is Eastern Time. Most of Indiana is Eastern time, save for a stretch running along the northwest part of the state. An interstate highway bisects that line, the state decided in the early 2020s to post signs acknowledging the driver’s cross from Eastern to Central time, a good decade and a half after everyone’s satellite-connected cell phones began doing that job for them.
Of course, Indiana did not recognize Daylight Savings Time until 2006. Seriously.
This meant for some of the year the Pacers played in Central time, some of the year the Pacers played in Eastern time. Nobody outside Indiana knew what time it was inside Indiana and really nobody in or outside of Indiana were much bothered. Corn showed up on time, that’s all anyone cared about.
Good basketball in Indiana predated America’s adoption of Daylight Savings Time. DST, like bad basketball, initially seeded in Canada as a testing ground, later easing its way down toward the states when we realized our boys, just like the Canadian boys, needed something strenuous to do in winter months.
The rest of America glommed onto Daylight Savings in 1918 like a patriotic champ, trying to check off every last one of Woodrow Wilson’s points. Not Indiana. It declined Daylight Savings Time out of hand, Indiana didn’t want DST messing with sleep habits of its youngsters, its corn-fed youngsters.
Homer Stonebraker, among them youngsters.
Homer, “Stoney,” wrapped up his third All-American basketball season at Indiana’s Wabash College in 1918, working off an athletic scholarship he earned the moment Wabash College heard there was a local guy named “Homer Stonebraker” that was good at basketball.
He was really good at basketball, leading tiny Wingate to the state title in 1913 and again in 1914. Wingate had no gymnasium, instead playing outside when “weather permitted.” The Indiana winters rarely permitted, and Wingate “logged 576 miles during the 1912-13 season and 1,675 miles of travel during the 1913-14 season. They did most of their travel via trains and interurbans.”
Homer Stonebraker was the first one on that interurban, whatever the hell an interurban is. The 6’4 center dropped 74 in one contest and in his senior year averaged 25 points per game. The other teams averaged 17 points per game.
Wingate won state titles in 1913 and 1914 playing 80 percent of its contests on the road. The touring toughening suited the boys nicely for the 90-mile trip (goodness knows how long this takes on an interurban) down to Bloomington for the Indiana state tournament. Contemporary press reports appeared to draw the same conclusion:
The Bloomington Evening World praised Wingate’s victory as “a tribute to the country and the small town.”
“A corn-fed youngster who goes to bed with the chickens and gets up before day has an advantage over the ‘city-feller’ and his cigarette.”
You got that, Jarrett Allen? Hear this, Max Strus? Put those gaspers out!
It will take more than hale and hearty midwestern habits for the Cavaliers to pull a comeback in the Eastern Semifinals, a picture of competition thus far.
Game 1 of this series was unrelenting, Game 2 only relented because the referees asked everyone to, they wanted to see if anyone flagrantly fouled. A couple of guys started bleeding.
That two more prominent Cavaliers dropped out before Game 2 is a tremendous drag. Cleveland’s intelligent insistence upon sitting Darius Garland’s pained toe is as correct as Kyle Anderson was incorrect in imagining the Cavaliers as better without Garland. The ball movement improves, maybe the gestalt theory shines a little larger, but there should be no pause, any team with Darius Garland in the lineup is beastly.
The loss of DeAndre Hunter is survivable, unfair, the prized trade deadline acquisition felled by a questionable at-best shot from Bennedict Mathurin. Evan Mobley, perhaps the East’s most influential player, is not as easily replaced. Though if you had to, you’d choose Jarrett Allen as the candidate above any other center, Jarrett may have the parts.
The Cavaliers are as equipped as any NBA team to go into a familiar road building and take care of two games in three nights. Cleveland better be equipped, the Pacers are goin’ to bed with the chickens. Now that Steak n’ Shake isn’t as good anymore and all the fireworks stores closed, the home team doesn’t have any reason but to tuck in early. They’ll need to.
Mathurin was as effective a stir-the-drink scorer in Cleveland (11 in Game 1, 19 on Tuesday) as he was a defective defender, a common theme, he gives, but he gives back. The Cavaliers will not turn the ball over in Indiana, the Pacers might, no fault of those chickens. The same bench minutes that advanced Rick Carlisle’s cause in Game 1 nearly skunked Indiana’s effort inside Game 2, a contest decided only by mere inches. Those 13-to-14 inches per attempt by which Ty Jerome missed 13-14 of his shots.
The Pacers won 65 percent of their games after the New Year, and there are about as many gimmicks and novelties on this team as there are in a typical cornfield. The group defends and throws smart centers and sturdy, sizable small guards all over the court in a manner not unlike Cleveland, the team Indiana defeated five times in six tries this season. This series runs rife with surprises, good and gnarly, but the Pacers’ pristine play is not startling.
Now, the chickens, they’ll startle you. Run right up under your feet.
Kelly Dwyer writes about the NBA at KDonhoops.com.
