As we feared at the start of their best-of-seven series in the Eastern Conference finals against two-time defending champion Miami, the Indiana Pacers are showing their lack of mental toughness reminiscent of their floundering selves in the last two months of the regular season and the first two rounds of the playoffs.
The Pacers, whose 99-87 defeat in Game 3 on Saturday, May 24 (Sunday PH time) put them behind 2-1 in their series against the team they prepared for all year long, showed the mental fragility characteristic only of teams overmatched in talent. But they’re by no means overmatched in that respect. As we said in our preview of their series, the Pacers are conceivably better this year while the Heat, with all due respect to LeBron James, are not as good as they were owing to the departure of gunner Mike Miller and another year of wear and tear in the legs of such veterans as Shane Battier, Udonis Haslem, Rashard Lewis and Ray Allen. But maybe we were missing out on the mental side, as this Pacers team has alarmingly warned observers in losing the homecourt advantage to Atlanta (twice) and Washington this postseason.
Yesterday morning, it seemed like it was the likes of Allen who were on the fresh side as the Hall of Fame-bound sharpshooter provided the firepower at crucial junctures, hitting a three-pointer when Indiana made its last run from 10 points down to come to within two, 76-74. That made it 79-74, and Allen added three more three-pointers to help break the game wide open.
It was a scenario that was hard to imagine in the opening half as the Pacers took it to the Heat with their big men Roy Hibbert, Luis Scola and David West imposing themselves inside. With those three and reserve Rasual Butler on the firing end, Indiana erected a 37-22 lead midway through the second quarter, and the Pacers looked like they would have a vise-like control over the ballgame like they did in the opener where they led wire-to-wire. That is, until their notorious dark side reared its ugly head again.
Long suspected of an inability to handle success well, the Pacers started to turn the ball over and make uncharacteristically foolish mistakes only a totally inexperienced team is capable of making. Instead of keeping their foot on the gas, the likes of David West, Paul George, Lance Stephenson and George Hill botched passes, dribbles, shots and other basic plays to allow the Heat to get back into the game.
The Pacers had five consecutive turnovers over that span, showing ironically how unnerved they were after taking that 15-point cushion – just as they did after taking a 63-56 lead in Game 2 late in the third quarter – as if protecting a lead against Miami was such an unsettling job. It looked as if for every forced or unforced turnover that was either caused by the Heat defense or simply self-inflicted, the pressure increasingly built up more as the Heat took advantage of those turnovers and scored in succession.
The score was 42-38 at halftime, which meant the Pacers were outscored 16-5 in the last five minutes of the half, and it looked and felt like it was just a matter of time before Miami took control of the game and secured the victory. That’s exactly what happened in the second half.
“When they made a run,” Stephenson said, “we never responded.”
That couldn’t be more true, but the Pacers have been 5-0 in the playoffs this year after losing, which means they’ve shown an ability to recover and fight back. They better do it the next game and prove, not to anybody else but most of all to their own selves, that they can match the Heat shot for shot, defense for defense, and stare for stare if need be. In other words, they have to show the kind of mental toughness that their own boss, Larry Bird, exhibited during a legendary career with the Boston Celtics. Otherwise, this series may be over quicker than most of us anticipated.
Lottery rigging?
The results of last week’s draft lottery came as a big surprise to most hoops junkies. This is because the Cleveland Cavaliers, who just won last year’s lottery and had a mere 1.7 percent chance of winning it this year, again hit the jackpot by landing the No. 1 pick in the most loaded draft class in years. Only the Orlando Magic, with a 1.52 percent chance of winning it in 1993, had a smaller probability of landing the top pick than the Cavs and the Chicago Bulls, who also had a 1.7 percent chance in 2008 but won the lottery anyway and quickly used it on Derrick Rose.
What makes the Cavaliers’ lucky fortune even more remarkable is the fact that this is the third time in four years that they have ended up with the top overall pick, also winning the lottery in 2011 through a pick traded by the LA Clippers, which they turned into Kyrie Irving.
(RELATED: NBA Mock Draft v1.0 – Cashing in on the lottery)
Cleveland GM David Griffin, who represented the Cavs in the lottery, called the lottery fortune a “defining moment.
“It was incredible,” Griffin said. “When Cleveland didn’t pop up at nine, I knew obviously we had moved up and I had to gather myself for a second. Just a remarkable feeling.”
For not a few people, however, the lottery smacks of a rigged process. They can’t just dismiss it as pure luck and point to the 1985 lottery, the year the process was first implemented in the league’s effort to prevent teams from tanking – or deliberately losing – games for the chance at posting a worse record and thus getting at least one of the top two picks under the old system. This system, where the worst teams in each conference engaged in a coin flip to determine who would get the No. 1 overall pick, was phased out when league leaders thought it no longer served its purpose.
But the first draft lottery in 1985 quickly spawned conspiracy theories when Patrick Ewing, then the undisputed top college player and a potential franchise star, went to the New York Knicks. Many then suggested the NBA fixed the lottery to enable the Knicks, who owned the biggest TV market, the chance to immediately become a league powerhouse. So much analysis, in fact, has been made of the video of then-commissioner David Stern pulling the Knicks’ envelope, which was reportedly frozen to distinguish it from the other envelopes, or had a crease in one corner to let Stern know it was the Knicks’.
Nearly 30 years later, the conspiracy theory is again alive because of the Cavaliers’ unprecedented luck.
“Cleveland had a two percent chance of landing the first pick and they got it. Tell me how’s that not a conspiracy?” colleague George Gonzalez, a Boston Celtics diehard and La Salle alumnus, says.
“This whole process smells and crawls like a rat and this has been so since ’85,” another fellow hoops junkie, Anton Ibe, an international real estate broker, concurs. “Too many bones are being thrown Cleveland’s way to keep that franchise alive. I don’t believe in coincidence… and in the Cavs’ case, it’s too much. Kyrie Irving (in 2011). Include LeBron (James in 2003), and you have four No. 1s. Too much coincidence. Three (No. 1 overall picks) in the last four years after LeBron left (in 2010). There’s no way you can convince me that this whole process isn’t rigged.”
Anton believes it’s part of a league plan to bring James back to his home state when he becomes a free agent in 2016, saying – when I riposted that if the process is rigged, it would make more sense to do it for the marquee teams – that it’s a matter of keeping a weak franchise afloat. He compared it to marketing (which he knows something about) where more senior, experienced and skilled guys are expected to bring in the numbers to merit just the normal kind of support from the management. The weaker ones, meanwhile, would get much more of that to enable them to raise their level and score, thus benefitting the rest of the organization from the overall marketing standpoint.
Anton also cited the case of the Chicago Bulls after Michael Jordan retired in 1998. “After Jordan retired, the Bulls had four top three picks, two No. 1s (Elton Brand immediately after Jordan retired, which is shades of Kyrie Irving to the Cavs, and D. Rose), one No. 2 (Jay Williams), and one No. 3 (Ben Gordon). In years in between, they had three No. 4s (Marcus Fizer, Ty Thomas, Eddy Curry),” Anton relates. “Can’t you see a pattern here relevant to Cleveland’s? Former marquee team trying to be resurrected after its star player has flown the coop?”
Anton suggests that a more equitable system should be put in place to prevent such a lopsided turn of luck – or conspiracy – from happening again. He disses the lottery wheel system that I mentioned, saying it would defeat the draft’s primary purpose of strengthening weak teams.
“The lottery wheel system is foolproof in terms of tanking, and actually very fair, but I don’t think that is really a smart move since it seems it would defeat the purpose of the draft – which is to strengthen weak teams,” he says. “For instance, if it were Miami’s turn this year to pick No. 1, that team would be crazy s…t and we’d all be complaining for the draft/lottery to be altered once again. Top of mind, just based on the Cleveland incident and yesterday’s lottery, they just have to stratify the process/mechanics. Say, you can only have one top-three pick in three years. Relevant to Cleveland yesterday, the Cavs and New Orleans (the 2012 winner) should not have been allowed to participate in the lottery anymore (if this was implemented, the Cavs would not have participated last year, too). It still does not address the rigging part completely, but at least the favored teams of the powers-that-be can’t be heavily favored anymore.”
Popular basketball writer Bill Simmons goes a little farther, suggesting a number of rules that he says would prevent teams from being rewarded for their incompetence, at least over a long period of time. This includes disqualifying a team that wins the No. 1 overall pick in the four years following that lottery victory.
“For me, this was about rewarding a relentlessly incompetent organization. (The Cavs) wasted seven LeBron years and never found him the right help (or came up with a smart long-term plan to build around him). They went through three coaches and two GMs since 2009… including the same coach twice (one year into a five-year deal, no less),” Simmons explains. “They had four top-four picks in three years and thought Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters (the fourth pick in 2012) could coexist… The NBA treats franchises like Cleveland the same way absentee billionaire fathers treat their screwup sons – just keep buying them stuff and throwing money into their accounts and everything will be fine, right?… And by the way, it’s not just the Cavs. Minnesota just made its 10th straight lottery. Sacramento just landed its sixth straight top-seven pick. Washington made the 2014 playoffs only after landing the No. 5, No. 1, No. 6, No. 3 and No. 3 picks from 2009 through 2013. I can’t accept that we created a professional basketball league in which… the same incompetent teams get rewarded – repeatedly, over and over again – for being incompetent (or) the same team in a 30-team league can win the No. 1 overall pick three times in four years.”
Simmons then makes the following proposals: “Once you win the No. 1 overall pick, you can’t win it again for four years. If four years is good enough for an Olympic cycle or a presidential term, it’s good enough for the same team getting the No. 1 pick. No team can get two top-three picks in a three-year span. In other words, anyone who landed a top-three lottery pick in 2012 or 2013 would have been ineligible for 2014’s lottery drawing. We’d toss their ping-pong balls out and everything. So on Wednesday, the Cavs would have been stuck at No. 9, Orlando would have been relegated to third or lower, and everyone else would have had better chances.”
There is indeed no shortage of ideas or proposals making the draft lottery a more equitable, and, ergo, more credible system. NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who has made a remarkable start in his tenure after replacing Stern last February, should consider such ideas seriously if the league is to avoid being perceived as an organization that plays favorites and prejudices the best interest of its teams, as it was during Stern’s reign.
Cleveland winning the draft lottery for the third time in four years? At the very least, this smacks of an inequitable system whose time for a revision or finetuning – rigging or no rigging – probably has come. Silver should implement these changes as soon as he can to keep this system relevant to the league’s objective of leveling the playing field. Failure to do this won’t stop the conspiracy theories that have hounded the league over the past three decades regardless of their authenticity or irrelevance.
SHORTSHOTS: The Milwaukee Bucks, the league’s worst team this past season with a 15-67 record, giving them a 25 percent chance of landing the top pick, got the second pick instead. It came five days after investment firm executives Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry officially became the owners of the franchise. “As much attention that has been focused on Mr. (Donald) Sterling, Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry show we have an incredible group of owners,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said of the Bucks’ new owners… Cleveland’s unexpected draft lottery victory brought Detroit down one slot, with the Pistons moving down a spot at No. 9 and forfeiting the No. 8 pick to Charlotte because of the Ben Gordon-Corey Maggette trade that took place during Joe Dumars’ reign as president, which gave the Pistons a top-eight protected pick. “Can you believe Detroit loses their pick in (Pistons president and coach) Stan Van Gundy’s first draft?” Pat Williams, the Magic’s senior vice president and lottery veteran, blurted… San Antonio’s trio of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili set a new record for most playoff victories by a trio with 111 when the Spurs blasted Oklahoma City 112-77, the Thunder’s worst playoff loss, in Game 2 of their Western final series. Duncan, Parker and Ginobili were previously tied for the mark at 110 with the LA Lakers’ Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Cooper. Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar themselves, along with Byron Scott, rank third on the list with 93 playoff victories together. The Boston Celtics’ Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, meanwhile, rank fourth after winning 92 games as a trio during the 1980s… – Rappler.com
Bert A. Ramirez has been a freelance sportswriter/columnist since the ’80s, writing mostly about the NBA and once serving as consultant and editor for Tower Sports Magazine, the longest-running locally published NBA magazine, from 1999 to 2008. He has also written columns and articles for such publications as Malaya, Sports Digest, Winners Sports Weekly, Pro Guide, Sports Weekly, Sports Flash, Sports World, Basketball Weekly and the FIBA’s International Basketball, and currently writes a fortnightly column for QC Life and a weekly blog for BostonSports Desk. A former corporate manager, Bert has breathed, drunk and slept sports most of his life.
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