AP Photo/Michael Conroy

Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose, center, shoots while pressured by Indiana Pacers center Roy Hibbert, left, and guard Darren Collison in the first half of an NBA preseason basketball game in Indianapolis, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011.

Derrick Rose and Luol Deng each scored 16 points to help the Chicago Bulls beat the Indiana Pacers 95-86 on Friday night in the preseason opener for both teams.

C.J. Watson added 15 points for the Bulls, who brought their share of red-clad fans for the game that had some of the intensity of a key regular-season game. It was a rematch of last season’s first-round playoff series, which the Bulls won 4-1.

Tyler Hansbrough had 19 points and 12 rebounds, and Paul George added 17 points and 10 rebounds for the Pacers. Danny Granger scored 12 points for Indiana, but was just 5 for 17 from the field. Indianapolis native George Hill scored three points in his first game in a Pacers uniform after being acquired from San Antonio.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP)

David West is headed north to Indiana, where he will join forces with Danny Granger and former Hornets teammate Darren Collison.

West agreed to a two-year deal with the Pacers on Sunday that his agent, Lance Young, said was worth $20 million.

”Indy was a team that I was really giving a good, hard look at,” West said in a phone interview. ”They’ve got a good balance in terms of a couple good veterans and some really good young players. There are some budding guys and I think that’s a team that I can help in the next couple years.”

The Pacers have not yet announced the free-agent signing, but West said he planned to be in Indianapolis on Monday.

West, a two-time All-Star who was drafted 18th overall by New Orleans in 2003, started 70 games for the Hornets last season, averaging 18.9 points and 7.6 rebounds before tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in a victory at Utah on March 24.

The 31-year-old had reconstructive surgery on April 12 and opted out of a deal 2 1/2 months later that would have paid him $7.5 million with the Hornets this season. West said he has been rehabilitating vigorously and has felt strong enough to play for a number of weeks now.

”I just feel good. Obviously you can’t really simulate what the NBA environment and atmosphere is, but I’m anxious to get back on the floor and play,” West said. ”I’m confident in the rehab that I’ve done and I’ll be eight months out of surgery. So the timing is pretty good and I just feel like once I’m able to get back on the floor and get a rhythm, just getting my basketball flow back, it should be great.”

When West decided to test free agency, he said the main reason was because he wanted to find a place where he could win right away. He did not rule out a return to New Orleans, but said he wanted to explore every opportunity.

West saw the Pacers as a team on the rise. He called Granger ”one of the best small forwards in the league,” and said the Pacers have ”a good young center” in Roy Hibbert.

West also said he was comfortable playing with Collison, who shined as a rookie in New Orleans two seasons ago while Chris Paul was hurt.

”It’s just an opportunity for me to go up there and make my mark and really help them,” West said.

If you like reading our blog, remember to bookmark it.

Indiana Pacers fans went to sleep on Black Friday faced with another weekend of a suspended NBA season and the prospect of contemplating, again, just how far into their own abyss the Indianapolis Colts can slide before 2012 dawns. When we awoke on Saturday morning, though, the basketball world looked markedly different, and brighter. The NBA and the players representatives worked through that long night to reach a tentative agreement that will likely end the months-long lockout and gives the Pacers the chance to wrest back some of their fans from the death grip the Colts have developed over the last half decade. This announcement could be the springboard that the Blue and Gold need to regain the lofty perch they held in central Indiana through the mid-2000s, and I can’t wait for them to resume the trek they began last spring by making the playoffs.

With the Colts winless in 2011, the Pacers have been forced to sit on their hands while Indianapolis sports fans have turned our attention elsewhere. It’s been a long, empty fall in Indiana at a time when we should have been filling Area 55 in Conseco Fieldhouse, welcoming George Hill(notes) home to Indy and generally enveloping ourselves in the daily soap opera of a new NBA season. With the confluence of events that should have played out in the last couple of months, the Pacers could have been well on their way to gripping the community. Instead, we’ve heard little sound bites from the players, and only nothing from the front office, allowing the team to slip further from our collective consciousness.

As it turns out, the delay in getting the 2011-12 NBA season ramped up may actually lead to a more frenzied start for the Pacers. Equipped as they are with ample cap space and sitting in a town hungry for positive sports news, the Blue and Gold are poised to own the local landscape this winter. The next few weeks will be stuffed with free agent talk and training camp reports, and the the season will likely tip off on or around Christmas day. If it all plays out as expected, the Pacers and their fans may be in store for quite a holiday gift.

Adam Hughes was raised, and still lives, in rural Indiana. He has been a Pacers fan since the early 1980s and has witnessed the rise and fall of a great NBA franchise. He follows the current club closely and is anxious for the lockout to end so the Pacers can begin their next ascent.

Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.

Well, even though we don’t have the Indiana Pacers playing, the Indianapolis Colts are 0-10, and Indiana University football is still a joke, we have a lot to be thankful for as sports fans. Sure, it’s been a rough year. But, some positives to take out of the 365 days since the last Thanksgiving we celebrated here are:

• Robbie Hummel is back at Purdue, and playing well
• Notre Dame football is ranked, and has a great game coming up against No. 5 Stanford
• Indiana basketball has a great recruiting class, and they’re off to another big start
• Marvin Harrison will be honored by the Colts Sunday, and placed in the team’s ‘Ring of Honor’
• Brad Stevens is still coaching Butler
• Valparaiso basketball is off to a 5-1 start

But, most importantly, if you are here and reading this blog entry, we hope you give thanks for the people who love you and the surely wonderful food you will likely scarf down this afternoon while watching a truly impressive slate of NFL games.

So, on behalf of Travis Miller, Matt Grecco, Bill Potter, Joe Kutsunis, and the SB Nation news desk (which includes James Brady, Tom Lewis, and many others), we at SB Nation Indiana wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.

By now, we should be a week or so into the new NBA season, and Indianapolis should be awash in Blue and Gold as the Indiana Pacers return to action off their most successful campaign in half a decade. The Pacers’ late-season push into the playoffs last April left fans anxious for more and with high hopes for the current group of Indiana players. Now that the NBA lockout has wiped out a whole month of games, though, the atmosphere is changing rapidly, and the goodwill built up in the spring is blowing away with the fall leaves. After the latest round of negotiations, Pacers forward Danny Granger(notes) delivered the bad news that no resolution to the labor strife is imminent.

Late last week, NBA commissioner David Stern and the league presented the players with their latest and greatest proposal, which included a straight 50-50 revenue split between the teams and the players. However, the hotly contested salary cap numbers apparently remained unchanged, and the players seem reluctant to sign any deal that won’t give the players a chance to expand their salary base. Indeed, Granger, who is the Pacers’ player representative, expects the union to reject this offer outright when they convene again on Monday. That’s really bad news, because Stern insists that the league will make no further concessions, meaning that the next step in the process would be some sort of court action.

Granger’s pessimism is a bitter pill because this latest proposal would get the season fired up on December 15 and still allow each team to play 72 games. Missing just 10 contests even with a six-week outage would have been a minor miracle, and the timing would have been just about perfect for the Pacers. With the Indianapolis Colts sliding toward oblivion, this town is ripe for the taking, and the Pacers could have made huge strides with a full pre-Christmas schedule. Maybe Stern made the offer knowing it would be rejected by the players, but the fact remains that something palatable to fans is on the table.

It stings to have bad news such as this delivered by a player, particularly by someone who is often cited as a cornerstone of the franchise, as is Granger. Reading the tea leaves for us does little to increase Granger’s likability, and may actually cost him and the Pacers some support in the long run. Perhaps he should leave the announcements to the union itself.

Adam Hughes was raised, and still lives, in rural Indiana. He has been a Pacers fan since the early 1980s and has witnessed the rise and fall of a great NBA franchise. He follows the current club closely and is anxious for the lockout to end so the Pacers can begin their next ascent.

Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.