2 days ago: Indiana Pacers’ Roy Hibbert (55) celebrates with his teammates late in the fourth quarter of an NBA basketball game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Cleveland on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011, in Cleveland. The Pacers won 117-112 to hand the Cavaliers their 22nd straight loss. At left is Cavaliers’ J.J. Hickson, (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

By Evan Dunlap – Contributor

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Feb 4, 2011 - The Indiana Pacers, as they’ve been since 2003, are in a state of transition, but that period is on the verge of ending. Firing coach Jim O’Brien midway through his fourth season with Indiana was a solid way to speed up the process, and the contract of team president Larry Bird is due to end this summer. With fresh faces leading the team on the sideline and in the front office, Indiana is poised to take its next step forward.

Few young, mediocre teams have a future as bright as that of Indiana. In addition to franchise centerpiece Danny Granger, the Pacers boast young talents at point guard (Darren Collison), center (Roy Hibbert), small forward (Paul George) and power forward (Tyler Hansbrough and Josh McRoberts). That’s an enviable group of budding stars, despite Hibbert’s season, which has trended downward after a strong start.

But where the Pacers can really make their mark is via trade. Bird has said he wants to parlay his sizable expiring contracts — Mike Dunleavy, T.J. Ford, Jeff Foster and Solomon Jones combine to create a whopping $27.2 million in ending salary this summer, according to ShamSports, the web’s most authoritative salary database — into another impact player before the trading deadline, and given the uncertainty about what the next collective bargaining agreement will bring, it’s likely that more than one team will be interested in shedding salary by dealing a talented player to Indiana for at least one of those deals.

Bird’s problem is that he can’t really afford to let those contracts come off the books, hoping to land a free agent. The CBA comes into play here as well, but mostly the issue is that there are few stars to be had in the forthcoming free-agent class. Perhaps he could sign Greg Oden, an Indianapolis native, to an offer sheet and hope the Portland Trail Blazers don’t match it, but he’d seem to be redundant with the young Hibbert healthy and contributing from the center spot. No, it’s imperative for Bird to act before the trading deadline to make sure his assets don’t go to waste.

But making a trade at the deadline simply for trading’s sake also has its own risks, as Bird can’t content himself with acquiring a middling player, as doing so would only repeat his sad pattern of aiming for a win total in the low-40s each season. That means veteran retreads like Richard Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince should be off the table, as they’d do little to improve the Pacers’ fortunes now or going forward.

What sort of player should Indiana pursue? Given where they stand, it’s clear an offensively-minded performer should top the list, as the Pacers ranked just 24th in offensive efficiency before Wednesday’s games, scoring only 103.4 points per 100 possession; on defense, they rank eighth, giving up 104.6 points per 100 possessions.

Having established their need for offense, we can look closer. What need emerges? Someone who can shoot the three-pointer and get to the line. The Pacers have connected on 36 percent of their three-point tries this season, exactly the league average, and have four players taking at least three per game. Foul-drawing is a higher-priority concern, as only Granger attempts more than five foul shots per game. Hibbert, for all his size and skill around the basket, only earns 3.1 free throws. And Collison, despite his speed and quickness, lags behind at 2.8 per game.

The Houston Rockets’ Kevin Martin is the gold standard as far as combining those two skills, but it seems unlikely the Rockets would be willing to part with their hyper-efficient two-guard for mere financial savings, especially not when they have solid trade assets of their own and could be sellers at the deadline in order to strengthen themselves for a playoff push. Digging deeper, J.J. Redick of the Orlando Magic might be an option, though he doesn’t draw fouls at a great rate.

Regardless of how Bird reshapes the team, it’s clear that doing so is only one step in a much larger process. With the right move, or moves, Bird can take the Pacers from “okay” to “good.” But that next step, from “good” to “great,” requires more time, patience, and some internal development, which makes it a more difficult proposition. Nevertheless, the Pacers have slowly maneuvered themselves into this position. Bird has them in great shape to take another step forward, but it’s up to him to make the most of this great opportunity.

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Though the Pacers are in the midst of a small run (two straight, baby!), the reality is the team has under-achieved for much of 2010-2011. Team president Larry Bird said he expects this year’s team to make the playoffs. In an Eastern Conference that is extremely top heavy, that really should be the expectation every year.

But this year, after Darren Collison was acquired in a trade over the summer, the sense was we’d start to see this team truly compete in the East. So far, we haven’t, which is why Jim O’Brien is no longer employed with the Pacers, and 37-year-old Frank Vogel has the job close to the mid-point.

With all this in mind, it’s no surprise that the Eastern Conference All-Star team will not feature anyone from the Pacers. The only truly All-Star worthy player on the club, Danny Granger, is having a sub-par year. His points (21) and FG percentage (42%) are down while his turnovers are up (2.71).

While it would have been nice to see a Pacers player in the All-Star game, in the end it doesn’t really matter because, like most All-Star games, the event itself is pointless. The basketball isn’t ‘real’ No one’s trying. No one’s playing defense. No one cares.

The hope is that since the Pacers don’t seem all that invested in All-Star weekend, maybe they could use the time to re-focus and adjust to their new coach. This way, they might actually start to resemble a real NBA basketball team after the break.

Published: Monday, January 31, 2011, 1:37 PM

Former Cleveland Cavaliers coach Mike Brown could return to the coaching ranks with the Indiana Pacers.

Brown, fired by the Cavaliers following the 2009-10 season, was an assistant coach with the Pacers from 2003-05.

The Indiana Pacers fired coach Jim O’Brien last weekend, which opens the door for Brown to return.

Indystar.com reporter Mike Wells writes:

Former Pacers assistant and Cleveland Cavaliers coach Mike Brown is one of the candidates the team will likely pursue this summer.
 

Jim O’Brien is out as coach of the Indiana Pacers, and that’s probably about right.

At 17-27, the team had been sliding terribly. Obie’s crew had lost more coin-flip games than was to be expected, but the group’s strength of schedule was in the middle of the pack, and the offense wasn’t getting any better. Not the best news for a coach that had been brought in to amp up the Indiana offense, and try to teach some defense along the way.

O’Brien’s Pacers had developed a defensive edge over the last season and a half, ranking eighth among 30 teams in defensive efficiency, a point often lost because the team ran so much offensively, which skewed the way its defensive aptitude was regarded. Indiana’s offense this season, despite a rotation seemingly made up entirely of shoot-first types, had stunk on Indianapolis ice. The Pacers ranked 24th of 30 teams, and not all that great even when semi-franchise guy Danny Granger(notes) wasn’t slumping and Roy Hibbert(notes) wasn’t thinking twice about every half-hearted hook he tossed up.

Pointing out those go-to men helps O’Brien’s case moving forward, as he searches for perhaps one more head-coaching gig (the longtime assistant took over for Rick Pitino when the former Kentucky coach flamed out in Boston 10 years ago, and had presided over a rough turn leading the Philadelphia 76ers a few years later). Bird has not been good as a personnel man. He’s made some sound moves in the draft, but by and large his trades haven’t worked out, and Indiana has been stuck in a nebulous not-rebuilding/not-winning strata for years.

And while handing Danny Granger (at best, your second-best player on a pretty good team) over to a coach as the go-to guy seems like an invitation to fail, understand that even the most well-meaning of Pacers fans had lost faith in Obie as a guy to trust on the sideline.

His rotations seemed curious at best. The Pacers continuously let games slip away late in the proceedings, and while you have to cast a dubious eye on the players first, second and 14th for letting a close game get out of hand, you’d also like to think the coach could take over for at least a few of those close contests and make a difference. Granger, Tyler Hansbrough(notes), Josh McRoberts(notes) and Brandon Rush(notes) have seemingly rose to the ranks of good-to-passable under O’Brien’s tutelage, but you also get the feeling that this group would have ended up there regardless of a coach’s influence. And Hibbert’s confidence issues under Obie cannot be dismissed.

Indiana’s struggles may not have been O’Brien’s fault, but it’s clear that at the midpoint of the 2010-11 season, he certainly wasn’t helping either.

The Pacers will move forward with Frank Vogel at the helm, and by all accounts he’s a tape-watching son of a gun. A real ‘X’s and ‘O’s guy, though at first glance it doesn’t appear as if the Pacers need any help in the “here’s-what-the-Bucks-like-to-run-in-this-situation” category, as this crew needs guidance and a steadying hand more than anything.

Adrian Wojnarowski points to the idea that the Pacers could be leaning towards trying to pick up former Cavalier coach Mike Brown as the team’s new head man, which sounds about as typical and obvious and boring and as uninspired as many of Bird’s moves in his 7 1/2-year run as personnel boss.

Brown is another game-tape guru, but he also wasn’t great shakes as Cleveland’s head man. It probably wasn’t much of a picnic in Cleveland as LeBron James(notes) ignored every bit of guidance tossed his way, but dealing with superstars properly is what sets top NBA coaches apart, and even though the Pacers don’t have a star to call their own (which, again, isn’t a good thing), it doesn’t seem wise to tie your fortunes to a man who just reeks of a top-level assistant, and little else. Brown doesn’t really have the same whiff that Rick Carlisle or Tom Thibodeau ran with before they took over their first head-coaching gigs.

Worse? Though the Pacers will have cap space this offseason, nobody knows what this offseason will look like after the NBA’s labor issues sort themselves out, and the (available to sign, at least) free-agent crop isn’t much to get excited about. Nor should Pacer fans hold out much hope for Bird in that regard, even as he takes to his first chunk of cap space without Donnie Walsh’s guidance (sign Al Harrington(notes)!) helping run things.

In all, these can’t be good times for Pacer fans, as they spiral toward the lottery. And even a clean slate on the sideline and impending cap space this summer can’t make up for what has been a wasted half-decade in the franchise’s five-year playoff drought.

Related: Tyler Hansbrough, Brandon Rush, Roy Hibbert, Danny Granger, LeBron James, Al Harrington, Indiana Pacers, Philadelphia 76ers