Thursday, February 28, 2008

Pacers a 3-quarter team?

Mike Wells guessed in his recap of the latest Pacers game that the Pacers would have a winning record if they played for only three quarters. I decided to investigate, and this is what I found:

The Pacers' current record is 22-36, but after 58 games of only playing three quarters their record would still only be 24-29-5 The fact that their five ties would have to go into overtime (or in this case the fourth quarter), along with the fact that the Pacers have only come from behind in the fourth quarter to win games just a few times, leads me to believe that those five ties should be at least three more losses for the Pacers. Several players and even Coach O'Brien have said that they lose games in the fourth quarter, but it's just not true.

So what is to blame? "Mental toughness", which O'Brien blamed the losses for last night? Could it be that the Pacers just lack the endurance to play hard for the full 48 minutes? Lack of motivation? Do they just not care? Even though Dunleavy and The Lone Granger continue to put up good stats game after game, you'd have to wonder how much harder they would play if they had a better supporting cast (besides SuperRush, he's just amazing) and knew they had a better chance to win every night.

I guess my question is this: Why should Pacers executives expect fans to show up to games (and especially stay for the entire second half) if the team those executives are putting on the floor can't even do that much?

Update:
The Pacers aren't even a second quarter team

No comments: