- [Reporter] It's easy to forget
but the Indiana Pacers rang in 2014 as the NBA's best team.
Frank Vogel coached the league's most efficient defense
by a long shot.
Paul George played a big part in that
while also blossoming as an offensive superstar
building on the prior season's Most Improved Player Award.
Old school sky scraping center Roy Hibbert
formed a one man wall in front of the rim
while breakout wildcard Lance Stephenson
gave the Pacers a jolt of youth and reckless energy
George Hill provided a steady hand at point guard
and David West kept everyone grounded
with veteran gruffness and reliability.
After a near perfect start to the regular season,
there was reason to believe Indiana
could finally break LeBron James
and the Heat's hold on the Eastern Conference crown.
It was president Larry Bird's job
to make sure the roster at Coach Vogel's disposal
was up for the challenge.
If you stand too far back, what happened next
looks simple and obvious.
A team that fell to the Heat in 2013, lost again in 2014
then they lost players and regressed to middle of the pack
but that doesn't cover it.
This wasn't a huge collapse
but the way Indiana messed with a great thing
then unraveled was pretty gnarly.
Back in 2013, this team, a three seed
faced LeBron and the top seeded heat
in the Eastern Conference finals.
Indiana stole home court advantage
by winning game two in Miami only to fall behind
with a couple blowout losses then go down in seven.
So there was the bar to clear in 2014.
Indiana kept their core intact
and plowed through the first four months
of their 13-14 regular season schedule.
The Pacers closed January, 2014
holding the best record in the East
with a healthy lead over The Heat.
February 1st brought two new storylines
seemingly minor ones.
One, Lance Stephenson was mad.
All star rosters had just been finalized.
Paul George was obviously chosen
as an Eastern Conference starter.
Roy Hibbert got voted in by coaches.
Frank Vogel led the Eastern squad
since he coached the team
with the best record in the conference
but not Lance.
Lance Stephenson was having a career year
and felt like he'd been snubbed.
Later reports even suggested Stephenson felt like
Hibbert didn't deserve to make it over him.
Speaking of Hibbert, the Pacers made a move on February 1st.
They signed Andrew Bynum once a champion and all star
now trying to get his career back on track
but a traditional center like Hibbert.
Bynum ended up barely registering on the court.
He played two games as a Pacer,
one of them a ridiculous six of 18 shooting bonanza
in the last game of his bizarre NBA career.
So yeah, Andrew Bynum was barely a Pacer.
His career in Indiana is not remembered
for the basketball playing.
Nevertheless Bynum's presence irked Hibbert.
He felt the pressure of someone set up to take his spot
even though that didn't really happen.
Hibbert's play took a noticeable dip
around the time Bynum came on board.
These splits in roughly the same minutes are stark
but Larry Bird wasn't done tinkering.
Toward the end of February he made another move
that looked like a no brainer in pure basketball terms.
Danny Granger was a career long Pacer and one time all star
but injuries had limited his utility.
Orlando Johnson was a competent second year guard
but probably wasn't going to factor
into a playoff rotation.
So Bird traded Granger for Evan Turner,
a young healthy guard with some post season experience.
The Pacers released Johnson to make the full trade work.
Again, this looked minor but it was not,
keystones had been removed.
Even from the sidelines
Granger was a beloved veteran leader, a friend to all.
David West says he knew the season was over
the moment he got the phone call
saying Granger had been traded.
He knew they couldn't get past the Heat.
He knew that in February! Granger hardly played!
Johnson was a similar case.
He was young and a benchwarmer
but a teammate everybody loved whose presence they missed.
And then there's the new guy.
Evan Turner's niche and style of play
looked to Stephenson like Bynum was to Hibbert.
Here was another unpredictable microwave bench guard.
Now Lance felt like his role on the team was in jeopardy.
Like Hibbert, a disturbed Stephenson played measurably worse
in the last two months of the season.
So there are two straightforward basketball transactions
that seemed fine but screwed up
Indiana's internal stability.
Bird had removed the wrong Jenga blocks
but it wasn't just that.
In late February, GQ magazine promoted a photo spread
from their March issue.
This photo caught the most attention.
The starters wearing cool clothes,
doing their best Blue Steel expressions, 115 00:05:07,260 --> 00:05:11,140 displaying various types and depths of cleavage.
There's nothing unusual about successful attractive athletes
doing a little modeling
and yet as if stricken with a curse
the Pacers barely cracked .500 in the 27 games
after the GQ photos hit the internet.
This from a team that had wrecked everyone up to that point
the losing rankled the locker room
enough that Hibbert went public with a lengthy rant
headlined by the accusation
that some of his teammates were selfish.
When Indiana briefly lost their hold on the Eastern one seed
both Hibbert and David West said good,
they didn't deserve it.
The GQ spread isn't even
the most interesting photographic exhibit
from this chapter of Pacers basketball.
When sordid rumors emerged
about George, Hibbert, and Hibbert's fiance
George posted this Instagram photo
with this pleading caption to try to calm everyone down.
See, we caught a fish.
Would backstabbing sex traders have caught a fish?
Doubt it! underneath the basketball
was all psychological emotional stuff,
stuff with which even the greatest teams in history
had to contend.
Perhaps the Pacers were one of those champions
who would overcome all the noise.
Perhaps they'd just cut it out entirely in the postseason
starting with a series against the Hawks.
No, nope, Stephenson and his new
apparently threatening understudy Turner
physically fought right before
Indiana's first playoff game against the Hawks.
Indiana lost that game one
and barely avoided a historic series upset
after Hibbert struggled to match up
with ****ing Pero Antic.
The Pacers gathered themselves somewhat
in the second round against the Wizards
but in an Eastern final rematch against the Heat
they fell well short of the 2013 high watermark.
This team was the high seed,
healthy, experienced and vengeful
lauded as the best defense in the NBA
but they squandered an early series edge.
LeBron and Dwayne Wade ran amok
to undo a Pacers lead late in game two.
Miami came back from a big deficit in game three
then won games four and six by double digits
to end a much less dramatic series
than that of the prior year.
Indiana's performance in this matchup
is best remembered for Lance annoying LeBron
and blowing in his ear and stuff, not the basketball.
Major disappointment for a rattled bunch of Pacers
but if Indiana could settle things internally
the contending window remained.
It may have even widened in July, 2014
when LeBron James announced he would return
to the Cleveland Cavaliers
with Miami defanged and Cleveland perhaps needing some time
to build around LeBron
Bird sought to keep the Pacers core intact
for a championship push.
He made their biggest free agent Stephenson
a substantial extension offer.
Even with that, even with Turner leaving the picture,
Lance chose to bail
signing a less secure deal with the Charlotte Hornets.
Still with LeBron shaking up the East
and with a decent enough wing replacement in CJ Miles,
the Pacers hoped to restore some camaraderie
and run it back all the way to the finals this time
and then, only then, did the bottom truly fall out.
Late on a Friday night in August
in the waning moments of a fun,
relaxed team USA exhibition scrimmage
Paul George went up to contest this shot
and came down with a crunch.
I am certainly not gonna make you watch George suffer
an open fracture of the tibia and fibula in his right leg.
Suffice to say it was gross, it required surgery
and everyone understood instantly
that George would not be playing basketball for a long time.
With Stephenson gone and George reassembling his leg,
the 2014-15 Pacers stunk.
Vogel still managed to squeeze out a top 10 defense
and George Hill played a borderline all star season
but with Paul George returning for just six games
Indiana finished 38-44,
missing the playoffs entirely
a year removed from a one seed.
Looking ahead to a full season George return
Bird insisted the Pacers would play smaller
and faster in 2015-16.
What did that mean for the tallest slowest Indiana player?
Well, Bird came right out and said
Hibbert had a bad 14-15 season.
He and Vogel insisted Hibbert would have a smaller role
if he came back,
that he'd have to earn his minutes
which even if reasonable is a harsh public statement
about an established player.
Bird's bluntness wasn't out of character
but it irked David West who named the Hibbert treatment
as a reason he declined his contract option
to take a huge pay cut with the Spurs.
If Bird was trying to neg Hibbert
out of taking his own option though, it didn't work.
Hibbert picked up the final year of his contract.
To move on from Hibbert
and focus on new draft pick Myles Turner
as their center of the future, they'd have to make a trade
and so they did.
Out went a recent all star
in exchange for a second rounder.
The team to which Paul George
made his full health, full season return
barely resembled the messy but competitive Pacers of 2014.
He and George Hill were the last core players standing
and even Hill looked different.
There wasn't much new talent besides Turner
to carry out his fast paced small ball vision,
Bird resigned backup guard Rodney Stuckey
and made a couple of underwhelming free agent additions.
Trying to follow Bird's vision
Coach Vogel projected George up a position
to power forward.
George didn't sound thrilled.
Bird did not care.
Miles ended up playing
a lot of those undersized power forward minutes
and as the season wore on and Turner looked good,
Vogel regressed to a more typical, less small ball approach.
Stylistic changes notwithstanding
the Pacers followed a middling 45-37 season
with a first round loss to the Raptors.
George played spectacular playoff basketball
and everyone else kind of disappointed.
Days after elimination Bird fired Vogel,
once again wrapping a personnel move
in some pretty harsh public candor.
Instead of bringing in some maven of fast paced small ball
Bird kept the head coach hire in house,
promoting Assistant Coach Nate McMillan.
This was a risky shakeup since Vogel was the coach
who'd helped shape George into a superstar
and that superstar was going to become a free agent
in just two years.
If Bird was worried about further alienating his star
he didn't act like it.
In a straightforward three teams swap Bird ditched Hill
to bring in a roughly equivalent point guard Jeff Teague.
A pretty lateral move
but one with a clear effect on relationships
in the locker room.
Hill was Paul George's best friend on the team.
Just look at George's farewell Instagram post.
In pure basketball terms, Bird's other 2016 moves
didn't exactly match the stated plan to play fast
and none of it really worked.
Indiana's offense improved a bit under McMillan
but their post Vogel defense declined a lot.
George's name came up in trade rumors.
He wasn't having fun.
He sounded like he missed his former teammates
and he declined a contract extension
unsure the Pacers were a winning team.
Reacquiring Lance Stephenson restored a little bit of fun
but the Pacers barely broke .500.
As if to measure how far Indiana had fallen,
the Pacers faced LeBron and the Cavaliers
in the first round of the playoffs and got swept with ease.
The 2017 offseason's main drama was clear.
A year from free agency George insisted he was a Pacer,
Indiana was his team
but that expiring contract still loomed
and Bird wasn't going to be the one to figure it out.
After the 2017 playoff defeat he stepped aside
promoting GM Kevin Pritchard into the President role.
Pritchard got right down to business.
In a shocking move, the Pacers dumped George
and any uncertainty about his future
bringing back some players that
honestly worked out pretty well for them.
And indeed this collapse isn't the story
of a contender descending into absolute misery.
The Pacers avoided the basement
even while losing their best player
but don't forget how excellent this team was,
how poised they seem to take over the East
if not win a title.
Instead, these Pacers never won another playoff series
and the core totally dissolved within three years.
George's broken leg was a big reason why
but far from the only one.
This collapse shows how much chemistry matters,
how marginal contributors might still be crucial presences,
how even a minor newcomer might rock the boat
and how private relationships interact
with public statements.
Even the solidest winningest on court machine
might be more delicate than it appears.
The Pacers tinkered the wrong way with the wrong parts
and in doing so busted a dynamo beyond repair.