April 25, 2007

Pacers Bounce Carlisle : The Indiana Pacers announced Wednesday that Rick Carlisle will not return as head coach. In four seasons as Pacers coach, Carlisle compiled a 181-147 record (.552 winning percentage). The Pacers made the NBA playoffs in three of the four seasons and reached the Eastern Conference Finals in Carlisle’s first year, 2003-04. That same season, the Pacers posted a 61-21 record, the best in franchise history.

read story | posted by BornIcon to Basketball at 2:15 PM CDT (6 comments total)

Wow. For some reason I did not see this coming. Who does Larry go to now? Does Carlisle stay on with the Pacers as a consultant?

I think Carlisle is so loyal to Larry that he will to stay. Though I wouldn't be surprised if a team looking to mold a defensive roster, say Sacramento, were to back a truckload of cash on his lawn.

As for the Pacers coaching vacancy? You could pretty much cut and paste this list here. Though none of those candidates seem to really have many strong ties to Bird.

Comment icon posted by lilnemo at 2:36 PM CDT on April 25

Sam Mitchell. It's a real possibility.

Comment icon posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 3:26 PM CDT on April 25

Beat me to it, Weedy....Colangelo's trump card is allegedly Marc Iavaroni.

Comment icon posted by smithers at 3:29 PM CDT on April 25

Interesting scenario. The question is, will Sam come if he's forced to coach another rebuilding squad?

Comment icon posted by lilnemo at 3:55 PM CDT on April 25

The Pacers are falling apart much faster than I thought. I still think Rick Carlisle is a top tier coach, even if he seems noticably inept at developing young players.

Dunleavy at SG can never and will never work out. He'd be a lovely 6th or 7th man, kind of a poor man's Jalen Rose back when we were developing him.

Diogu didn't get enough PT for me to really make a decision but he seems to be a career backup.

Ever since we fleeced Chicago and Portland (getting Brad Miller, Ron Artest, and Jermaine O'Neal for Dale Davis and Jalen Rose) we've drafted poorly and traded worse.

We refused to resign Brad Miller cause he was too expensive, then paid 5-6 million a year for Scott Pollard. Now we're overpaying both Dunleavy and Marquis Daniels (who can't make it onto the court).

Daniels, Diogu, Greene, Marshall, McLeod, and Shawne Williams don't really belong on a playoff team. Williams was our first round pick (continuing the trend of drafting developmental small forwards) so I don't mind if we keep him around for a couple of years.

We had such a boner for Al Harrington (developmental small forwards much?) back when he was in Atlanta, meanwhile Jason Terry was also avaiable. Harrington is a text-book "stats guy" tweener who doesn't play well on the court at the same time as our best player.

Granger's offensive game isn't very good but he was quite clearly trying to establish himself as an offensive option. In the games I watched he'd turned into a "ball-stopper" who jacked up jump shots more often than not. Carlisle is definitely partly to blame for this. Granger has the capability to be a very strong defender, and possibly a 2nd scoring option, but his offensive game is a question mark. Even though Stephen Jackson was totally crazy and I'm glad he's gone, he commanded the 2nd scorer role and the team was better for it.

Jeff Foster is good enough to start and should have been starting all year long.

We need a new point guard and a new shooting guard, we need to stop overpaying marginally talented white guys and we need to stop drafting developmental small forwards.

Comment icon posted by chmurray at 9:29 AM CDT on April 26

I don't know why you had to add the white guys part......but since you did they don't seem to get arrested now do they.

Comment icon posted by 3pounddickey at 12:20 PM CDT on April 26

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