Kent Sterling

Chris Duarte is my favorite Pacers player of the season so far – which says as much about the other Pacers as Duarte.

I want to care about the Indiana Pacers, but if the Pacers themselves play as though they don’t care about the Pacers, why should I bother?

That was the thought that rang in my head like the bell in a church where it is always noon as I watched their pathetic lack of effort in Toronto last night. Basketball is dramatic, fun to play, and compelling as hell to watch when there is something on the line. The Pacers played folded for the Raptors as though not even pride was at stake – maybe especially as though pride wasn’t at stake.

Basketball is a lot like music. If a band goes through the motions playing their hits and serves as a walking and breathing jukebox without a captivating collective aspontaneity, people at a concert chat among themselves and treat the event as background entertainment. Basketball provides the same opportunity to be a fascinating watch or a distraction from conversation.

Through five games, the Pacers have been more chatter than matter despite three very close contests to begin the season. Because my wife was busy doing something more important than watching the Pacers lose in Toronto last night (a broad swath of potential activities), I was left to talk to myself – which is something you can see me do twice each day on my YouTube channel. I asked myself a variety of questions. Hear are 14 of them (in honor of Sam Perkins, one of my favorite Pacers):

Do the Pacers realize that basketball isn’t drudgery?
Each member of the Pacers starting lineup (minus Chris Duarte, who is on his rookie deal) earns roughly a quarter of a million dollars per game. That would pay four-to-five teachers, police, or firefighters for a year. All they need to do is play basketball for two-and-a-half hours while travelling via chartered jets and staying in luxurious hotels!
Did last night’s game interrupt something the players were more interested in?
Why did Rick Carlisle decide to coach another team given that his wealth is substantial, and he could easily lay on a beach sucking down Coronas with Snoop Dogg for the rest of his life?
Was Malcolm Brogdon born with structurally deficient hamstrings?
Will Duarte’s positive energy lift his teammates, or will he be dragged into the team’s intractable malaise?
Are we in the midst of another era when fans would prefer to sit in the Gainbridge Fieldhouse bars to being in their seats watching the game?
Why does Myles Turner often appear to be more enthusiastic as he supports teammates from the bench than when he’s on the floor?
Why did only the rookies sing Happy Birthday to Rick Carlisle as he “celebrated” the end of his 62nd trip around the Sun?
Can I discipline myself to watch another 77 of these games?
Are the other 29 NBA teams as ambivalent about basketball as this one seems to be?
How long until Pacers assistant and Butler alum Ronald Nored decides to run for Congress instead of coach apparently indifferent millionaires?
Do Chris Denari and Quinn Buckner like each other?
Who has it worse – the people who pay for tickets to watch this team or the people who get paid to watch this team?

Some of those questions are uneducated and reflect my angst in the moment as I watched the game. I did not enjoy asking myself those questions – or answering them alone in our living room. Maybe tomorrow night in Brooklyn the switch will flip and suddenly I will enjoy watching the Pacers again. It can happen just that quickly. That’s part of the fun of basketball too!

Overreacting to dismal starts is something that fans do, and I am a fan of the Pacers franchise. A 1-4 start is hard to ignore – regardless of injuries. Results always have a cause, and I’m afraid the cause for 1-4 is the same as the cause for my disinterest in our city’s NBA franchise.

I have great respect for Pacers ownership, affection for the management team, and a deep love of basketball. So why don’t I enjoy watching this team right now?

Carson Wentz spiking the ball early in Sunday’s game against the Titans would be a sign of good things to come.

When I was on Dan Dakich’s radio show Monday afternoon to talk about the Colts win in San Francisco, Dan stopped me after I made a claim that the Colts get off to slow starts not just at the beginning of every season, but also at the start of each game this season.

“Whoa, big boy, I’m not sure that’s true,” Dan said. Unsure of my gut feeling that the Colts started games slowly, I backtracked. We all know that the Colts have failed to win an opener since 2013, but the claim about starting games slowly was something I had not researched at all. I said it because I felt it, and sometimes feelings are inaccurate.

Not this time though.

Dan was right to call me on it. Just like a professor should call out a student who states beliefs without a corresponding citation, Dan wants his listeners to be able to trust information from his guests. That requires verification. So here is the verification:

Over the Colts seven games, they have been outscored by a total of 40-27 after each game’s first four combined possessions. This was especially problematic through the first four games as the Colts were digging out of a hole after each team possessed the ball twice. Scoring after four drives in those games was a combined 31-6.

After four awful starts, the Colts got things straightened out on the offensive end by scoring one touchdown in each of the first two drives of the next three games. Even with that reversal of early game fortune, the Colts are still averaging a puny 1.93 points per possession for the season on each of every game’s first two drives. That’s not nearly good enough to win games against quality opponents like the Titans.

Like I mentioned, the average points in the first two drives in each of the last three games is 3.5. That is plenty good enough to win over the course of an entire game – against anybody!

To dig even further into math – something I am not enthusiastic about – the first game between the Colts and Titans gave each team nine possessions. The ninth for the Titans was in the final minute of the game as quarterback Ryan Tannehill took a knee twice, so let’s call it eight possessions for Tennessee. That makes the Titans winning this game by only nine points pretty damn remarkable given their two interceptions and a fumble lost while the Colts were flawless in the turnover department.

In Titans drives that didn’t end in a turnover, they gained an average of 49 yards and scored an average of five points. Those numbers reflect a Colts defensive debacle that could have generated a far more lopsided result.

I know this is Optimism Wednesday, but while some are saying that the Colts could have won the first game between these combatants, the likely result was far, far worse. The only reason the Titans didn’t drop 40 on the Colts was because of their own sloppiness with the football.

To win Sunday, the Colts need to continue their three game string of offensive good starts and slow the running game – Derrick Henry is going to get his, but Tannehill accounted for a full third of the Titans rushing yards.

The Colts are in dire need of a win, a sad truth for all teams that start seasons 1-4, but unless the Colts defense plays lights out in a way they did not appear capable in Nashville, there is not much hope. Relying upon turnovers didn’t work last time, and it likely won’t this time.