Okay, so as it turned out, I was wrong. Larry Bird, despite sounding like he wanted to return, will resign as Pacers president. He’ll apparently stick around for the draft, but after that, he will be replaced by the familiar face of Donnie Walsh, who is coming off a one-year hiatus as Knicks president.
Dang.
Not that I have anything against Walsh. After all, he was the dude that drafted Reggie Miller, but it’s sad to see the Legend go, especially after all that patience and hard work is beginning to finally pay off.
Oh, and as expected, David Morway will be replaced as GM by Kevin Pritchard. Several sources claim Pritchard is a colossal prick who cares more about his own career advancement than the team (partly due to his messy split from Portland) but Bird trusts him and he does appear to be pretty competent.
Pritchard and Walsh are apparently already speaking up to 15 times and meeting 5 times a day to discuss…stuff. Hopefully they know that they are doing.
Right now, the priority is to re-sign Roy Hibbert and George Hill, which I believe they will. After that, the Pacers have a bit of space, but not as lot as initially envisaged, to sign a free agent or two. The Pacers need someone to facilitate the offense, and of course, they would LOVE Deron Williams, but the chances of him coming are ZERO (he has already narrowed it down to Brooklyn and the Dallas, apparently). And the next best option, Steve Nash only has a slightly higher chance than ZERO of joining the Pacers. So you can all stop dreaming. Then again, I may have said the same thing about David West, so you never know…
So who’s left after that? There’s OJ Mayo, who almost came to the Pacers before Morway botched it. There’s Jamal Crawford, whom the Pacers remain interested in. Both would be upgrades on Leandro Barbosa and provide much needed bench scoring.
The Pacers also need another reserve big to relieve Big Roy, and Chris Kaman had come up before in conversations, but is regarded as risky because of health concerns.
Another alternative is the Bucks’ Ersan Ilyasova, a skiled big man who put up impressive numbers last season but it remains to be seen whether it was a fluke.
Indiana native Eric Gordon would be a massive boost (provided he remains healthy), but he is a restricted free agent and the Hornets have cleared up enough cap room to keep him, so he’s pretty much out. Plus with Anthony Davis heading to New Orleans the team might eventually get somewhere…eventually.
Oh, and apparently Brandon Roy is making a comeback. He is supposedly better now, and the Pacers could have a shot, albeit a slim one.
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