He is doing his best to make it all seem normal. Everybody says the
right things and maybe it'll work out much sooner than everyone expects.
|  | | Reggie and good buddy Mark Jackson will be in competition from now on. |
But Reggie Miller knows in his heart of hearts that his best chance for an NBA
title has left town, on the sore feet of Rik Smits, the sore wallet of Dale Davis and the sore heart of Mark Jackson.
"I just won't be calling him like I used to at 2 or 3 o'clock in the
morning saying 'we should have won that ballgame,'" Miller says of his best
friend, Jackson. "Actually, I don't know who I will call now. I'll just
probably ... I'll probably just take it on the chin."
Ten years, more or less, of growing and sacrificing and fighting and
winning, and now that group, the heart of those Indiana Pacers, is gone.
Gone after Miller believed that most of them would be back, and that he'd
once again have the smartest team in the league, and that with the right
contributions from Indiana's young guns the Pacers would be playing in June
again.
Now, no one is talking about a title. When the Pacers are among the
elite again, it will likely be with Al Harrington and Jonathan Bender and
Jermaine O'Neal and Jalen Rose and Austin Croshere leading the way. Not
Reggie Miller. And not this season.
"You grow up on the schoolyards thinking it's just a game, and you're
just out here to have fun and to entertain and please the crowd," Miller
says. "But, you know, there's a lot of suits that sit in big offices and
they make a lot of calls. But right now, it's training camp, and it's early,
and I'm gonna wait and see. I haven't gone postal yet. I'm sure once the
games start, and if things don't fall my way, I'll probably voice my opinion
even louder."
He "bleeds blue and gold," Pacers colors, and he knows his history. He
knows that Indiana means Oscar Robertson and Larry Bird and Isiah Thomas,
who is now his coach, who is now asking Miller to take on a different, more
vocal role. With a new offense that looks suspiciously like the triangle,
Miller won't be the focal point all the time. He isn't penciled in for 25
shots a game, not every night, anyway, not with Rose getting $93 million and
Croshere $51 million.
| |  | |
| Rose |
| |  | |
| Jackson |
"Reggie's gonna be fine," Rose says. "I think that's blown a little out
of proportion. Reggie was just as close to Mark and Dale as we all were.
Mark Jackson was my neighbor. He stayed right behind me. Dale Davis was one
of my best friends on the team, as well as Antonio Davis. But we're
professionals. You've got to continue to move on."
It's not that simple, though. Miller flirted with the Jazz, but came
back to Indiana for $36 million over three years. And the only salient
question now is, is he happy he stayed? Would he have returned if he knew
Jackson, Davis and Smits weren't?
|
“ |
You get all the way to the Finals, everything that
all of these guys have been playing for. You get all the way to the Finals.
And you lose, and you have a chance to come back and win with the same team.
And everybody left. ” |
|
|
— Isiah Thomas |
"That's a great question," Miller says. "There's only a couple of
places I would have played, because you know I have to be competitive, and
you know I've gotta play at a certain level. Now, am I gonna be able to do
that now? Do I think I'm gonna be able to compete against the Knicks, the
Lakers, Miami? And (can) my team compete at that level that I'm used to for the
last six years? ... I don't know. But it's my job to make them think that
they can. And if I can pull off that with this young guys, then I might be
the greatest player than Indiana's ever had."
Thomas isn't masochistic. He took this job thinking the Pacers were
close to a title. He salivated at the thought of his young players rolling
through the regular season, then riding the wiles of his veterans in the
playoffs. But Jackson wanted more money. Davis wanted more money. And Smits
couldn't coax another season out of his feet. Thomas doesn't hide his
disappointment in the trio.
| |  | |
| D.Davis |
| |  | |
| Smits |
"Every championship team always has a conflict with management over
great pay," Thomas says. "So there always has to be a compromise. And most
championship teams wind up compromising great pay to have great success. Or
they find a happy medium. Or they get great pay after they've had great
success. Whether it be Chicago, Detroit, Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco
49ers. And that's the process that I tried to explain to him that didn't
happen here in Indiana ... You get all the way to the Finals, everything that
all of these guys have been playing for. You get all the way to the Finals.
And you lose, and you have a chance to come back and win with the same team.
And everybody left."
It is as if, he is told, Laimbeer and Dumars departed after Detroit
lost in the seventh game of the '88 Finals.
"Here's the analogy," Thomas says, the blood and the smile gone from his
face. "Laimbeer, Dumars, Rodman, Mahorn, Salley, them guys wouldn't
have left me. That wouldn't have happened."
(From Portland, Davis acknowledges that his demand for a trade may have
left his old team in a lurch. "We had a chance to compete for it all, and
they started making a couple of moves," Davis said. "The Mark Jackson move
was pretty big. And I had had tough times with my contract. When I lost my
option date [Davis was unable to void his contract in June 1999, when he
and his former agent missed the date by which he had to file for free
agency], I lost a lot of money, quite naturally. But I felt like really I
came back and played as hard as possible and definitely helped give us an
opportunity, give us a chance. I just looked at it as a good time to move
on. We just couldn't settle up on things.")
Now, Thomas has to keep Miller's interest. He has given Miller free
reign to challenge, to cajole, to encourage the twentysomethings. "I think
he realizes that this year, he needs those guys," Croshere said. "Whereas
last year, maybe he didn't."
Miller is sounding like his old coach, Larry Brown, these days. Talking
about guys not playing the right way, chucking up too many shots. "They
think that's ballin'," Miller says. "You know, that's not ballin'. You get
it done at the defensive end. It's how you make your teammates better. And
Isiah's stressing that from the sidelines, but you've gotta actually be in
the fire. And I think he's given me that leeway to say 'no, you're doing it
the wrong way.'"
The likelihood is that Miller will spend a lot of time doing just that
this season. But in the vastly inferior East, who's to say the Pacers can't
still be a favorite? How good are the Heat, for example, if Alonzo Mourning
is indeed out for a long period of time? How good are the Knicks? The
Hornets? The Bucks? Why can't Reggie Miller still dream?
"I'm sure it's gonna be tough for me to get shots, and to score 18 to
25 points a game," he says. "But, you know, they didn't pay Jalen, they
didn't pay Austin all that money for nothing. Hopefully, they'll be
aggressive on the offensive end. Yes, I still want to be aggressive
offensively, but that's not my role. My role is to compete and I'm sure I'll
be the first or second option and hopefully we'll make the playoffs through
the first 82 games.
"But as we all know, come playoff time, you know I'll hog the ball,
anyway, so does it really matter?"
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