Things haven't gone exactly according to plan in Indiana, unless you are listening to Isiah Thomas.

	Thomas' first year in Pacerland has been a disappointment.

The Pacers, in a street fight with the Celtics for the last playoff spot in the East, weren't supposed to struggle this much. Too much talent. Too much playoff savvy.

Then again ... Thomas didn't think that.

"I like where we are as a team, where we are as a franchise," Thomas said as March turned into April and the clock ticked down on the race. "When the season started we had to find a way to develop our young guys -- Al Harrington, Jeff Foster, Jonathan Bender, Jermaine O'Neal. I felt we had to develop them for the good of the franchise."

With Reggie Miller, Jalen Rose, Austin Croshere, Travis Best, Sam Perkins, he said, the Pacers would be a better team in the playoffs than they had been in the regular season. "No question about that. But we needed the young guys to come along."

But what if the Pacers don't make the postseason one year after playing the Lakers in a six-game Finals. "I'll deal with that if I have to but right now, I don't want to even consider it," Thomas said, flashing that small killer smile he liked to fix on his victims a decade ago.

There are more than a few, close to the Pacers, who say Thomas is more than a little disingenuous, that he is in large measure responsible for the uneven performance by Indiana this season. They point to 16 different starting lineups, the outright disappearance from the rotation of players who figure prominently for eight to 10 games at a set, bizarre substitutions in which productive players disappear on the bench.

	“	What strikes those who know what's going on is that Isiah doesn't appear to work very hard. He's constantly canceling [game day] shootarounds. He cancels practices. He's frequently late. You can say a lot of bad things about a lot of coaches but very few, if any, are late. ”
		— NBA insider on Thomas

It's easy to blame Rik Smits' retirement, the defection of Mark Jackson, the trade of Dale Davis.

As Rose noted, "Any time you change lineups there's going to be an adjustment. That's just a fact, especially with a young team."

Of course, Thomas is new at this. He competed as a superior point guard and won two titles in Detroit. He was the general manager in Toronto who gambled on Damon Stoudamire. He's also the guy who constantly tested Chuck Daly's patience, put a power move on Pistons owner Bill Davidson that cost him an executive's chair, lost out in another battle for control in Toronto, buried the CBA under the weight of unrealistic dreams. That's a lot of baggage.

In fairness, if you look at other ex-players in his age group, neither Byron Scott in New Jersey nor Sidney Lowe in Vancouver has been able to prod his team to a higher level. Still, neither started out with the Pacers' talent.

"What strikes those who know what's going on is that Isiah doesn't appear to work very hard," one insider charges. "He's constantly canceling [game day] shootarounds. He cancels practices. He's frequently late. You can say a lot of bad things about a lot of coaches but very few, if any, are late."

There was, in fact, one egregious example of this as the Pacers went into a tailspin in early March, losing four straight and seven of eight. It started with a loss at home to Seattle on March 2. Late that night, Thomas called his trainer and told him to cancel practice the next day and game day shootaround the day after that. Some of the players did not get the message. They all showed up a little bewildered for a game with the Nets and they were pounded 120-96. "I've never felt so unprepared for a game," Croshere complained.

Thomas says he learns by doing. He says he is almost surprised by his own patience in the job: "I didn't know I had it. I think it demands a certain amount of patience when you have a team like ours. If I had a veteran-laden team, where everyone knew what they were doing, then the inconsistencies would bother you. I haven't become frustrated. I understand it's part of the growing process."

He repeats the oft-spoken argument that the Pacers had peaked, that it was time to turn the page on some of the old vets. If he had them, he said, "it would be easier to win basketball games. But in the long run, would you win a championship with that? Probably not. You'd only frustrate yourself and cover your ass a little bit. For the most part, it was a team that had maxed out. We would be winning games and everything else, but when it got down to beating a team from the West, could we beat the team from the West? Probably not."

Critics say Thomas doesn't listen. Larry Bird was often described as dazed in his early days as Pacers coach, an unfair evaluation. Bird was always in control, but never overtly so. He had two bright assistants in Dick Harter and Rick Carlisle, whom many believe should have succeeded Bird. They proposed, Bird disposed. He learned. By the time he tired of the job he knew more than a little about what he was doing. Thomas has wise heads around him, but he doesn't often use them.

According to a source, things are not at all well between Thomas and Pacers president Donnie Walsh, who believed, as did many in Indianapolis, that at worst this would be a break-even year, but maybe a little better than that. They have had at least one conversation about Thomas' coaching style and the word is that matters were not resolved.

"I'm not upset with Isiah," Walsh said Monday. "I don't have misgivings. As far as the problems people told me I would have with him, I haven't seen it. I believe that in time he can be a great coach."

Clearly, Walsh is at least paying a short-term price with this hire. If Thomas hangs around and learns from his mistakes there may yet be dividends to reap. If not, Thomas goes the way of Dick Versace, who had an overblown opinion of himself. The Pacers had an intense dislike for Versace, but they respected his knowledge. They reportedly like Thomas, but do not hold him in high esteem as a coach. After all, how do you fool Reggie Miller. He dates back to Jack Ramsay.

Thomas said he only wants to coach until he wins two championships. It's a pat answer. Given his history of restlessness, who can believe he will stay more than a few years? The Hawks had that sense of Thomas who doggedly pursued their coaching job while Lenny Wilkens still held onto it. Even though he still owned the CBA, he built a home in a fashionable section of Atlanta and enrolled his children in private school. Among other reasons, the Hawks did not hire Thomas because they believed he was not dedicated to a coaching career.

One former Thomas intimate says there is no question that this a short term detour. "Isiah's in it for the money," he said. "He's a business guy, a promoter. The CBA came down around his ears. He dreamed big and he took it down and it's gonna cost him a little money. Coaching saves him financially."

There is a buyout in Thomas' contract. It's a year's pay, $5 million. It virtually guarantees Thomas will be working at Indiana next season.

Jeffrey Denberg, who covers the NBA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.