They have youth. They have length. They have 10 wins and only two losses and their famed closer hasn't taken a shot yet. They have one of the best general managers in the league, quite possibly the best GM to never win Executive of the Year. They have, in the words of the GM, the "next-best thing" to Shaquille O'Neal by lining up two 7-footers who can score. They have maybe the best defensive player in the league, too, which isn't often said about guys 6-foot-7. Plus they have the coolest arena on the NBA map to house all of it.

They are the Indiana Pacers, sprouting dangerously from America's hoops heartland, and they have one more submission for that stacked checklist.

	Believe it, Isiah haters. Zeke can coach.

They have a coach, too.

It's not just results that make the argument for Isiah Thomas, after two years of skepticism that really rankled Donnie Walsh, Isiah's aforementioned boss.

The argument is augmented by the knowledge that Thomas spent the summer looking at everything the well-stocked Pacers have -- Reggie Miller to win games, Jermaine O'Neal and Brad Miller to carry the team from the front line, the beastly Ron Artest to hound everyone -- and concluded he would have to invent an offense to capitalize on all those commodities.

Yes, invent. Or at least concoct.

Only a coach would do that.

"Isiah came to me, showed it to me and I tried to find flaws in it," Walsh said. "I had to sit back and say, 'This is pretty good.' "

Isiah calls it "Quick," and his Pacers have grasped it fast, jumping to a 10-2 start that impresses you in spite of a cushy opening schedule once you remember that Reggie has missed all of it.

It's a hybrid system that borrows from Tex Winter's triangle offense, John Wooden's high-post shuffle cut and the weak-side passing game Thomas ran at Indiana for Bob Knight. Positions are largely immaterial; Isiah's Quick offense involves swinging the ball from side to side repeatedly, constant screening and cutting and, most of all, read-and-react instincts that operate totally counter to the way Thomas' Detroit Pistons played, when either Thomas or Chuck Daly called out a play. On one side, the Pacers can be found running the triangle/shuffle cuts portion of the system. On the other, the players are moving in passing-game patterns.

"I just wanted to come up with something different," Isiah explained.

That he has. The Pacers have five players averaging in double figures, even with Uncle Reggie still wearing turtlenecks. In spite of the fact as well that, with Miller out, the Pacers' top seven scorers don't include anyone over the age of 26.

The balance has helped the Pacers break from the Indy .500 pattern that marked Thomas' first two seasons as coach: 41-41, then 42-40 last season. As a bonus, all of the above have led to the first loud media praise of Thomas as a coach.

"I'm sure he's going to get his due this year," Detroit president and former teammate Joe Dumars said.

Not that he's looking for it. Thomas insists, a decade removed from the forever sting of his Dream Team snub and after a lifetime of various bashings, he isn't holding out for anyone's kudos. This is his chance to hit back at everyone who questioned his work ethic or motives for coaching or the inarguably petty assertion that he smiles too much. But he won't.

	“	This is a redemption for our players. I would say a lot of the credit has to go to them. Other young teams haven't been asked to go out and do what this team has been asked to do. They're doing it. They're working their asses off and getting it done. ”
		— Isiah Thomas

"This is a redemption," Thomas said, "for our players.

"I would say a lot of the credit has to go to them. Other young teams haven't been asked to go out and do what this team has been asked to do. They're doing it. They're working their asses off and getting it done.

"Some people, with us being young and going to the playoffs the last two years, somehow that got turned around to where I was using youth as an excuse for not winning (in the playoffs). I still don't understand how that was an excuse. You're not asking other young teams to do these things.

"But it comes with the territory. I've been on the entertainment stage since high school. As a player, some people like the way you play and some people don't. As a broadcaster, as a GM, a coach, some people like you and some don't. No one likes reading or hearing bad things about themselves, but ..."

Said Walsh, bothered more by past critiques than Isiah himself: "That's because it's not very understandable. Basically we've been rebuilding the team since he got here and made the playoffs both years. That's pretty substantial. But he's a pretty tough guy. I can't say that he likes (criticism), but I think he moves on."

Call it a read-and-no react approach. And, truth is, Thomas shouldn't have to defend his coaching career so much. Before he took over for Larry Bird, the Pacers -- fresh off a 2001 Finals appearance -- traded away Dale Davis for O'Neal and lost Mark Jackson (free agency) and Rik Smits (retirement). Jalen Rose was then dispatched last February for Artest and Brad Miller. Both times Thomas has taken the Pacers to the playoffs, they were eliminated by the team (Philadelphia, then New Jersey) that reached the Finals.

Then came summer school, and Thomas' compilation of a six-inches-thick screed that holds all the research and jottings that led to his Quick offense.

If it keeps working, Thomas better call the patent office. If it doesn't, credit him for having the daring to be inventive in what was universally viewed as a telltale season for him.

"That's what we as coaches do," said Thomas, who actually began his Quick research two years. "That's the kind of stuff we sit around talking about."

Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here.