INDIANAPOLIS – Mark Boyle is making jokes and Rick Fuson is breaking news, and the Indiana Pacers are fun again. It helps that Victor Oladipo is hitting shots in that 118-111 scrimmage victory against the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday. That’s fun, too.
And that’s what we’re looking for out of the Pacers to finish the 2019-20 NBA season, correct? No, silly, we’re not looking for them to make a deep run into the 2020 NBA playoffs. If they do, terrific. But that’s not why we needed the Pacers to come out of that coronavirus hibernation.
Here’s why we need them: Because we need fun. Lord knows, real life isn’t giving us any these days. School openings are being delayed, football season is being debated, and politics? Don’t get me started on politics. It’s an absolute train wreck here in America, your side hating my side, and my side hating yours. Turn on a television news program. Use that phone to find your preferred form of social media. Look at us.
Now, do yourself a favor: Take a hammer to your TV set. Throw your phone into the trash.
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Hey, we’re just having fun here, aren’t we? The Pacers were having some on Sunday, even if this was their first game after the announced indefinite loss of All-Star center Domas Sabonis to plantar fasciitis, a brutal development for their postseason chances. But as I’ve said, forget their postseason chances. Let’s not hang our happiness on that. Let’s just enjoy what we have.
And what we had on Sunday was Oladipo looking very much like the dominant All-Star he was in 2017-18, before that torn quadriceps tendon last season. He was hitting 3-pointers, then longer ones, then chucking a 30-foot heat check against the Mavericks’ zone. As it turns out … yep. Still hot.
In 28 minutes Oladipo had 16 points, seven rebounds and three assists. He made four 3-pointers. He blocked a shot, played all kinds of good defense, and looked like the fastest player on a court.
That’s fun.
But you need to tune into the Pacers’ broadcast. Near as I can tell, not many of you did that on Sunday. For one thing, the Pacers or the NBA or Xfinity or whoever is in charge of this whole streaming-on-TV thing still can’t get it figured out. All over social media, people were lamenting being unable to watch the game on Sunday. That included me, too, for a second scrimmage in a row … until I gave up on my TV and streamed the game from Pacers.com on my laptop. The stream counter showed 963 people were watching with me.
Fuson and Boyle, Chris Denari and Quinn Buckner, they’re saying great stuff like …
That’s Quinn Buckner you hear screaming into the microphone at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, where he and Denari will broadcast the rest of the season, same as Mark Boyle and Slick Leonard when the games are back on radio starting with the regular-season return Saturday against Philadelphia.
Doncic had just fouled Myles Turner, who had posted up Doncic and pivoted him into oblivion. It looked old school, like something Jack Sikma would have done – look him up, kids – and was proof of what Turner has been telling people, that he worked almost non-stop on his low-post offense during his time away. Which had Mark Boyle, the second-half guest of Denari and Buckner, wondering how that was possible during a quarantine.
“What is he doing?” Boyle was musing. “In his kitchen, posting up on his sink?”
Boyle was on one in the second half, wondering at one point about the public-address announcer shouting his little heart out after Mavericks baskets at the empty HP Field House on the Walt Disney campus.
“If you have no fans,” Boyle was wondering, “why do you need a P.A. announcer?”
This guy.
And get a load of Denari and Buckner’s guest in the first half, Pacers president Rick Fuson, who dropped a #RickBomb by letting us know what’s been happening at Bankers Life Fieldhouse while the riots were raging and the coronavirus was spreading and the Pacers were making their way to Orlando for the NBA’s restart.
“That hasn’t stopped,” Fuson said of a $360 million construction project designed to have Bankers Life Fieldhouse ready for the 2021 NBA All-Star Game. “It’s going to be a different arena when people come back, especially on the event level and the lower bowl.”
“The practice floor been raised a level,” he’s saying, and now he has my full attention. “The Fever’s locker room is below that. Now the court is at street level.”
Are you picturing this? The Pacers’ old practice court – before they opened the St. Vincent Center across the street – used to be down in the basement of Bankers Life Fieldhouse. It was weird. You’d walk south on Delaware Street, with the arena on your right, and look into that window there and … there’s the practice court. Down in the basement.
But now, apparently, the Pacers elevated the court to street level, and put locker rooms below it. Boggles my mind. And then Boyle comes along and asks if Myles Turner is posting up his kitchen sink, and we’ve gone completely off the rails.
This was a Dallas “home” game, which means the Mavericks were in charge of game operations. Their P.A. guy. Their music during timeouts. Their advertisements on the LED boards. The Mavericks must have quite a partnership with Michelob Ultra, is all I’ll say about that.
When the Pacers were the home team on Saturday against Portland, we saw plenty of their leading partner, Kroger. That’s advantage: Pacers. See, I can’t stand beer, but I love Kroger. Buy all of my food, and even some of my clothes there. Don’t @ me.
At one point Buckner is saying, “Yeah, I liked it better – no offense – when it was a Pacers home game. The signage looked so good. And so familiar.”
Maybe Quinn gets his clothes from Kroger too.
The broadcast is so good, you forget these guys are doing it from Bankers Life Fieldhouse, almost 1,000 miles north of Orlando. At one point Oladipo is curling off a screen, catching a pass from Malcolm Brogdon (17 points, seven rebounds, six assists in 28 minutes), and drilling a 3-pointer. A little later he’s splitting 6-7 Dorian Finney-Smith and 7-4, 290-pound Boban Marjanovic, encountering 6-7 Luka Doncic and seeing the rapid approach of 6-5 Tim Hardaway Jr. Oladipo takes flight and wraps a pass around Doncic, out to Brogdon on the opposite elbow, where he drains a 3-pointer.
Chris Denari is saying, “All the things we were hearing about Victor in his individual workouts, all the (dominant) things he was doing 5-on-5, you knew he needed to get through that first game on Thursday to get to where we are today.”
Perfect thing to say, right time, and you realize these guys are giving us gold from 1,000 miles away. And there’s Rick Fuson, the man who helps dictate where the team’s money goes, thinking the same thing …
“Now that I’ve seen you do this,” Fuson is telling Denari and Buckner, “I don’t know that we need to have you back on the road again.”
Now they’re laughing, Buckner and Denari, but Buckner settles down and speaks up.
“But Mr. President,” he’s telling Fuson, “let me make my own plea here: Chris and I need our own feel of the game.”
Answers Fuson: “I think what we’ll do is give you some more 3D stuff, get you some popcorn for the ‘feel,’ maybe get you a hot dog after the game. Any time we can save a little cash, it’s a great idea.”
Everyone’s having a good time, especially when Mark Boyle replaces Fuson in the second half and lays out his tanking-for-travel strategy.
“My goal now,” Boyle says of the radio games he’ll soon be broadcasting from Bankers Life Fieldhouse, “is to do a mediocre job in light of what Rick Fuson told you in the first half. He needs to understand that we need to be on site. That’s our goal.”
Said Buckner: “That’s got to be our plea going forward.”
And Denari: “We were very serious about things, but boy he took it to another level.”
All in fun. Check out the stream Tuesday at 4 p.m. when the Pacers play their final scrimmage against the San Antonio Spurs. A good time will be had.
And it sure does help when Oladipo is making his shots.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.