Faces and Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Indiana Pacers

A year ago at this time the Indiana Pacers were considered one of the best team in the NBA. Now they are mostly irrelevant to the average NBA fan as Indiana struggles to make the 8th seed in a disappointing Eastern Conference. Outside of the Hoosier State, and even in it, you don’t hear many people talking about the Pacers.

Mark Travis posed a question in a recent post on But The Game is On, one that explored the Purgatory in which Indiana resides.

"Did we ever really care about the Pacers?I don’t think we ever did. I think that we were so intent on finding a rival for one of the best teams ever assembled that the Pacers became our deeply flawed darling. Once the KG Celtics began to disperse, it seemed that we were in such a forceful stretch of dominance from the Heat that, as entertaining as that team was to watch, the season would be boring until they got to the Finals, which was always a foregone conclusion."

I think the answer is much more complicated than yes or no. Or maybe that the answer changed over time.

Travis explains how the Pacers grew from underdog to the Miami Heat’s rival, and that the average fan jumped on board to cheer for the one team in the Eastern Conference who might stop them. Travis is certainly right about the fact the average fan doesn’t care about the Pacers any more. But I don’t know if it is true they never cared. You have to add some perspective to how and exactly why the Indiana Pacers fell from grace in the public’s eye. Losing Paul George and playing sub-.500 basketball is a big part, but the love for the Pacers had died well before this season began.

Remember when LeBron and Nike tried to embrace the “villain” role? They filmed what is the equivalent of a wrestling heel promo.

But to fall from grace you have to once be there, and for that let’s start out by going back to that 2012 playoff series where the Pacers mounted their first real challenge to the Miami Heat and LeBron James, and think about exactly where the league was at that time. The story of the national perception of the Indiana Pacers in recent years correlated heavily with people’s opinion of the Miami Heat.

We weren’t far removed from The Decision, one of the biggest heel turns in sports history. If you aren’t familiar with the wrestling term and the art of kayfabe, a heel is the antagonist to the hero (face) or protagonist. When LeBron James went to Miami in the fashion he did it was perceived, fairly or not, to be in line with the Wikipedia definition of a classic heel character.

"In order to gain heat (with boos and jeers from the audience), heels are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner by breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the standards of the match. Others do not (or rarely) break rules but instead exhibit unlikeable, appalling and deliberately offensive and demoralizing personality traits such as arrogance, cowardice, or contempt for the audience. Many heels will do both, cheating as well as behaving nastily. No matter the type of heel, the most important job is that of the antagonist role. Heels exist to provide a foil to the face wrestlers. If a given heel is cheered over the face, a promoter may opt to turn that heel to face, or to make the wrestler do something even more despicable to encourage heel heat."

The heat LeBron got for going to the Heat (see what I did there?) came from the idea that announcing it on national television was an arrogant move, even if the money was for the Boys and Girls Club. Much like leaving your fiancé at the alter as AJ did to Daniel Bryan on Monday Night Raw, it was the idea of disappointing the Cleveland Cavaliers fan base in such a public fashion as he did made him out to be the bad guy, rightly or wrongly.

Before they won the title in 2012, LeBron and company were still the heels of the league. The Pacers were the underdogs set against an opponent who by virtue of putting together a super-team, were seen as the bad guys.

But back to the Pacers and Heat in 2012. Indiana was the face to Miami’s heel. America had rallied around the Dallas Mavericks the year before, and now they saw Indiana leading the Heat 2-1 going into Game 4 of the series. The Pacers were a face in the style of Daniel Bryan: They weren’t the traditional power, and being a small-market team gave them a certain pluck and charm like an undersized Danial Bryan has. They even showed the humility that endear face characters to the audience: When the got the first win of the series in Miami, David West hurried them team off the court, epitomizing the idea that this was a gritty, blue-collar team. Dwyane Wade played the heel role perfectly as he complained even then that somehow the Pacers were celebrating too much.

This heel move didn’t help his cause either.

Think the idea of heel turns and villains and wrestling promos sounds crazy?

Remember when LeBron and Nike tried to embrace the ‘villain’ role? They filmed what is the equivalent of a wrestling promo.

LeBron was drawing heat like one of the top heels in the WWE could only hope.

Though the Pacers would lose the next three games to the Heat in 2012, it was the beginning of one of the NBA’s best rivalries for the next two seasons. While Indiana was still the likable underdog in the playoffs that year and the next, something important happened the year before in 2011 that was important to changing the fan dynamics with the Heat and how they were received going forward.

They were still considered to be the villains in many fans eyes in 2012, but the loss in the NBA Finals had a softening affect on the Heat’s image, They were humbled by one of the biggest faces in basketball, Dirk Nowitzki. Dirk and his tag-team partner of Jason “Jet” Terry came back and vanquished the arrogant Dwyane and company, letting fans believe the idea that you couldn’t just throw a super-team together, you had to earn it. Like almost every storyline is wrestling history, the villain got their comeuppance and was put in their place.

Before they won the title in 2012, LeBron and company were still the heels of the league. In the playoff series with Indiana, the Pacers were the underdogs set against an opponent who by virtue of putting together a super-team, were seen as the bad guys. Our hero Pacers were like Daniel Bryan, trying to earn their rightful place at the top and looking to vanquish the Heat. Even though they lost the series, the Pacers were the faces that some NBA fans were learning to love.

Just like with professional wrestling, you can try to make someone the face of the company, but if the fans don’t buy it, they can quickly turn.

But on the flip-side of every heel is the face and his journey to the top. For the Heat, the loss in 2011 was humbling, but when they came back and won the title the next season, it helped change the way average fans viewed them and LeBron James.

No longer was he the king without a crown, LeBron was a champion. For a casual NBA fan it was now more fun to cheer for him since he accomplished that, and even for some spiteful fans, the championship wasn’t ever going to go away, so why keep hoping for his and the Heat’s demise?

Plus, little things here and there were helping endear themselves to the casual fan. A moment like when Paul George and LeBron traded shots and showed mutual respect made LeBron look like the good guy, or at least not the bad guy. This was a new repacked LeBron, and the Heat had a new gimmick: Redemption.

If you weren’t a fan of one of the teams LeBron was trying to beat, it became easy to see him as a likable guy who had made some mistakes, got what he deserved, but built himself and his team back up and earned two titles in the process. He, and by proxy the Miami Heat, had made their face turn.

Back to the Pacers 2013-14 season. Indiana gets things going early with a nine game win streak. Paul George is is throwing down insane dunks, Lance Stephenson is is making crazy shots, Roy Hibbert joined PG to become a big part of All-Star Weekend.

Things were good in Naptown.

Then this happened.

The Pacers weren’t attacking anyone back stage, but you could argue a lot of NBA fans saw this as “contemptible” or “acting in a haughty or superior manner,” classic heel behavior. With that and with the internal issues with the team now leaking out and showing themselves on the court in the form of The Struggle. People started to see the Pacers as a team acting like they had already won something.

Just like with professional wrestling, you can try to make someone the face of the company, but if the fans don’t buy it, they can quickly turn.

Without diving into speculation of why, it was apparent the locker room was not united. As the team’s performance on the floor got worse, it became easy to mock and start hating the Pacers for the casual fan. The Pacers were now losing games and weren’t nearly as fun to watch, and then even within the fan base in Indiana, some were turning on Lance Stephenson as he appeared more and more like a heel character himself. He was arguing with teammates, fighting with teammates, and then for his final act, blowing in LeBron’s ear.

The circle was complete: LeBron was now the face to Lance Stephenson’s heel, and their teams went with them.

All the blame shouldn’t go to entirely Lance Stephenson or any one player. But for both NBA and Pacers fans, he was the center of attention and made it hard to cheer for Indiana. Sure winning and losing mattered during all this, but actions and words of all the parties involved played into the perceptions fans had of them.

The circle was complete: LeBron was now the face to Lance Stephenson’s heel, and their teams went with them.

They always do. It is easy to overlook problems when a team is winning, but they’ll eventually come to light.

As Indiana fell apart internally the casual fans found it easy to mock the GQ photo shoot and anything else Indiana did. It wasn’t as if the sentiments weren’t there before, but now fans had little problem letting everyone know.

You know things had really gone to hell when the WWE put Damian Sandow in a Lance Stephenson jersey to troll fans when RAW visited Indianapolis. Seriously, what level of NBA Hell is it when you can draw that sort of cheap heat by putting a wrestler in the jersey of a hometown player? Stephenson hadn’t signed with the Charlotte Hornets yet, but the WWE knew the reaction Sandow would draw in Stephenson’s jersey.

The Pacers-Heat Rivalry is gone, Paul George is hurt, and LeBron is working on completely redeeming himself if he can bring a championship to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Without Paul George any interest in the Pacers nationally has almost completely vanished. It hasn’t helped how much of the season both David West and George Hill missed either. Unlike the Heat were in the 2011 season and into 2012, Indiana hasn’t even been fun for teams to hate.

The Pacers did fall into the Purgatory that Travis spoke of: Irrelevance. You could even say that the Pacers were jobbers at the beginning of this season.

Indiana was humbled last year by the way they finished the season. They got their comeuppance. It is now time for them to redeem themselves.

But the Indiana Pacers are working on making another face turn of their own. George Hill is making the Pacers a winning team again, at least in the month of February. If Paul George can return from injury and get Indiana back into playoff contention this year or most likely next, then the casual fan might be cheering on the underdog heroes once again. Indiana was humbled last year by the way they finished the season. They got their comeuppance. It is now time for them to redeem themselves.

Paul George’s injury and his recovery sets up a story line the average fan can get behind. If Paul George can get the Pacers to the playoffs after going through his horrific leg injury, it would be hard to the average NBA fan not wanting to see them succeed.

Maybe then, the average fan will care about the Indiana Pacers once again.

Next: The George Hill/David West Pick and Roll Is Back

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