8p9s Roundtable: Did the 2000 Pacers Stand a Chance vs. Shaq and Kobe?

Who was the most important Pacers player on that team?

Gibson: Reggie Miller is the correct answer, but Jalen Rose pulled his weight as the second leading scorer for the team as well averaging 20.8 points a game. He was also second in assists (3.4 per a game) to Mark Jackson’s 7.7. He also was third is usage during the playoff run, so you can’t say he was just being ball dominant. Miller lead the team, for sure, but Rose helped carry the load.

Donahue: “Important” always means different things to different people, so people may interpret this question differently than I will. They’ll be wrong, so ignore them. Reggie was the most important Pacer on pretty much every team he was on over the course of his career. There were often other Pacers who were “better” — from Chuck Person to Detlef Schrempf to Jalen Rose to Jermaine O’Neal — but they rarely mattered as much as Miller did. By 2000, Jalen Rose was the “best” Pacer. It’s often easy to forget exactly how good he was at that point in time. However, the Pacer universe revolved around Reggie, and nobody really bothered to pretend otherwise.

Furr: The most important Pacer was always Reggie, but his supporting cast was huge in the playoffs. Travis “dribble for 20 seconds and chuck it” Best had a game-winning 3, Jalen Rose was a terribly underrated player (and still is, in my opinion), Rik Smits was a safety net in the post, Mark Jackson was still one of the best passers in the NBA, and Austin Croshere was exactly what the team needed as a 6th man (and probably 10 years ahead of the NBA curve; he’d make $9-10 million a year in today’s NBA). This was Reggie’s team though, and they were only going to go as far as he took them.

Washburn: Reggie was without a doubt their best player in the playoffs, but I’ve always thought that Jalen was their most important player because he was the one guy on the entire team that could actually create his own shot (unless you include Travis Best and whatever it was he tried to do on every single horrible, ball-stopping possession). Jalen’s game opened things up for Reggie and others, and he was even better the next season when he averaged 21/6/5 while playing better defense than most people remember.

Next: Best Pacers Team Ever?