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Larry Bird’s Mistakes Set Up the Indiana Pacers for Mediocrity

By Ben Gibson

May 16, 2016; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Indiana Pacers new head coach Nate McMillan and president of basketball operations Larry Bird speak to the press during a press conference at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports
May 16, 2016; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Indiana Pacers new head coach Nate McMillan and president of basketball operations Larry Bird speak to the press during a press conference at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports /
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Larry Bird and Nate McMillan of the Indiana Pacers
May 16, 2016; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Indiana Pacers new head coach Nate McMillan and president of basketball operations Larry Bird speak to the press during a press conference at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports /

The Indiana Pacers season was destined to fail, but everyone hoped the team would overcome its shortcomings. How much of the blame falls on Larry Bird?

The Indiana Pacers season was doomed to fail. Or at least they shouldn’t have been expected to be a top four team in the East and Larry Bird deserves a good deal of the blame.

Hold on, this isn’t a postmortem hot take. Just stay with me here.

Hindsight is 20/20. It is very easy to wait until all is said and done to make a grand pronouncement of what was wrong. That’s one reason I like Stan Van Gundy’s “Write the story while the ball is in the air.” motto. If you can’t make your point before the situation terminates itself, there rarely is value in that assessment.

But here is the thing: We pointed out a lot of these issues before the season even started. From the moment Larry Bird fired Frank Vogel, we started to see that the Indiana Pacers might be in trouble.

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