Indiana Pacers: 10 burning questions five games into the season

After a 1-4 start and an interesting first week, we’ve got more questions than answers with this Indiana Pacers team. I figured it’d be wise to consolidate some of the most important questions yet to be answered.

1)    Was Chris Duarte Snubbed from the NBA’s Top 75 List?

By all unbiased accounts, rookie Chris Duarte appears to be destined for a Hall of Fame career. Already averaging nearly 20 points and shooting almost 45% from 3, it seems likely that Duarte will finish in the top three all time in 3-pointers made, and it would make sense to proactively add him to this list as to avoid looking foolish in the future.

2)    Is the same witch who handles the Indiana Pacers’ injuries in charge of the 3rd quarters?

-20, -10, and -9, and -6 in the first 4 games, so far. Whatever we did to deserve another year of this? How can we atone?

3)    What will it take to make Rick Carlisle smile?

Perhaps if we pretended that we were announcing the starting lineups like usual, but instead of each player coming out, there were golden retrievers in their respective jerseys, and for a moment, it appeared the Indiana Pacers were going to play a game with five golden retrievers. I know that’d make me smile.

4)    With the Indiana Pacers finally shooting more 3s, is it time for a reunion with a certain former player of ours?

Forgive me if this is obvious, but there’s a certain Pacer in recent memory who could really shoot it, was way ahead of his time, and probably still has some left in the tank. That’s right, I think we should see if Sarunas Jasikevicius would be willing to play with us this season.

5)    Is Myles going to score between 11 and 39 points in any game this season?

With nine, 40, four, five, and ten so far, I’m hoping Myles Turner fully commits to this all-or-nothing approach and stays consistently unpredictable.

6)    Does Justin Holiday miss his brother?

Not in the basketball sense, just in general. I bet it’s hard to go from playing with your brother every day to him being your opponent and living several hundred miles away. Truly wild stuff.

7)    Would Goga be considered a bust if he didn’t have such a fun name?

He didn’t see the floor yet in the first three games, and didn’t look like a dramatically different player against the Bucks. If his name wasn’t something so awesome like Goga (perhaps TJ?), would we be talking about this pick being a big miss?

8)    How many games are they going to lose this year where they score 130+ in regulation?

We already lost one in OT where we scored 134, so losing 131-130 in regulation doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. Defense is going to be optional once again on a lot of nights this year.

9)    Is GainBridge a real company?

This has been driving me crazy since the naming rights were announced. I haven’t heard of this company once, and they have the money to sponsor an arena? Honestly, I never heard a lot of talk in the world about Conseco or “Banker’s Life” either. I’m afraid the Indiana Pacers naming rights is part of a Ponzi scheme or something.

10) What happened in the games?

Bally Sports can’t agree to a deal with my cable provider, so I guess I’ll never know.