The NBA has decided that the Indiana Pacers are not impressive enough to warrant attention as they return from their first truly awful season in decades. The Pacers were not selected for any of the opening day festivities or holiday action. They're stuck in purgatory instead.
The NBA has decided that Tyrese Haliburton and his road back to the level he was at the last time we saw him, just before he tore his Achilles tendon, is not worth a single nationally televised game in the first week of the season.
The NBA has concluded, it seems, that the Pacers are not interesting enough to platform or promote. It has unilaterally chosen that teams are not allowed to be celebrated until they have proven they are good. That would be fair, if they hadn't scheduled the Philadelphia 76ers for both Christmas Day and the season opener.
It smells a lot like disrespect. And it's stupid to see that coming from the league office instead of just online fans.
While Indiana has plenty of storylines to keep track of and one of the most exciting styles of play, they're treated like the type of team that they have so routinely beat.
While the Pacers run and attack mismatches, they do not have a top-10 player in the NBA. While they score effectively, they do not have a scorer so singular that they turn a random Tuesday into a "get to your nearest screen right now" text and an unforgettable evening.
But they do have a good team, and that should certainly count for something.
The Pacers deserve more
Indiana has, by all accounts, three top-25 players (if you believe in Tyrese Haliburton returning to form), five players in the top 60, and a coach who, while flawed, has won one of the hardest titles ever.
It shouldn't be hard to create a basketball middle class, where teams are given a fair amount of respect that is proportional to both what they are expected to be and what they can be. Maybe the shot at the Sixers was not fair. They are, after all, a team with LeBron James. That will get views, and the NBA is a business.
But it's simply not fair that a Pacers team with so much talent, with so many storylines to watch, fighting their way out of the web of a 19-win gap-year, is treated as if they are the fourth worst team in the league, as their record could suggest in a vacuum.
Basketball is a business.
The Pacers have the eighth smallest market and the fourth worst team according only to attendance and team record. They are not meant to be highlighted by an NBA league office that has only been getting more and more star focused in an era of online notoriety and social media.
But that doesn't mean it's right.
What happened to exciting basketball? What happened to loving the game for the watching experience and not just for the names involved? What happened to the game we loved?
The Pacers embody all of that.
To discard them on the dawn of the return to the sport is to reject all that once mattered in favor of views.
It's not just disrespect. It is an outright tragedy.
Add us as a preferred source on Google