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The Indiana Pacers’ decision of blowing up their roster and rebuilding two years ago was absolutely the right one to make. However, the Pacers haven’t procured the necessary amount of talent to have any semblance of a bright future. Instead, the stiffs and mediocrities that currently comprise the Pacers roster have steered the Pacers to a 10-23 record, with the latest loss the most humiliating one—a 132-89 annihilation at the hands of the New York Knicks. While individual losses are often overblown, the performance exposed the myriad reasons why the Pacers will be dismal for seasons to come. The Pacers starting lineup consisted of Earl Watson, Luther Head, Mike Dunleavy, Josh McRoberts, and Roy Hibbert. Three career backups, a brittle wing still gathering his bearings after returning from injury, and a gentle giant. Has there been a more impotent starting lineup fielded by a team this season?Roy Hibbert had some success in the paint, but his hooks are too slow-developing and mechanical to elude shot blockers coming over once Hibbert begins his moves.Hibbert had some success from the high post, hitting jumpers from up to 20-feet out and making nifty passes from the high post—7 AST, 0 TO.However, Hibbert showed zero athleticism. He had difficulty finishing near the hoop, he made no effort to show on the far side of screens, he was ineffective on nearly all his interior rotations, he was beaten on the glass, and he had to give David Lee too much room to shoot because of Hibbert’s lack of foot speed. As a result, Lee was able to shoot 18-foot jumpers to his heart’s content and finished with 22 points on 9-16 shooting.Because of Hibbert’s defensive tardiness, his game is synonymous with foul trouble. Indeed, Hibbert fouled out against the Knicks.Mike Dunleavy may be the weakest player pound-for-pound in the entire league. He was abused on the boards and defensive end of the court, displayed a questionable handle, and made awful outlet passes. His only redeeming quality was his ability to curl off of two weak-side down screens to free himself at the top of the key where he sank a trio of jumpers.Aside from one half of the 2007-2008 season, Dunleavy has always been a disappointment in the pros.Josh McRobers turned his head, misread defenses, and airballed a layup in 19 forgettable minutes.Earl Watson has been pressed into starters duty recently after Jim O’Brien deservedly benched T.J. Ford for being a shooting guard in a point guard body. However, Watson is at his best as a tempo-pushing backup who can pressure the ball and make plays in a broken field.As a starter trying to initiate Indiana’s offense, Watson was a disaster—4-12 FG, 1-6 3FG, 1 AST, 4 TO, 9 PTS.As a smallish shooting guard, Luther Head was simply posted or shot over by New York’s assortment of oversized wings. And he couldn’t shoot away his liabilities—7-15 FG, 2-7 3FG, 18 PTS—with most of his points coming well into garbage time.Solomon Jones offered no resistance on Lee’s jump shot, had no presence in the paint, and didn’t do anything to warrant being in the rotation.A.J. Price is a not-so-quick shooting guard in a point guard’s body who couldn’t get into the paint. In other words, a pine-rider.Brandon Rush is a shooter who shot too many blanks—2-13 FG, 0-6 3FG, 0 AST, 2 TO, 6 PTS. Like Price, his defense was a disaster.Travis Diener can’t run an offense, can’t penetrate, can’t defend, and only has value when he’s knocking down his threes.Dahntay Jones was the only Indiana player who sometimes made acceptable baseline rotations, who spoke on defense, and who played with any muscle whatsoever, though he too was guilty of losing focus on the defensive end. Perhaps after half a season away from Denver’s defensive organized chaos, Jones’ chops have been dulled playing with his new sad-sack teammates?Offensively, Jones was at his best as a baseline runner and doesn’t quite have three-point range on his jump shot.The Pacers took 30 threes out of their 91 shot attempts, the majority of them quick triggers with no exploration inside the arc.The Pacers didn’t have any player who consistently broke down the Knicks defense, nor who could create offense for either himself or others.Because Indiana’s wings either are too small or play too small, Wilson Chandler, Danilo Gallinari, and Al Harrington feasted on Watson, Head, Rush, Price, Dunleavy, and Dahntay Jones and were able to finish at the hoop with ease.Besides Watson and Dahntay Jones, Indiana has nobody who puts defensive pressure on opponents. As a result, other teams just run what they want to run against the Pacers.Indiana didn’t compete on the defensive end, and their youngsters made too many mistakes.Indiana’s injured starters can’t be used as an excuse for the team’s struggles. Danny Granger is a gunner who does most of his work on the perimeter and none of it on the defensive end. Troy Murphy can shoot and board but can’t do anything else. Jeff Foster isn’t the athlete Indiana needs, and neither is Tyler Hansbrough.Of their youngsters, Price and Rush look like D-Leaguers while Hansbrough and Hibbert project to backups or role players at best.Of their veterans, too many Pacers are journeymen with no track record of achieving measurable success.Of course Larry Bird should give the embattled O’Brien a vote of confidence. Bird’s the player who signed off on building such an inept roster. The Pacers are a soft, defenseless, jump-shooting team that can’t create open looks for those shooters, and lacks talent all over the roster. In other words, a bad basketball team with a bad future.

The Suns got Jason Richardson. That's what happened.

Cool story. Like Eberle's shoot-out move? Pretty sweet huh?

If anyone wants to watch a horrible reffed game turn to the gold medal game.

Texans fault, they should have won more games and they would not have been in that situation.

Yes, and it's quite obvious if you have seen them play often. Chris Paul is all flash, and gets out of position of defense too often, and Deron Williams is a lot stronger than he is, shoots better, and does pretty much everything better, and owns that over-rated [expletive] when they play against each other.

No video of the game vs. Orlando where he went 1-4 and made defensive plays like the one at the 27 second mark, where he makes some kind of half-hearted effort to stop ball penetration? http://www.nba.com/g...l#nbaGIboxscore <object width="388" height="394" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="ep"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="movie" value="http://i.cdn.turner.com/nba/nba/.element/swf/1.1/cvp/nba_embed_container.swf?context=&videoId=games/rockets/2009/12/19/0020900389_okc_hou_recap.nba" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/nba/nba/.element/swf/1.1/cvp/nba_embed_container.swf?context=&videoId=games/rockets/2009/12/19/0020900389_okc_hou_recap.nba" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#000000" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="388" wmode="transparent" height="394"></embed></object> Or his 1-5 game against the Thunder? Or the -10 +/- he had in the loss to Denver? All you have is a game against the Clippers?

They never wanted to play him at all, finally gave in and played him to increase his trade value, and then he complained that he wanted more minutes. When he found out against New Jersey that he wasn't going to play, he ditched the team and left. Morey and Adelman have more pressing concerns than pleasing the McGrady fanboys. If you've lost respect for the duo for taking a team of role players and having them play unprecedentedly good basketball because a soft player had his feelings hurt, then blame McGrady for ditching his team and not being mentally strong enough to contribute. Adelman knows that. Here's what he said about T-Mac today: Why do you want an underachiever on a team that wins solely by getting the most out of themselves? The Rockets will keep playing the right way without T-Mac. If it isn't good enough, it isn't good enough. They still have dreams of being a contender next year with Yao out and the season is inspiring confidence in the rest of the roster. If Houston's best isn't good enough, then it isn't good enough. So far, it's been plenty enough.