Bird Says Pacers Are Trying To Rebuild Organically

[The Lone Granger]

Pacers president Larry Bird is in the third year of his own three-year plan to rebuild the franchise.

 

Bird explained to NBA.com how he has tried to retool Indiana and how he'll work in the next few seasons.

 

http://www.realgm.com/images/nba/4.2/profiles/photos/2006/Bird_Larry_ind.jpg

 

"Y'know, we don't have sellouts every night. But we think we've got a good nucleus," Bird said. "After this year, we'll be down to $34 million. And still have all the Draft choices. We hope we can build it the right way. We said it was gonna take us three years, and this is the third year. Hopefully we can get it done.

 

"We can't go out there and get [Amar'e] Stoudemire and guys like that. We've just got to hope our Draft choices get better and if we go out on the free-agent market, which we're going to, we want to get players to fit in and fill our needs. We got lucky with Collison this summer. We just have to be patient with him."

 

-RealGM

 

I'm very happy with the way we've handled everything. We aren't trying to go out, break the bank and bring in star players, we're trying to keep this as a rebuild. And in all honesty, I think we might get a guy like Horford if he's a free agent, simply because he probably won't take a max contract, or even if he does he fits us perfectly. I think the Pacers are headed in the right direction, and I'm very excited to see what other moves we make both this year, and this coming offseason.

 

Thoughts?