In the past 10 days the Pacers have made some surprising moves.
I have been a fan of Marquis Daniels since he broke into the league. He is a great third guard for a championship caliber team. You could even plug him in as your starting SG as long as he isn't expected to carry a heavy scoring load every night.
As I said before letting Peja go was the right move. If they had over-paid Peja to stay, they would have compounded the mistake of not getting enough for Artest.
Drafting Williams and White seems like a lot of reaching, but we will see how they turn out.
Working to arrange a sign & trade to bring back Harrington concerns me, but he is definitely a talented player, who is still young. As discussed elsewhere, he will add to the whining image of the Pacers and I don't like that, but I will tolerate it if we win 55 or 60 games.
We still need a quality point guard. Tinsley has had 5 years to show us what he can do. I don't see him as a starter on a championship squad.
They also need to think seriously about telling Jermaine that he is the best Center on the team and he is going to have to play there.
This team, more than anything else, needs to get their enthusiasm back. The last few years have worn on these guys emotionally. Hopefully next season will start a more positive direction, now that the most significant problems have been addressed.
I think the Daniels trade is great mostly because he adds depth at 3 positions. Tinsley has always played well when healthy -- and Johnson & Jasikevicus are quality backups.
I think Bird & Walsh has finally realized that they can add depth by acquiring versatile players. I like what they did in the draft -- the last thing this team needs is more stiffs to stand around in a halfcourt offense.
The Pacers are gradually transforming into a run & gun, transition offense which is a nice change from the grinding slow paced games of the last 5 years. It worked great when Reggie Miller was around, but it just doesn't fit anymore.
I'm glad Harrington got what he wanted in Atlanta. Now he knows that the grass isn't always greener on the other side and hopefully he'll shut up and play. I still can't believe he asked to be traded just because he wanted to be a starter -- nevermind that he led the team in minutes for the entire season. I'll bet he's grown up a bit.
I think they'll put it together well enough to make a good playoff run. They certainly have the talent.
