It was only a matter of time before the dam burst.
The Pacers — who were cruising along at 46-13 in early March — had a rough end to their season, losing 13 out of 21 games before winning their final two to finish at 56-26 and earn the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
During the slump, the team’s offense — never a strength even during better times — devolved spectacularly, and veteran forward David West took the team to task.
“I just don’t know if we’re handling success and being out front the right way,” he told NBA.com late last month. “When we don’t share the ball, we have 10, 15 possessions where we don’t make a single pass, and you’ve got four guys, or nine guys, on the floor watching one guy, watching two guys, it’s on us. … We’ve had that same sort of conversation over the last month and a half or so. We just haven’t been able to apply that on the basketball court, particularly on the road.”
Rumblings of locker room tension began to grow, and on Friday, on the eve of Indiana’s playoff opener, it all came to a head, according to a Yahoo! Sports report.
Guards Lance Stephenson and Evan Turner engaged in a nasty fight at practice, the report states, as “two Pacers dragged a cut, cursing Turner out of the Bankers Life Fieldhouse court.”
“This stuff happens, but the timing wasn’t ideal,” a witness to the fight said.
Turner was acquired from the Philadelphia 76ers at the trade deadline. Stephenson, the always-feisty Brooklyn native, is in a contract year. West was one of the two Pacers who broke up the squabble.
“We’ve been on the ropes a little bit,” West told Yahoo! on Tuesday night. “Every team goes through that. But I thought we did a great job of dealing with whatever issues we had. The great thing about this group has always been that we’re very open with one another, always been able to get through the ups and downs of a long NBA season.”
After a rough Game 1, it looks as if the Pacers may have found their footing in the series. Behind 27 points and 10 rebounds from Paul George, plus 20 and 7 from Luis Scola off the bench, the Pacers topped the Hawks 101-85 to even the best-of-7 series at a game apiece. Game 3 is set for Thursday night in Atlanta.