Wanted: Loser!

Wanted: Coach

Requirements:
Patience
Blindness
No history of heart-problems
Crack-head
Whack-head
NHL coaching experience
No NBA coaching experience

Job description:
Take losing in stride.
Bear with a team which has no direction.
Main entertainment the fans come to see.
Smoking crack during the game as to avoid cardiac arrest.

I think it's obvious now what I am talking about. I'm talking about the Indiana Pacers. I've been doing my homework recently and noticed that AT LEAST 5 coaches have rejected the Pacers' offer and wanted nothing to do with coaching the team. It is such a tragic tale, NOBODY wants this team. None of the league officials actually want anything to do with the Indiana Pacers and their landslide right now. How can they? When it is guaranteed failure.

"We need you to take over this team. You will mostly lose all your games, but you'll eventually win a few in break-out games. I'm talking about almost 60 losses for each of the next 2 or 3 seasons. It'll damage your coaching-career; but hey, we'll still pay you millions for it."

What you just experienced above is the subliminal message that the organization has been injecting towards the coaching candidates; only these candidates can read between the lines, unfortunately for Walsh and Bird. Not Stan Van Gundy, not Jeff Van Gundy, not Brian Shaw; heck, we could even joke about the Pacers scaring Sam Mitchell into signing a contract extension with the Raptors because of the coaching invite to Indiana. Not even one of the franchise's most respected player, former NBA-player Mark Jackson, wanted to coach the team. Do you want the punchline? Not even Bird himself wants to coach the team. I guess those are benefits of top management: hire other people to do the dirty work. I think Bird knows his principles.

"But Why?" is everyone's question about how horrid the Pacers are, here's why:

• The Pacers' roster is horrible. They missed the playoffs for the first time in a long long time. Seriously, what can you do with a roster that contains two uberly-soft-over-paid-mediocre players, along with the epitome of inconsistency in a point guard, and an unhappy star player? Nothing really.
• The Pacers have no draft pick this year to ice the roster pain. That's right. They lost this year's draft pick to Atlanta dating back to the Al Harrington trade. No new talent this year guys, just the same old grumpy faces.
• The Pacers have no money to sign any free agents. Thanks to the humongous contracts of two sorry excuses for basketball players, the Pacers are going to be hooked for quite a while. I doubt any team is interested in the two, so trading them is out of the question. I guess this means no free agents and no rookies.
• The Pacers have no direction. Will they be rebuilding? Or will they still be trying to push for contention despite being unprivileged of new faces on the team? The answer is right between the eyeballs of every knowledgeable basketball fan, and that is to rebuild; but the management doesn't seem to realize that. This has got to be one of the worst management performance of any organization since the Timberwolves were WAY over the salary cap and were forced to concede their draft pick for quite a number of years; not to mention having girls pose as KG's teammates as he single-handedly brought them to the playoffs each year.
  
• With a horrible roster, no draft pick, no money, and no direction: the Pacers seem to be headed downhill for the next few years guaranteed. What kind of coach would want to take a job that guarantees major losing seasons? Desperate ones are all I can think of.

There seems to be no way out for the Pacers, no matter what angle I look from. The only way the Pacers will contend without rebuilding next season would be credited to divine intervention: Mike Dunleavy scoring 23ppg, Troy Murphy scoring 15ppg and grabbing 12rpg, Jermaine O'Neal scoring 23ppg and grabbing 10rpg with 2bpg, and Jamaal Tinsley scoring 18ppg and handing out 8apg.

Dream on.