The resurrection of the Indiana Pacers

In 2004, the Indiana Pacers lost in the Eastern Conference finals and appeared poised for a run at the NBA championship with a young, talented nucleus. Then came the brawl. It's taken nearly a decade but the Pacers once again have people thinking about titles. Here's the inside story on how the Pacers were rebuilt as told by the project's chief architects: Larry Bird and Donnie Walsh.

Larry Bird's gut told him it was time.

The Indiana Pacers had lost seven of their past eight games but that wasn't the stretch Bird was looking at. He was looking ahead. He saw a stretch of 10 games and figured coach Jim O'Brien could win at least seven of them.

More important, Bird thought a new coach could do the same. It was a Sunday afternoon, Jan. 30, 2011. Bird called O'Brien in. He told the coach how much he appreciated all his hard work through 3½seasons of hard times. He told O'Brien he was firing him.

The Pacers were mired in negativity. O'Brien had been virulently, publicly critical of center Roy Hibbert. He was playing Paul George too little in Bird's opinion. He was playing Lance Stephenson scarcely at all.

Still, Bird felt deeply grateful. He felt O'Brien had established a system, a work ethos, a standard of expectation and execution with a young, emerging team. He asked O'Brien for his help, one more time. He asked who on the coach's staff might be a candidate to replace him.

Bird had already called several prospects but took O'Brien's recommendation to heart. Bird summoned assistant Frank Vogel to his office.

"I asked him if he had any interest in the job," Bird recalled. "He said, 'I don't know. I've got to think about that.'

"I said, 'No. No. No. I'm asking you if you have an interest in the job. This is the NBA. I'll get somebody else. I don't care.'

"I knew Frank was playing a little game. He wanted it but he didn't want to hurt (O'Brien's) feelings. He left. I called him and said, 'You've got the job.'

"I told him to bring all the coaches to dinner that night. So we got everybody together and I got up and all I said was: 'Frank is in charge.'

"(I said,) 'He's going to run the team but I want to tell all you guys right now, if I hear you say anything negative, other than coaching negativity about a bad pass or a bad screen, I'm going to fire you on the spot. I don't want any of that here. We're going to look at the future. We're going to be positive about the future.' "

Bird paused. He smirked.

"I'd say Frank went a little overboard," he said. "He's been here what, three years, four years? I've still never heard him say anything negative. It worked. He's done an excellent job."

From elite to irrelevant

Tuesday was the ninth anniversary of that November night in 2004 when Pacers Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson charged into the stands at Detroit to fight with fans and teammate Jermaine O'Neal punched a man.

Lengthy suspensions followed, as did further off-court issues and a growing dissatisfaction that sharply eroded and alienated the Pacers' fan base. Average attendance would dip from nearly 17,000 to as low as 12,221, last in the NBA.

Donnie Walsh, Pacers president from 1988-2008, faced the facts. A team Bird considered good enough to win the NBA title had to be blown up.

Said Walsh: "We had to start all over again."

It would be a long, painful slog. As a small market team, the Pacers couldn't afford to dump players, exceed the salary cap to acquire others and pay the NBA's prohibitive luxury tax. Neither could they attract elite, team-transforming free agents; Indianapolis hasn't the pocketbook and isn't the "destination" market New York, Los Angeles and Miami are.

Nor would quick remedy arrive through the draft. Over the nine drafts since the brawl, the Pacers have sniffed the lottery but once. Paul George was the 10th pick in 2010.

Said Walsh, who jettisoned Artest and Jackson in trades that exchanged good players for good citizens: "We had to trade our way out of the mess. There are no shortcuts unless you get the first pick and get LeBron James. When you're building a team you have to be patient because you're bringing in young guys who haven't played in this league no matter how talented they are.

"Larry was willing to do the hard things and stand there and say, 'It's going to work,' when nobody else thought so."

The Pacers lost more than they won for five consecutive seasons: 2007-11. While the Colts were winning games, division titles and a Super Bowl, the Pacers were losing ground, fans and money, but clinging grimly to their plan.

Said Bird, who sent another malefactor, Jamaal Tinsley, home to sit out the 2008-09 season: "I didn't feel sorry for myself. I felt sorry for our fans; people who dedicated a lot of money and instead of going on vacation came in here and watched us play 41 times a year.

"We had to change the culture. I knew our fan base was going to dwindle. Revenues weren't going to be where we wanted them at.

"It was tough. I'd go into meetings where they were trying to sell tickets. I laid out everything to my owner (Herb Simon). I laid out everything to our marketing people. I said, 'Look, I don't want to deviate from this. There are going to be times you doubt me like everybody else and I understand that. It's part of it. But stick with me."

The Pacers didn't deviate. They took the heat. They collected the pieces.

Brick by brick

Danny Granger was the first to arrive. The Pacers had the 17th pick in the 2005 draft. They projected Granger as a lottery pick. They got him to come to Indianapolis for a workout only as a favor.

Bird: "After 15 minutes, we said, 'Get him out of here. He doesn't need to be here. We have no chance.' He was that good."

Except that doubt persisted about a knee injury Granger played with as a senior. The draft went other ways. The Pacers got their man, their first piece, a wing scorer.

The center came next. The Pacers sent O'Neal, a six-time all-star whose play had been diminished by injury, to Toronto in a 2008 six-player deal that gave them the rights to the Roy Hibbert, the Raptors' draft pick at 17th overall.

The trade was a home run. The Pacers filled a need while dumping a contract that had two years remaining and had obligated them for more than $44 million.

The front office exulted. The fans boiled. Hibbert was not only raw, he lacked the most fundamental of basketball skills. He couldn't run.

Bird: "I played with Robert Parish (a hall of fame teammate at Boston) and Robert told me, 'You know, Cap, us big boys, it takes us a long time to get it but once we get it, we don't give in.'

"If you look at Robert's career, he scored the ball but he didn't run up and down the court until he got to Boston. That was tough for him. I remember when he came, he couldn't get free throw line to free throw line the first two months of the year."

Hibbert, too, learned. He has become perhaps the NBA's most lethal defender of the rim.

The 2009 draft netted Tyler Hansbrough, a willing but marginal contributor who was selected over several point guards (Jrue Holiday, Ty Lawson, Jeff Teague) who have been more successful, but 2010 would prove pivotal for the Pacers.

Bird: "It was between Ed Davis and Paul George. I liked Paul George because of his length ... and all I heard was how great a kid he is and what he really wanted to be was a professional basketball player and everything was so positive.

"I liked Davis. He was a double-double guy but we needed more than that. We needed a guy, who if he really worked at it, could be special, and we got lucky. I knew we were going to catch hell, but that was all right."

The pick begot anger, and bewilderment: Paul Who?

Walsh: "Larry picked the right guy, and by the way, he was way more right than anybody knew at the time."

Davis has averaged 7.1 points and 6.3 rebounds over three-plus seasons with Toronto and Memphis, George 13.5 points and 5.9 rebounds for the Pacers. George is at 24.4 and 6.8 this season. He was an NBA All-Star at 22. His ceiling is yet to be glimpsed.

The Pacers had their incipient superstar, and they weren't finished with the 2010 draft. They grabbed Stephenson and his considerable baggage at No. 40.

Bird: "I thought he might go in the first round. I don't see anybody in the first round, the top 10 picks, with more talent than this young man. Can we save him? Can we help him? I don't know.

"And I thought, 'If I take this kid, everybody is going to be mad.' And they were."

David Harrison and Shawne Williams, two other Walsh/Bird first-round picks with issues didn't work out. Stephenson has. The Pacers had another piece.

The acid test on George and Stephenson would be to conduct the 2010 draft again today. George would be the first pick. Stephenson would be gone by the middle of the first round, and maybe, as Bird feels, as a lottery pick.

Said Walsh, who left the Pacers in 2008 to spend two years rebuilding his hometown New York Knicks: "I was looking at it from New York and I thought, they're starting to get all the positions built. The more I watched, I thought, this group is playing so well together as a team."

"They're much better than their pieces."

Climbing the ladder

Vogel in 2011 returned the Pacers (37-45) to the playoffs after a four-year absence. They lost to Chicago, 4-1 in a competitive first-round series. They were progressing, and as ever, Bird was determined to stick with the plan, his plan, and do it his way.

He wanted a point guard. He knew which one.

Bird: "I'd been after George Hill for three years. We needed a guy that was cool, calm, wouldn't get flustered, and if he's got something to say, he would say it directly to the guy under his breath and just run the offense and knock down open shots.

"I thought Kawhi Leonard was going to go in the top eight. (When he fell to the Pacers at 15, Bird had the commodity he needed to pry Hill from San Antonio.)

"I told Herbie (Simon, Pacers owner), 'I want George Hill but we're going to pay a price for it because this kid (Leonard) that just slipped to us is going to be one hell of a player but I think we need this for our team.' Herbie goes, 'OK, go ahead.' "

The Pacers had their point guard, but he wasn't their only acquisition, nor their most crucial.

Bird: "I can remember one time Donnie told me, he said, 'Bird (Walsh always addresses his front office protégé by his surname), you're going to be sitting in that office one day and somebody's going to want to make a trade and you're going to go: 'You mean you'd trade me him for that guy?'

"That sort of happened with David West. It wasn't a trade but free agency but once I knew his knee was fine, I knew we hit the jackpot.

"Of everything we've done here, with Roy, with Danny, with Paul, with Lance, the biggest change for this franchise, the turnaround, was because David West came in here. That changed the whole outlook of the guys downstairs (court level), and really, the face of the franchise.

"He's a real man. He brings it every day. He expects his players to do the right thing. He expects them to come together, work hard, play hard and get along.

"One guy changed everything."

Back in the chase

The newly configured team took the eventual NBA Champion Miami Heat to six games in the 2012 Eastern Conference semifinals. The Pacers were on the come. Bird was exhausted.

He took the 2012-13 season off to recover, to seek help for back and shoulder problems. Walsh stepped back in as president after a year off following his departure from the Knicks.

The Pacers had been restored. They went 49-32 and took the Heat, again the eventual champs, to seven games in the Eastern Conference finals. They did it without Granger, who was limited to five games by a knee injury.

Bird watched from home.

Bird: "I watched them all year and every time, I'd say, 'Where's the bench? I talked to Herbie and Donnie throughout the year. I knew if I got back in, the first thing I was going to do is try to completely redo the second unit."

Bird's return became anything but a certainty.

Walsh: "When I took the job, I knew he was coming back. Then, all of a sudden, I was getting mixed signals: He might not come back. I don't think he's going to come back.

"I went to him a couple of times and told him you really need to come back to this team. You built it. These kids love you. You can't just walk out on them."

Bird: "I didn't think I was ever going to come back but what happened is teams started calling me. Everybody I talked to said, 'Well, don't you want to chase a championship again?'

"And I said, 'If I'm going to chase a championship it will probably be here in Indiana,' and that just stopped all the talk from that particular team. Then another one called. I have to say, I had a couple opportunities to do it the way I wanted and have full control, but it's like Donnie said, 'Bird, if you're going to do this thing, why don't you do it here?'

"One day Herbie called me and I said, 'I'm bored. Today, I'm bored.'

"He goes, 'Today I'm hiring you. I want you in here Wednesday. I think it was the end of June (the 26th) and we didn't get the contract done until then end of July, so obviously I wanted to do it.

"When I walked in here it was like I'd never left."

Bird spent no time settling in. He signed three free agents — 3-point shooter Chris Copeland, and backup and No. 3 point-guards, C.J. Watson and Donald Sloan. Bird re-signed West and traded spare parts Miles Plumlee and Gerald Green along with the Pacers' lottery-protected 2014 first-round draft pick to Phoenix for power forward Luis Scola.

Bird: "Once I took the job and got back, the first guy I wanted was C.J. Watson, but Scola's the guy. I wanted him for a couple years. I was very reluctant to trade a first-round pick but if we've got the team I think we have, that one extra guy can make a major difference."

Walsh: "You've filled every hole. This is what Larry's been building for.

"Last year, when I came in, that's the thing that was in my mind: You've got to keep this team together because Larry's built it, he's going to come back and I'm not going to let Hibbert get away from us, not going to let George Hill get away from us.

"This is the kind of team Indiana can really cheer for. These are the kind of guys people in Indiana can be proud of. They're not going to do anything stupid. They're good guys. They're pros. They have the pro mentality."

Nine years. It was a long, hard slog and that night in early 2011 when O'Brien reported to his office, Bird could see farther back than the seven losses in eight games. He could see all the progress made since 2005. Looking ahead, he could see more than the next 10-game stretch, of which Vogel, his new coach would win seven.

Bird and Walsh shared a vision and didn't deviate from it through the hard times and the harsh criticism. Perhaps they saw the dim outline of promise in future 10-game stretches, like the one beginning this season.

The Pacers won their first nine.

Email Star reporter Phil Richards at phil.richards@indystar.com and follow him on Twitter at @philrichards6.