INDIANAPOLIS – They do not exist anymore, not without Victor Oladipo. Listen to Las Vegas, listen to media outside this market, and you won’t hear anything about the Indiana Pacers. Not since Oladipo suffered that season-ending injury on Jan. 23, and to be honest, not much before that either. This isn’t me wallowing in Midwestern self-pity. This is me telling you how it is.

Are they listening now? Oh, probably not. Losses around here don’t move the needle – hell, wins around here don’t move the needle – and what happened Wednesday night in their final game before the All-Star break was a 106-97 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. No way around that. Pacers played. Pacers lost.

But the Pacers, who came into this game with an NBA-best six-game winning streak, showed something in defeat:

Take us seriously.

“The sky,” Pacers power forward Thaddeus Young was telling me afterward, “is the limit for us.”

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It really doesn’t matter what anyone outside the city thinks of this team, even if it is irritating to the point of irresponsibility. Here, before we get into what happened Wednesday night – and why this loss was more proof that the Pacers aren’t simply folding without Oladipo – let’s go over two irritating, irresponsible examples from the past few days.

Irritating: The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook gave updated odds a few days ago on potential Eastern Conference champion. Four teams were given at least 5-to-2 odds to win the East – the Bucks (5-2), Raptors (9-4), Celtics (2-1) and 76ers (9-4). The Pacers, third in the standings, were at 100-1.

Irresponsibility: ESPN analysts on Tuesday night devoted a lengthy segment to a breakdown of Eastern Conference contenders. They talked about the teams in first (Bucks) and second (Raptors). They talked about the teams in fourth (76ers) and fifth (Celtics). They didn’t talk about the team in third. Guess who’s in third?

“We can’t control it,” Pacers coach Nate McMillan was saying Wednesday night, verbally shrugging his shoulders at the disrespect.

Listen, up to a point, you can understand. Intellectually speaking, it makes sense: The Pacers lose Oladipo, their only proven star. The NBA is a star-driven league. Ergo, the Pacers are not to be taken seriously.

Here’s the thing, and don’t you ever tell me ergo again: The Pacers don’t have just one driving force, but two. One, yes, is – was – Oladipo. But the other driving force is still here. It’s the Pacers’ culture, something that transcends X’s and O’s, something that can’t be quantified, not even by me as I’m trying to explain how important it is. And if you can’t attach a number to it, by golly, it must not exist, which means the Pacers’ lone driving force will be ignored by people who aren’t around here to see it. But we’re here. We see it.

We see Myles Turner’s biggest fan on the team being Domantas Sabonis, and Sabonis’ biggest fan being Turner, even if their minutes, and therefore their production and arguably their next contracts, aren’t as large as they could be. We hear the way the locker room talks reverently about the 11-year veteran Young, one of eight active NBA players with more than 11,000 career points, 5,000 rebounds, 1,000 assists and 1,000 steals; and about nine-year vet Darren Collison, who ranks among league leaders in assists (17th), 3-point percentage (18th), steals (24th) and assist-turnover ratio (fifth).

And we even saw this on Wednesday night, something that warmed my heart, made me wonder if maybe I’m reading Tyreke Evans wrong. The Pacers recently acquired Wesley Matthews to take Oladipo’s starting spot, which means they acquired Matthews to take Evans’ starting spot, seeing how Evans had been elevated from the bench to replace Oladipo. But Matthews is starting now, which means Evans is on the bench, which is where he was Wednesday night when Matthews hit a go-ahead 3-pointer in the third quarter. The bench erupted, led by Tyreke Evans, who pulled an imaginary arrow from his quiver and shot it into the rafters at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

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“We cover for our brother,” is how Young put it. “That’s one of the biggest things, the brotherhood in this locker room, and none of us wants to let anyone down.”

Alas, there was some letdown on Wednesday night. Not for lack of effort, but execution. Despite a freaky night from the biggest freak in the NBA, Bucks giant Giannis Antetokounmpo – 33 points, 19 rebounds, 11 assists – the Pacers clawed back from a 13-point deficit, took a three-point lead on Matthews’ 3-pointer and kept building on it. With 9½ minutes left the Pacers were getting a 3-pointer from Matthews’ biggest fan, Tyreke Evans, and the lead was 86-76.

But the wheels came off. The Bucks, the team with the best record in the NBA, commenced playing like it. Giannis was driving and dunking, Khris Middleton was scoring points in 3-point chunks, and with 2½ minutes left, order was restored. The Bucks reclaim the lead at 97-95 on a layup from Ersan Ilyasova, and the Pacers have nothing left. They miss seven of their final eight shots, and the final score is what it is.

But that doesn’t change what we saw. Well, it doesn’t change what I saw – the Eastern Conference-leading Bucks surging to a 13-point lead behind a monster night from the monstrous Antetokounmpo. And the Pacers, those cute little Pacers, refusing to go away. Bojan Bogdanovic getting hot. Darren Collison hitting big shots. Myles Turner smacking a shot by Antetokounmpo against the backboard. Matthews hitting a 3-pointer and Evans firing an invisible arrow, and the Pacers actually thinking they should win this game.

Afterward, I’m telling Young: You guys aren’t going away. Why aren’t you going away?

Said Young: “We just have a lot of fight in us. We believe we can compete with any team in the league. There’s a lot of resiliency in this locker room. One of the biggest things about us, is we all have heart. We knew with Vic going down we’re a capable team capable of beating anybody on any given night. We just continue to believe.”

This locker room, I’m telling Young, doesn’t look relieved to have played a competitive game against the best team in the Eastern Conference. It looks ticked off.

Said Young: “We are. We feel like we let one slip away. We had the game under control with eight minutes left in the fourth, up 10, and they erased that lead.”

Which leads me to my final question, the question nobody seems to be asking: What can this team accomplish? What can you do?

Said Young: “The sky’s the limit for us. As long as we continue to believe in each other, continue to fight, continue to have that resiliency, I don’t think there’s a limit to what we can do as a team.”

The Pacers believe. Are they right? We’ll see, but they won over Antetokounmpo, who’s not usually so gracious.

“Still amazing,” he said of the Pacers, “still an amazing team. They play amazing basketball, they play together, they play hard, they cover for one another on defense. They’ve been playing amazing, even without Victor Oladipo. I know Vic is a great player, he’s an All-Star, (but) even after he went down this team has been able to cover for him and pick it up and play good basketball.”

That’s Giannis Antetokounmpo talking. Anyone listening? Hello?

Hello?

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.