NBA trade deadline quiet for Pacers

While a bustle of activity defined Thursday around the NBA, the trade deadline passed inside Bankers Life Fieldhouse with hardly a peep.

The Indiana Pacers stood pat as the 3 p.m. EST deadline drew to a close. The current 15-man roster, which includes Paul George on the mend, will remain intact for the rest of the season and a potential push for a lower seed in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

At the same time, most of their competition for those final playoff berths added players. Miami -- in a virtual tie with Charlotte for the seventh seed -- added Goran Dragic, the ninth-seeded Nets returned Kevin Garnett to Minnesota in exchange for Thaddeus Young, 10th-seeded Boston picked up Isaiah Thomas and Detroit, tied with Indiana at 21-33, two games behind Miami and Charlotte, picked up guard Reggie Jackson from Oklahoma City.

But in Indianapolis, pin drops.

Though Indiana remained active in discussions and gauged interest around the NBA, the team did not receive appealing phone calls nor did it have the assets available to compete for intriguing deals.

"Nobody (was) knocking our doors down," a team source told The Indianapolis Star.

The Pacers did express interest in Jackson. Jackson, who averaged 12.8 points and 4.3 assists per game as Russell Westbrook's backup, desired a home where he could be the lead ball-handler as well as a team with a chance to win. While Indiana fit that description and even had a leg up since its superstar, George, and Jackson share a close bond, the deal would have been tricky for the Pacers at the inception.

Jackson reportedly turned down a contract from the Thunder north of $48 million but he could command even more with his next team. A greater obstacle, however, would have been drafting a deal that appealed to Oklahoma City. The Pacers pitched offers to other teams but requested too much in return, according to a league source familiar with the trade discussions.

Though point guard George Hill popped up in a late Wednesday night rumor involving a trade to Denver for Ty Lawson, there was no real traction for that deal — much to the apathetic delight of Hill.

"I could care less, it's a business," Hill said on Thursday about his name appearing in trade rumors. "If it happens, it happens. If it don't, it don't. You can't control it. Only thing you've got to do is continue to do your job."

Larry Bird, the team president of basketball operations, spoke with reporters more than two weeks before the trade deadline and said the team had been measuring the worth of their players around the league.

"We'll see what the value of our players are and go from there," Bird said. "We're always looking to improve the team and obviously, there is a lot of improvement that needs to be done so we'll look around the league and talk to a lot of different people and see what's out there and hopefully we can do something that makes us better and if not, we'll stay pat and this summer do the rest of the work."

So although workers spent much of Thursday transforming the Pacers' basketball court into a wrestling forum for the 2015 IHSAA state championship tournament, silence ruled the day around Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

Call Star reporter Candace Buckner at (317) 444-6121. Follow her on Twitter: @CandaceDBuckner.

INDIANA AT PHILADELPHIA

Tipoff: 7 p.m. Friday.

TV: Fox Sports Indiana.

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PACERS (21-33)

Pos. Player PPG Key stat PG George Hill 14.1 3.8 apg SG Rodney Stuckey 11.6 3.0 apg SF C.J. Miles 12.4 2.8 rpg PF David West 13.1 7.3 rpg C Roy Hibbert 11.1 7.1 rpg 6th C.J. Watson 10.3 3.8 apg

76ERS (12-41)

Pos. Player PPG Key stat PG Tim Frazier 5.0 8.7 apg SG JaKarr Sampson 4.4 1.9 rpg SF Robert Covington 13.2 4.7 rpg PF Luc Mbah a Moute 10.0 4.9 rpg C Nerlens Noel 8.2 7.2 rpg 6th Jerami Grant 5.7 3.0 rpg

STORYLINES:

G.Hill rolling: George Hill was playing his best basketball of the season heading to the All-Star break, averaging 15.0 points, 50 percent shooting and .563 from 3-point range in the five February games he started since returning from the groin injury. Not coincidentally, the Pacers won four of those games to pull with two games of the final playoff spot. Hill averaged 1.8 3-pointers made in that stretch.

Philly changing again: While the Pacers didn't make a move ahead of the NBA trade deadline, Philadelphia did, and that's not a surprise given the team turnover in recent years. Last season's Rookie of the Year Michael Carter-Williams (15.0 points, 7.4 assists, 6.2 rebounds) was shipped to Milwaukee. The 76ers also will play the rest of the season without leading scorer Tony Wroten, who last week had surgery to repair a partially torn ACL. He was averaging 16.9 points and 5.2 assists.

Prediction: The Pacers are only 1-1 against the team that opened the season with 17 consecutive losses. Coach Frank Vogel's team won the first game of the season 103-91 in Indianapolis, then lost a 93-92 decision in Philadelphia when David West missed an 18-foot jumper at the buzzer. Given Philadelphia's loss of Wroten and Carter-Williams, it's difficult to imagine the Pacers losing this one. They win 100-86.

— Curt Cavin