Doyel: Pacers' game attendance is still down, but you love this team

INDIANAPOLIS – Something is happening between this city and this Indiana Pacers basketball team, something that cannot be explained with numbers, because numbers are cold and logical, the domain of the head. And what is happening here, between this city and this NBA team, is a matter of the heart.

No, attendance hasn’t been great this season: down 8 percent from a year ago to 15,355 per game, 29th in the 30-team NBA. I’m writing this on Monday night from what looks to be a barely half-full Bankers Life Fieldhouse, where a sea of empty seats watched the Pacers lay a 121-109 beating on ex-Pacers coach Frank Vogel and his Orlando Magic.

Screw the numbers, those cold-hearted bastards, because I know what I know:

You like this team. I mean, you like it in ways that don’t really make sense in a nationwide professional sports marketplace where only wins are deemed charming.

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Last couple of years, these guys were likable only when the scoreboard showed the Pacers with more points than the other team. With his roster aging and his franchise center disintegrating, then-Pacers president Larry Bird had to dismantle the 2013 and ’14 teams that reached the Eastern Conference finals. Those were likable teams, until Roy Hibbert happened, but Bird rebuilt around Paul George and everything changed.

The Pacers of 2015, ’16 and ‘17 weren’t charming. Held hostage by a leader who didn’t want to lead – but felt he deserved LeBron-treatment from referees and media and All-Star voters – the Pacers were a team to be tolerated. But when George told the Pacers he wanted to be traded after the 2016-17 season, the town didn’t have to pretend anymore. We booed his (rear end) out of here. See ya, Superstar.

What has happened since makes no sense, on any level, and here I’m talking about the head and the heart. Basketball-wise, cold hard logic says the Pacers shouldn’t be 12-9 and sixth in the Eastern Conference. Not after going 42-40 last season (seventh in the East) and having to unload their only superstar in a trade market where the Pacers had no leverage.

Pacers President Kevin Pritchard made morons of most of us – me included – by getting a better return from Oklahoma City than most of us thought possible, even after the deal was done. In different but obvious ways, Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis are franchise cornerstones. Oladipo, who made his first 11 shots and scored 26 points Monday night, is putting up All-Star numbers (22.8 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 3.7 apg), while Sabonis (12.9 ppg, 8.9 rpg) is a double-double machine in his second NBA season.

Oladipo is just 25, Sabonis 21. Add Myles Turner, 21 and still improving, and it’s a team with a future. This franchise needs one more star to compete for the Eastern Conference title, but the Pacers are shockingly competitive right now.

“It was such a sour situation with how things ended with Paul,” Pacers coach Nate McMillan was telling me before Monday’s game. “People wanted to just see some excitement and change.”

The relief – thank God the Pacers don’t suck – is palpable from this fan base, but that’s just part of what is happening here. And not the biggest part.

You love the way the Pacers play, faster than ever and shooting 3-pointers at a better clip – 40 percent on the nose entering Monday – than anyone in the NBA. In Oladipo and Darren Collison, the Pacers have guards playing at blur-speed at all times. They go and they go and they go, and then McMillan puts in Cory Joseph and Lance Stephenson. Joseph is the consummate pro, a guard version of Thaddeus Young – the Pacers’ starting power forward – and Lance is Lance. Everyone around here loves Lance because he plays with a passion that the leaders of recent teams, Paul George and George Hill (then Jeff Teague), couldn’t muster. Hill and Teague don’t show fire. Paul George just didn’t care.

This team, it cares. So does the fan base. And believe me, Indianapolis: The Pacers have noticed.

“Oh absolutely,” Collison was telling me Monday after the game, and before I tell you what else he said, let me describe the scene: He’s in a towel, heading for the shower when I stop him and say: One question? I’m cringing, because pro athletes in towels don’t like being stopped on their way to the shower, and I know what’s coming. “After I shower,” is about the nicest comment I deserve.

Instead, Collison grabs me by the elbow and walks me back to his locker.

“Come on here,” he says, and now I’ll tell you what else he said:

“When I’m around town, everybody’s always saying they like how we play,” Collison says. “They say we play hard and the right way.”

Attendance isn’t reflecting how much this city likes this team, but there are reasons. After the Pacers were strong-armed into trading George, hardcore fans (season-ticket holders) renewed their seats at the usual level, according to Pacers chief marketing officer Todd Taylor, but fans on the fence stayed away. Those fans are the ones who purchase tickets in multi-game packs, and they did not renew at normal levels. Nor did new fans come rushing to take their place.

The Pacers still offer a “pick any 10 games” package, by the way, and the remaining schedule includes two visits by Cleveland (LeBron) and one each from Boston (Brad Stevens), Philadelphia (Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid), the Lakers (Lonzo Ball), Golden State (Steph Curry, Kevin Durant) and Oklahoma City (Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, What’s-His-Name).

Screw the numbers, I keep saying. The affection this fan base has for this team is real and tangible, and here’s a small example. At IndyStar our printed newspaper has a daily section called “Let It Out,” the printed version of Twitter, a place for reader snark and anger, and hours before Monday’s our Let It Out section ran six comments.One reader, apparently referencing high-profile sexual assault accusations, wrote: “It may be time to take Viagra away from the old codgers.” One complained about drivers in Johnson County, another about tax cuts, another about the city’s annual budget shortage. A fifth asked Gov. Holcomb to “do something about Ditch Road between 73rd and 79th streets. It is so bad that it will become dangerous once ice and snow are here.”

Those comments, a mixture of comedy and crotchety, are normal. This one, the sixth of six comments Monday, was not. It was a 26-word love letter:

“It’s nice to see the Pacers winning. What’s even better is seeing players who play hard every game and actually want to be home in Indiana.”

Readers tweet and email me the same thing, and I mean all the time. I’m not guessing when I say: You really like this team. That’s why, walking the arena’s hallway with McMillan before Monday’s game, I told him: “This is your fourth season here (second as head coach). No way have you seen a connection as strong as the one between this fanbase and his team.”

Nate was nodding.

“As a coach we’re in the business of winning,” is how he starts, “and I’ve heard nothing but positive things from the fans – and they’re not even mentioning wins. We like the way you’re playing, you play hard, you’re fun to watch … those are some of the things I’ve heard. It’s been all good.”

He hears it at the gas station. And in the building where he lives. And even at a shoe repair place, where he says “the guy who owns the building was just so happy with how the team has been playing. I think we had even dropped a game the night before.”

What’s happening here, it couldn’t happen most places. But this place deserves these Pacers. And these Pacers deserve you.

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