Doyel: Larry Bird sleeps through trade deadline
INDIANAPOLIS – The alarm is sounding on Paul George’s time here in Indianapolis, and this is how Indiana Pacers president Larry Bird has decided to deal with it:
Hit the snooze button and go back to sleep.
The NBA trade deadline was Thursday at 3 p.m., but Bird didn’t do anything to make the Pacers better right now. He didn’t do anything to make them better in the future. Didn’t show George he was serious about putting more talent around him. Didn’t trade George at what should be the apex of his trade value. Didn’t do anything.
George will be a free agent after next season, and to stay here he needs to be convinced the Pacers can compete for a championship. That’s what he told Bird. That’s what he told Pacers owner Herb Simon. That’s what he told the media.
Bird’s response:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
It’s possible Bird didn’t do anything because he believes George will stay in Indianapolis, no matter what. It’s possible he believes George is gone, no matter what. It’s possible the battery on Bird’s cellphone died Thursday at 2:30 p.m.
It’s possible Bird isn’t good enough at his job.
I can’t tell you what Bird was thinking Thursday afternoon because he wasn’t speaking to the media.
“Who do you need?” a Pacers public relations employee asked the media, one by one, as we waited Thursday for practice to end and interviews to begin.
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“Larry,” I said.
No. Who else?
“Larry.”
Bird put together a team that reached the Eastern Conference finals in 2013 and again in 2014. He deserves all the credit in the world for giving Indianapolis a team only LeBron James and the mercenary Miami Heat could keep out of the NBA Finals.
But three years later, Bird has a crisis on his hands, a crisis of his own making, and so far he’s managing it by pretending it doesn’t exist. Paul George is gone if the Pacers don’t get better. That couldn’t be more clear. George has done the Pacers a favor by letting them know just how serious he is about leaving.
Does he stay? Does he go? As the trade deadline was approaching Thursday afternoon, George would have been fine either way.
“At the end of the day it really didn’t concern me,” George said after the deadline passed, referring to the possibility of being traded. “I’m in a good position either way — whether I was here or whether I was gone.”
Trade him, keep him, whatever. To Paul George, the name on the front of the jersey doesn’t matter as much as the name on the back.
“I was kind of on the ropes just like you guys were,” George told the media. “I didn’t know what was about to happen. It was kind of a dark moment. That was the frustrating part. … I thought I should’ve been in the loop a little more.”
You see where his head is? Not with the Pacers. Not with the Celtics or the Nuggets or any of the teams reported to have been interested in acquiring him. His head is with Paul George, and the lack of respect the Pacers showed him by keeping him out of the loop.
“I’m focusing on me,” George said at one point Thursday, and then he said it again a few minutes later.
“I’m focusing on me.”
Oh, we got that. A year ago, Bird rebuilt the team entirely around the idea that George would play power forward, and George declined to do it. This season, the Pacers lurched toward the All-Star break without either of their top two power forwards, and George again made it clear: Playing power forward “is something he doesn’t want to do,” Pacers coach Nate McMillan said.
George was hoping to see Bird improve the team this week — “I think we can make moves to get better,” George said Wednesday — but the truth is, the Pacers don’t have much in the way of trading chips.
That’s not a defense of Bird. That’s an indictment.
Bird has constructed a team with absolutely no assets other than George, second-year center Myles Turner and veteran point guard Jeff Teague. And it would be misleading to call them “assets.” It would be more accurate to call them "untouchable."
Let’s assume Bird did try to improve the Pacers before Thursday’s trade deadline. The Pacers reportedly were interested this week in Brooklyn’s Brook Lopez (career scoring average of 18.5 ppg) and Philadelphia’s Jahlil Okafor (15 ppg).
Imagine how either of those phone calls went:
Nets: What can you give us for Lopez?
Bird: Thaddeus Young.
Nets: Um, we gave him to you last year. Who else?
Bird: Monta Ellis, Rodney Stuckey, C.J. Miles, Lavoy Allen, Kevin Seraphin, Aaron Brooks, Al Jefferson.
Nets: Which ones?
Bird: All of them.
Nets: No.
Bird is in a mess of his own making. He doesn’t have the assets to improve the Pacers quickly. He needs the one thing Paul George won’t give him: time.
Bird is playing poker with someone who knows he can’t lose. Remember what George said about seeing his name this week as trade bait:
“I’m in a good position either way,” he said. “Whether I was here or whether I was gone.”
George will be a free agent in 2018, and he’s already sounding like he can take the Pacers — or he can leave them. For Pacers fans, this scenario is a nightmare.
For Larry Bird, it’s time to wake up.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter:@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel.