Originally posted by D-BONE
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The Rules of Pacers Digest
Hello everyone,
Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.
A quick note to new members: Your posts will not immediately show up when you make them. An administrator has to approve at least your first post before the forum software will later upgrade your account to the status of a fully-registered member. This usually happens within a couple of hours or so after your post(s) is/are approved, so you may need to be a little patient at first.
Why do we do this? So that it's more difficult for spammers (be they human or robot) to post, and so users who are banned cannot immediately re-register and start dousing people with verbal flames.
Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.
Rule #1
Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:
"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"
"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"
"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"
"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"
"He/she is just delusional"
"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"
"I'm going to take a moment to point and
/ laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"
"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good?"
In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.
We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.
Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.
That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.
A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.
There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.
Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.
In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.
Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.
If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!
All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.
Rule #2
If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.
The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.
The right places to do so are:
A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.
B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.
If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.
Rule #3
If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.
When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:
A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.
B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.
To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!
Rule #4
Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.
Rule #5
When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.
An example:
If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:
http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star
Rule #6
We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.
The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.
Rule #7
Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.
It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).
We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).
However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.
Rule #8
We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.
Rule #9
Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.
Rule #10
We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.
Rule #11
Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.
A quick note to new members: Your posts will not immediately show up when you make them. An administrator has to approve at least your first post before the forum software will later upgrade your account to the status of a fully-registered member. This usually happens within a couple of hours or so after your post(s) is/are approved, so you may need to be a little patient at first.
Why do we do this? So that it's more difficult for spammers (be they human or robot) to post, and so users who are banned cannot immediately re-register and start dousing people with verbal flames.
Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.
Rule #1
Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:
"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"
"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"
"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"
"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"
"He/she is just delusional"
"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"
"I'm going to take a moment to point and
/ laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*""Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good?
"In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.
We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.
Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.
That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.
A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.
There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.
Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.
In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.
Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.
If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!
All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.
Rule #2
If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.
The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.
The right places to do so are:
A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.
B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.
If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.
Rule #3
If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.
When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:
A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.
B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.
To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!
Rule #4
Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.
Rule #5
When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.
An example:
If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:
http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star
Rule #6
We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.
The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.
Rule #7
Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.
It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).
We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).
However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.
Rule #8
We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.
Rule #9
Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.
Rule #10
We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.
Rule #11
Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
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Sometimes, I wish I could sit with NBA Players, so I could ask them the direct question of...."What is it specifically that you don't like about Indianapolis from a free agent perspective?".Last edited by ksuttonjr76; 04-17-2019, 09:08 AM. -
I think you are on to something here. Neither free agency nor draft position are likely to yield top-shelf talent. The only way to potentially get it is to give up one or more of the true assets we have - Myles, Domas, Vic. Not sure Vic's age, contract, and injury history make him that attractive. I also think Myles is probably your most marketable piece. I don't know if it's for AD or what, but it just seems like our options are limited to try and get the needed talent infusion.Originally posted by naptownmenace View PostLeave a comment:
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I think I have the answer. Trade Myles Turner. He’s still young, he has potential, he lead the league in blocks, and he’s well liked around the league. The player you trade him for is Anthony Davis. It’s going to take a lot without getting a guarantee that AD wants to stay past his final season but a swing for the fences move like that is necessary. You’re gonna lose Myles, Holiday, McDermott, and the 18th pick. Cut bait on all the current Pacers free agents and see if you can sign Kemba Walker into cap space.Originally posted by Peck View PostLeave a comment:
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This was a great find. Thank you.Originally posted by Strummer View Post
This quality of Nate's is probably the main reason I like him and support him. I definitely saw and sensed Frank's inability to keep discipline within the ranks. It was a main reason for the implosion, in my opinion. I was Nate was more of a tactician, but he does build a solid foundation. It was weak with Frank and that weakness showed itself when things got tough.Leave a comment:
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Frank needed an offensive assistant after Jim Boylen bolted for San Antonio, but Frank was a master at adjustments and strategy. There are things that Nate does much better than Frank, but I believe both would've benefited by giving the reigns to an offensive assistant. Heck, Frank would've benefited by giving the offensive reigns to Nate, who is a much better offensive coach, imo.Originally posted by Unclebuck View Post
I get your point about singling out one game, but our anemic offense was a struggle for the last 15 or so games. Game 1's problem wasn't new.Leave a comment:
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This poll means nothing without knowing the reasons why.Originally posted by Strummer View PostLeave a comment:
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Originally posted by Peck View Post
I found this article back when Tyreke got suspended for being late. I was wondering what the history of dealing with lateness was. According to this article Frank was pretty lenient to put it mildly.
https://www.indystar.com/story/sport...oice/92716872/Doyel: Pacers hearing Nate McMillan’s new voice
Gregg Doyel, gregg.doyel@indystar.com Published 11:09 a.m. ET Oct. 25, 2016 | Updated 6:06 p.m. ET Oct. 25, 2016
It was a hard and regimented practice, as they always are under Nate McMillan, but an unusually sloppy one. The Indiana Pacers were coming off their first loss earlier this preseason at Chicago. They were running a shooting drill, timed and using all 94 feet of the court, and shots were not falling.
Players were looking down. Heads were sagging. McMillan was blowing his whistle and gathering his $85 million roster into a circle and talking about the weather.
“Sunshine,” McMillan was yelling, “or rain? Who are you going to be?”
McMillan went on to explain: Shots will not always fall. Calls will not always go your way. This game, it won’t always be easy. You can react with sunshine and stay positive, or you can react with rain — and make a bad situation worse.
Now McMillan is bellowing.
“Are you going to be sunshine?” he yells. “Or are you going to be rain?”
This is a new role for Nate McMillan to have, and a new voice for the Pacers to hear. When Pacers President Larry Bird replaced coach Frank Vogel in May with McMillan, Vogel’s assistant since 2013, he said he wanted a new “voice.” It did not make sense then.
It makes sense now.
Nate McMillan doesn’t sound anything like Frank Vogel. He doesn’t even sound like Nate McMillan, at least not the McMillan this roster had been hearing for three years. That McMillan worked for Vogel, one of the nicest, sunniest coaches in professional sports. And so McMillan was sunny as well.
“That was my job,” he says. “Frank was positive. He was just a positive guy. My job was to assist Frank, and not become or try to become that main voice that these guys heard.”
He has a new job now, a new voice, a new atmosphere. McMillan, whose team opens the season Wednesday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse against Dallas, isn’t an assistant anymore. He’s still sunny, certainly sunnier than the drill sergeant nicknamed “Sarge” when he coached Portland from 2005-12.
But the Pacers know the forecast can change in a moment.
* * *
Everyone had to sit in the high chair. Even Larry Bird.
This was Bird’s rookie season with the Boston Celtics, Bill Fitch was the coach, and Fitch tolerated no foolishness. He didn’t care who you were — role player, veteran, historically good rookie out of Indiana State. Screw up in practice, and he had a spot for you.
“We had a stage on the side of our court where we practiced,” Bird was telling me Monday at practice, chuckling as he looked off into the distance — past the Pacers in 2016, back to Boston in 1979. “When Fitch grabbed a guy, the guy would have to go up there on the stage and sit down. Fitch would stand up and look them right in the eye. We always called it the ‘high chair.’ And every one of us was in that high chair.
“I loved it.”
Bird believes players crave discipline. He craved it, and he was the best player on almost every floor he ever played on. He won’t say it — he likes them both, and he will not compare McMillan to Vogel — but structure is clearly among the main reasons he made the move to McMillan.
Players loved Vogel, but he wasn’t tough on them. Maybe because he wasn’t tough on them. He didn’t yell, not even when they showed up late to practice. Which they did, apparently, from time to time.
“Frank’s a good coach,” says second-year guard Joe Young, “but everybody’s late, and he wouldn’t say nothing. Coach Nate doesn’t play by none of that. He wants everybody on time. He’ll call out PG (superstar Paul George) if he wasn’t on time.”
Give me an example, I ask Young. He nods. He won’t name names, but he tells this story from a few weeks ago.
“There was a vet late for practice,” Young says, “and Coach Nate was like, ‘Nah, we can’t have that.’ He was about to put us on the line and make the whole team run! It’s just a whole different atmosphere here.”
Young is smiling. Maybe he’s wincing. Hard to tell, but for sure he’s shaking his head. So I’m asking him: Do players like this new atmosphere?
No, he says.
“We love it,” he says.
* * *
McMillan is working on being nicer.
He doesn’t agree with my sun versus rain analogy — he won’t like that last sentence, either, about trying to be nicer — but this is what I see: Vogel had the spotless mind of the eternally sunny coach, whereas McMillan’s disposition is more like Indiana weather — give it 10 minutes; it could change.
And he wants to soften up his storm clouds.
He knows he has to be different than he was in Seattle from 2000-05, where his roster had youth, and in Portland, where his roster had knuckleheads. In the Pacific Northwest he was “Sarge.” Here in Indiana, with a mostly veteran roster of almost entirely strong character — and in an evolving NBA era where power resides with the players — Sarge can stand easy.
It’s a work in progress.
“I’m not a guy who likes to play games,” he says. “I like to come in, get our work done. I think it’s fun when you're working hard and winning. I’m not a fun guy to be around if we’re losing. Everybody wants to win, I know, but I have to really work on losing.”
Has to be nicer, sounds like. But Bird didn’t promote him to be Vogel 2.0, nice ol’ Nate McMillan who for years was the good cop to Vogel’s good cop. Bird wanted a new voice, a different voice — more Bill Fitch, less Frank Vogel, somewhere in between — and in Nate McMillan he found it.
“Sometimes he motivates, and some guys respond to that,” says nine-year veteran Thaddeus Young, acquired this offseason from Brooklyn for the Pacers’ 2016 first-round pick. “Sometimes he yells and throws out things like ‘sunshine and rain,’ and guys respond to that. And sometimes we think it’s funny. But it’s been very, very good so far with the different methods and techniques he’s used.”
McMillan is partly cloudy, in other words. At times, sunny. Other times, something darker. Those are my words. These are his:
“I wouldn’t agree with that,” McMillan says of my weather forecast. “You can be a disciplinarian and still be sunshine. My role is to come out and coach them and challenge them. If I’m just a hard-*** 24/7, then that’s a little different. I haven’t been that kind of guy (here), because I think you have to communicate with players a little different than I did in the past.”
Indeed, he has weekly, one-on-one meetings with key rotational players — and not just to tell them what he thinks.
“I want to know what they think,” he says.
But sometimes, unlike the Pacers’ previous coach, McMillan thinks his players need a good tongue-lashing. Last week in Milwaukee he entered the postgame news conference with the game’s box score, with key statistics — ones he won’t tolerate — highlighted in yellow. Earlier that night, McMillan had stunned his team during a timeout when he lit into them for playing selfishly.
This season, this Nate McMillan era, it starts Wednesday. Let the sun shine. But know this: Clouds may form in the distance.Leave a comment:
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This probably isn't totally on topic, but I'm going to post it anyway. The discussion popped it into my head.
Nate was brought in to instill discipline and change the culture. As near as I can tell he did that well. I suspect the front office felt that was a more immediate need than finding an innovative coach. Yeah, it would have been nice to find a coach that was both a disciplinarian and an innovator but maybe that wasn't available.
The Athletic had a poll of NBA players last week that had an interesting result. They polled 127 players (they claim that's more than 25% of the NBA). Only 52 chose to answer the following question, but look who came in 4th.
That means that 3 non-Pacers have a negative opinion of Nate.Of course that's not a huge number but I suspect some of the players voting for Thibs or Boylen probably would not want to play for Nate for similar reasons. Is that perception of Nate going to affect the Pacers ability to attract free agents this summer? Possibly.11. Which coach, aside from your own, would you not want to play for?
(52 votes)- Tom Thibodeau (34.6%)
- Jim Boylen (21.1%)
- Igor Kokoskov (11.5%)
- Nate McMillan (5.7%)
- Stan Van Gundy (4.8%)
- Gregg Popovich (3.8%)
- Lloyd Pierce, Quin Snyder, Erik Spoelstra, Rick Carlisle, Nick Nurse, Alvin Gentry, Luke Walton, Steve Clifford, Scott Skiles (2%)
- Jeff Van Gundy (1%)
I'll also note that Nate got 0 votes in the question "10. Which coach, aside from your own, would you want to play for?" 121 players chose to answer that one. (Congrats to Gregg Popovich with 40.9% of the vote).
It's possible that the Pacers are going to change a third of the roster this off season. I imagine they're going to need Nate to stick around to maintain the discipline and not allow the new players to wreck the chemistry.
https://theathletic.com/909752/2019/...t-in-the-game/Last edited by Strummer; 04-16-2019, 03:16 PM.Leave a comment:
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Didn't most everyone in this forum say the exact same things about Frank. Can't make adjustments and can't run an offense. I'm starting to wonder if that is just what every fan base complains about across the NBA. In fact I would bet almost every fan base complains about poor offense, not playing those players who don't get much playing time and lack of adjustments. I know Brad Stevens gets a lot of criticism in Boston about his offense.
Well at least we don't have a coach who can't keep a 31 point lead in the third quarter of a home playoff game against the 8th seed. Thank God we don't have that coach.Leave a comment:
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There is some good stuff in this thread.
As someone who is not a big Nate fan, I'll say this:
-Nate's done a great job of coaching our team. There is little doubt, imo, on that.
-Our team has overachieved and lacks offensive talent, despite our high FG%.
However, I also believe the following:
-Nate cannot take us to the promised land, even if we are supremely talented.
-No lack of talent should result in an 8 point quarter, especially against a slow footed team that's missing their best defender.
-We literally avoided the paint in the first 6 minutes of the 3rd quarter. Our closest shot was > 15 feet.
That's terrible offense, imo, even if the shots were open. The players need to play better, but the coaching needs to be better as well. It's a shared responsibility.
Adjustments and strategy are keys in the playoffs, but I don't think those are strengths of Nate's. He's elite in other areas and our players are bought in, so maybe we can bring in an assistant who can help out with that.Leave a comment:
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