The New Orleans Hornets and Miami Heat play at 6 p.m. today at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, and one team will take a 3-2 lead in the series. Miami won games one and two at home, while the Hornets took games three and four in the Big Easy.
Both teams are playing for the right to advance in the playoffs and face an opponent — that despite having the league’s best record — is not getting any respect around the league as a threat to win the NBA championship.
The Pacers finished with the league’s best record at 61-21, which was three wins more than the league runner up in the Minnesota Timberwolves.
But the reason why the Pacers have gotten no respect is because the Eastern Conference is not nearly as competitive as the Western Conference.
The Eastern Conference had four teams with regular-season records better than .500 and one of those teams was the Heat, who finished 42-40 as the No. 4 seed in the East. It used to be a 42-40 team would at best be a No. 8 seed if it was even lucky to make the playoffs at all.
Two teams from the Eastern Conference, the Hornets and the Milwaukee Bucks, finished with 41-41 records, while the New York Knicks and Boston Celtics all finished below .500 as the seventh and eighth seeds in the conference.
In contrast, the Western Conference’s No. 8 seed — the Denver Nuggets — finished with a 43-39 record, which would have easily been the fourth seed in the East.
The Pacers finished with the best record in the NBA because they only had to deal with Western powerhouses Sacramento, San Antonio, Minnesota, Los Angeles and Dallas twice in a season, rather than the four times it played teams from the Eastern Conference.
Overall, Indiana dominated the West with a 20-8 record. However, they finished 5-5 against those Western Division teams mentioned above.
That is not intended to knock Indiana’s mark with the league’s best record. It’s just that the Pacers must prove themselves in the playoffs. There are some who would say Detroit, who stacked its roster before the playoffs, or New Jersey is really the best in the East.
But there are good things happening in Indiana. But are they for real? I think so.
Coach Rick Carlisle has a talented roster in Indiana, featuring two of the league’s top defensive players in forward Jermaine O’Neal and Defensive Player of the Year Ron Artest.
Both Artest and O’Neal are dangerous offensive threats as well. O’Neal averaged 20.1 points and 10 rebounds per game, while Artest averaged 18.3 points and 5.3 rebounds.
Reggie Miller isn’t the same offensive threat he was 10 years ago, but the 38-year old wonder — who is the NBA’s all-time leader with 2,464 career 3-point shots made — still is deadly behind the 3-point line. He averaged 10 points per game this season.
Jamaal Tinsley is a solid point guard when he’s healthy.
The Pacers are also one of the deeper teams in the league. Al Harrington was in the running for the Sixth Man of the Year award coming off the bench, and the Pacers also got significant contribution from youngsters Fred Jones, Austin Croshere and Jonathan Bender (again, when healthy).
Combine all this with Larry Bird working in the front office and the Pacers are set to be a team that should succeed in the East for the next few years and be respected throughout the league. How they finish this postseason will do a lot to determine how quickly that respect comes to them.