Since the second the final buzzer sounded on the Heat/Pacers game last night, debate has been raging over whether or not Frank Vogel cost his team the game by keeping Roy Hibbert on the bench on the final possession. Without Hibbert on the floor, LeBron James had a clear lane to the hoop and the win.

Could Roy have stopped LeBron’s drive (or at least fouled him)? Debatable. After the game, Roy swore he’d never sit idly by ever again. Read More »

Oh man … if the Indiana Pacers go on to lose this series against the Miami Heat, Pacers coach Frank Vogel is A) Going to be raked over the coals in the media for sitting Roy Hibbert on two crucial plays in overtime and B) Will forever be haunted by what could have been.

The criticism is fair. With his team up one with 2.2 seconds left in overtime, Vogel sat Hibbert – his best shot blocker and a presence that kept the Heat out of the lane for the majority of the game – in favor of a Tyler Hansbrough/Sam Young combo. His team paid dearly. Read More »

The Indiana Pacers only scored 81 points last night, but they still managed to beat the Carmelo Anthony-less Knicks by five. The Pacers are ugly to watch, and their highest-paid player is a seven-footer that’s shooting less than 40 percent from the floor, while averaging just 9.6 points per game. They can’t score, and their bench is awful. Read More »

A few weeks into the season, they were perhaps the NBA’s most disappointing team. Now Indiana is sitting at No. 4 in the East, 19-13 on the year after winning eight of their last 10 games. Roy Hibbert is still struggling on the offensive end, shooting only 40 percent and averaging just 2.2 free throw attempts a game. But David West is dropping in his customary 17 and eight, and Paul George is unlocking new “attachments” in his game every night, stepping up his averages to 16.9 points and 7.3 rebounds. Read More »

Indiana Pacers head coach, Frank Vogel, is known to be a young, hardworking coach that has motivated his team to get better each season he has been there. Thanks to Dan Devine over at Yahoo! Sports’ Ball Don’t Lie, we now know that as a 13-year-old, Vogel appeared on the David Letterman Show for their “Stupid Human Tricks” segment where he spun a basketball on a toothbrush while brushing his teeth! Sounds too good to be true? Here’s the video evidence. Read More »

Unless you’re Skip Bayless and your job is to swim against the current of popular opinion — that being LeBron James keeping Miami almost single-handedly from exiting the playoffs was an incredible, once-every-50-years performance — LBJ was the first thing you talked to your friends about around the water cooler. And why wouldn’t he be? The wrong-footed jumpers (he even banked one in over Kevin Garnett; so filthy), the tip-dunk where his head was at the rim, the 15 rebounds, there was more than enough to go around for conversation. Read More »

Indiana coach Frank Vogel knows his team will face a huge challenge in Miami in the Eastern Conference semifinals, but believes the talents in South Beach include an inordinate amount of flopping. A hatred toward flopping, seemingly even more pronounced than usual, has become the campaign issue du jour of the NBA postseason. Will it mean the win or loss of a series? Likely not. Is it the easiest thing to work up hate about? Yes. Read More »

It’s been two days – one weekend – and the NBA Playoffs have already thrown some twists our way. Derrick Rose is done, Nick Young and Reggie Evans spearheaded what might’ve been the greatest comeback ever and Andrew Bynum is setting records. Who would’ve thought? It only promises to get better from here as the Eastern Conference is now a complete disaster, and in the West, everyone outside of San Antonio has question marks. Read More »

I like Jeremy Evans a lot. Everyone here at Dime does. We’ve supported the #LetJeremyDunk movement since the beginning. I spent some time with him over All-Star Weekend, and we joked about his admittedly horrendous Call of Duty skills and the worst dunker on Utah. But he shouldn’t have won the dunk contest. Paul George had the best dunks. I’m not accepting arguments. That’s a fact (although it would’ve been Derrick Williams winning had he been able to finish his last one). Read More »

When we throw around the word “sleeper” in reference to an NBA team, it doesn’t really say much other than we think Team X will surpass expectations. Some sleepers could win championships, a la the Dallas Mavericks of a year ago. Others, such as the Memphis Grizzlies of last season, will slip into the playoffs and make a deep run after they weren’t expected to amount to anything.

So in picking the top five sleepers for the 2011-12 NBA season, there’s going to be some good teams that turn out to be super good and some bad teams that might surprise us by not completely floundering about. There’s a few prerequisites to being a sleeper, however. Read More »