The bloom is starting to come off the Indiana Pacers once promising season.
Following Friday night's lethargic, 13-point loss in Washington, the Pacers are just 13-10 since racing out to the NBA's best overall record at 39-10, according to BleacherReport.com. And all the fingerpointing is becoming as plentiful as the questions about the young team's ability to stay the course.
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"We've been in this rut for a month," All-Star center Roy Hibbert told the Indianapolis Star. "I don't know. I made my suggestions. You take one step forward and three steps back. We've talked about that at great length, amongst ourselves, privately, team meetings, all that crap and I don't know."
Point guard George Hill later added "I don't know what's the right or wrong answer. I'm not sure. I mean, we just got to play for each other. Move the ball.You can't turn on the light switch. You can't just go on and off. I feel like when we play people that have that stature of a dominant team, we get ready to play them. Teams that we may think are less dominant for us, we kind of stoop to their level. But those are the teams that are going to burn you. They're playing for a reason and with a purpose and that's what we haven't been doing."
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With only David West and Luis Scola being older than 30 of all the Pacers' rotation players, still others wonder about Indiana's maturity level. In putting up just 78 points Washington, the twentysomething nucleus of Hibbert, Paul George and Lance Stephenson shot just 6-of-22.
The Pacers also appear to be guilty of playing down to their competition. The Star reports five of their 12 most recent losses have come to teams currently not in the playoff equation. Those includes loses to potential Eastern Conference postseason foes Chicago, Charlotte and now the Wizards.
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