Hoosiers And Basketball

Club Trillion on the state of Indiana and the Pacers:

With respect to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and every other place in America that considers itself a “basketball city,” nowhere does the game matter as much as it does in Indiana. Spend a single January day in the state and it won’t take long to realize that watching or playing basketball is the pastime of choice for a majority of Hoosiers, even more so than auto racing, drinking heavily, complaining about the weather, or wondering why they still live in Indiana. This is why 13 of the 14 largest high school gyms in the country are in Indiana. This is why some of the state’s biggest heroes are Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson, Bob Knight, and Josh McRoberts’s knee-high socks. This is why the best sports movie ever made is entitled Hoosiers and not New Yorkers or Whatever the Hell People From Illinois Call Themselves. Simply put, Hoosiers spend so much time obsessing over basketball because the only entertainment alternatives in a state full of corn are to tip over cows or run a meth lab.

But even though Indiana is the biggest basketball hotbed in America, professional basketball in Indianapolis seems to be dying a slow, sad death. The Pacers are fresh off their best regular season since 2004 and, frankly, one of their best seasons in franchise history, yet they had the second-worst attendance in the NBA this year. This after last year, when the Pacers had the worst attendance in the league despite making the playoffs for the first time in six years. In fact, the unfortunate truth is that the Pacers haven’t been in the top half of the NBA in attendance in each of the past 11 seasons, even though seven of those seasons produced playoff teams and one (2003-04) was the best season of basketball ever played by a Pacers team. Clearly the people of Indiana, while having immense local pride and an innate love for the game, aren’t interested in supporting the Indiana Pacers. Which begs the question: Why not?
For a lot of Hoosiers, the obvious answer can be found in two words: Ron Artest.

I love the line about drinking heavily, complaining about the weather or wondering why they still live in Indiana.  One thing going for the Pacers, they have a beautiful arena.  One thing not going for the Pacers, they are stuck in Indiana.