And now this summer, for the first time in a long time, I am having trouble investing in the hope that the Pacers are offering. George Hill has become Jeff Teague. Ian Mahinmi has become Al Jefferson. Thad Young is here, trading the future hope of a draft pick for the present hope of an established veteran. Indiana has acquired three good to very good NBA players for the cost of two very good NBA players and a draft pick.
Maybe the team is a little better — Teague is a very good shot creator, Jefferson should be able to pound second-unit centers in the post, Young is an upgrade over anyone who played power forward for Indiana last year and his athleticism should allow them to play uptempo. On the other hand, they may be a little bit worse. The Pacers have swapped out two of the their three best defenders. There are now real concerns about spacing and a lack of outside shooting.
Of course, those are all problems of projection and strategy. My real unease with this Pacers’ offseason comes from the chronology of the plan. The Indiana Pacers are offering me a chance to buy in (emotionally) on a team that might be pretty good this season, a team that could theoretically catch a few breaks, find a missing piece, and end up near the top of the Eastern Conference. They are offering me hope for the present. What they’re selling smells a little fishy to me, but it’s also not what I am in the market for.
No matter how much optimism I force upon myself, I can’t help but see the ceiling on this team. I want a team with no ceiling. I want hope for the future.
*****
I can’t imagine what it feels like to be an Oklahoma City Thunder fan this summer. For years, they have traded in the most visceral sort of present hope. With two of the best players in the league, season after season, the Thunder were one break away from finishing on top. As if the riches of perpetual contention wasn’t enough, the youth of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook meant that the Thunder had a present and a future. Every year a new wave of complementary youth was added and the upward trajectory was extended.
As Kevin Durant heads to the Golden State Warriors he takes with him an enormous cache of present hope. With rumblings that Russell Westbrook would like to take leave of Oklahoma City as well, fans of the Thunder are suddenly in an unfamiliar place — looking at a talented young roster not as potential complements to the foundation of Durant and Westbrook, instead squinting and trying to see them as the foundation for something new.
I would imagine it is a painful shifting of focus, letting go of the pursuit of something just out of reach, beginning a new journey for something unseen, just over the horizon. Not to mention watching fans of the Warriors gleefully showering other in their sudden surplus of championship probability.
The thing is, no team can indefinitely sustain a market of hope without some shift in the product. The San Antonio Spurs have put together a herculean effort but the retirement of Tim Duncan inescapably signals the beginning of a new era. As full as the cupboard still is in San Antonio, as competitive as this team is likely to be next season, their future is pushing its way into the present and some day, perhaps soon, it will demand to be acknowledged, to be given the organization’s full and undivided attention.
This obsessive focus on a single timeline ultimately proved to be Sam Hinkie’s undoing. For three years, he offered fans of the Philadelphia 76ers perhaps the largest and most open-ended surplus of future hope in the history of basketball. Although he has come to be characterized as a poor salesman for the way things ended, he was at least transparent about what he was selling — future only, no present. I was a Hinkie supporter mostly because of envy. As an outsider, I paid no emotional costs, didn’t suffer through the losing, but I admired the pursuit of a ceilingless future, the willingness to only compromise on the journey and never on the destination.
That admiration and envy feels oppressive in
this summer heat, thinking about a Pacers team boxing themselves into being pretty good.
My sense is that most fans of the Philadelphia 76ers were thriving on the buffet of future hope that Hinkie offered. But blatantly ignoring the present was too much for the league or the team’s owners and their colleagues, or all of the above. That 76ers are prepared to pivot to the present, although it likely won’t be this year, but it’s coming. It just wasn’t soon enough to save Hinkie.
Hinkie wouldn’t pivot from future to present until he was ready but even for those organizations or general managers who are ready, swapping out production lines is not easy. Danny Ainge has been swimming in a Scrooge McDuck-sized vault of draft picks and young talent for several seasons, but don’t confuse him for a miser. He has been scouring the league for a place to spend those assets, to turn a vague eventual into a concrete now. The deal hasn’t materialized and the vault has become increasingly full — this summer adding the raw sushi potential of Jaylen Brown, Ante Zizic, and Guerschon Yabusele. Ainge would like to be selling his fans on the present, he just can’t find an appropriate supplier.
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