Rising Tide Of Positive Vibes Continues For Pacers

Another day, another couple of examples of the Indiana Pacers making a good faith effort to re-connect with the community in Central Indiana.

Jeff Foster, Danny Granger and David Morway took turns co-hosting the Kravitz and Eddie show on 1070 The Fan this afternoon. Kravitz is on vacation so the Pacer reps filled and gave fans plenty of goods. I hear most of Foster's hour and he was his normal, straight-shootin' self. We did learn that when he was a kid growing up in San Antonio, he tried to pretend he was Kevin McHale's son to sneak back to the Celtics' locker room when the C's made their one trip to play the Spurs.

Didn't hear much of Granger although he sounded great and handled a segment with the loquacious seamhead, Will Carroll, quite well. I heard a long segment with David Morway and he again expressed excitement about the draft depth and their hopes to find a quality player with both the 11th and 41st pick. Both Morway and Bird have really talked up the draft. They certainly aren't tempering expectations which adds to the positive vibe.

Speaking of positives, both Foster and Granger discussed the changes within the organization and how positive the atmosphere is inside Conseco Fieldhouse so far this offseason. Foster doesn't blow smoke, so it was nice to hear him genuinely express his positive outlook for the coming year.

Finally, the other little positive from the day was a season ticket ad shown in the first half of the NBA Finals. The ad was sharp, linking the fans as the key driving the intensity of the players. Also, always interesting to see who is featured in a ad like this and who is not. For the record, Jermaine O'Neal was shown signing autographs in the final scene of the ad. Good stuff and not something I recall seeing locally in the offseason before.

The Pacers have really raised their profile around town over the past few weeks and given fans plenty of reasons to take a look at what they're doing.