Hansbrough Working His Way Back On The Court For Pacers

Tyler Hansbrough returned to the court a couple of weeks ago and has been going through individual workouts, putting his shin to the test in hopes of joining his teammates on the court as soon as tomorrow, albeit in in a limited capacity.

Bruno offers this nuggets along with plenty of other interesting tidbits in his latest report from training camp. According to Jim O'Brien, Hansbrough could being playing with the team in the halfcourt on Tuesday.

"They want to see how he does after they've upped his workouts," said O'Brien. "I think (Tuesday) if he has responded well, then maybe they'll get him in the halfcourt but he has to prove his shin can handle what he's been doing."

Nice to hear some good news regarding Hansbrough's status. Seems like it's been a year since we saw him playing some solid summer league ball in the high post. The frustrating mystery surrounding the shin injury has certainly bottomed out any expectations I had for his rookie season, so I'll temper my enthusiasm until I see the whites of his shin in action. Of course, the Hansbrough news isn't all of the injury news from this report.

T.J. Ford and Jeff Foster will join Hansbrough, Mike Dunleavy and Travis Diener in street clothes for the Pacers game at Orlando on Wednesday. Foster continues to take it easy on his back while Ford is nursing a strained hamstring that isn't considered serious. Just being cautious in the preseason.

Plenty of other good information and reaction from Jim O'Brien and Danny Granger including their thoughts on Vecsey's article about Larry Bird (ain't buyin' it). The lead story is about the Pacers looking to establish some consistency after varying between good, bad and ugly thus far in the preseason.

"You can attribute it to a few things," said Danny Granger. "We're not all on the same page yet. Sometimes we are, sometimes we're not. We just have to get there."

O'Brien pointed out the starting lineup is largely intact from last year, which provides a good base.

"As long as you have a core group, then you should be able to get going at a pretty fair pace," he said. "We'll try to play to win the basketball games and play the rotations that you would have. We're going to have 10 healthy bodies against Orlando so all 10 of those guys have got to play in the rotation. You hope to build some consistency at both ends of the floor in both games."

So far this team has a remarkably similar feel to last year's team. Whenever I get frustrated by that thought I have to remind myself of how many tight games the team played in last year and maybe that experience will help swing more of those games in the Pacers favor.