Dear Indiana Pacers, Why do you hate me when I show you nothing but love?

Dear Indiana Pacers,

                I have been a Pacer fan my entire life.  I can remember being 9 years old and watching Reggie score 8 points in 8.9 seconds.  I can remember being at Kings Island during a youth group trip and instead of riding rides I watched Reggie push off Jordan for the game winner during the conference finals.  I remember graduating high school and using my college loan money on 10 game season ticket packages for the Blue and Gold.  I can remember….well you get it.  I’m a Pacer fan.  That used to mean something.  It was something to be proud of.  And although I can deal with the team being in a rebuilding process what I am becoming more frustrated with is the relations between the Pacers and its community.

                The brawl happened.  I get it.  We were on the cusp on being perennial contenders and one thrown cup ruined it all.  Indiana had to shake everything up and get the bad taste out of its mouth, remove the bad apples and change its image.  Well it has been over 5 years now and although we have gotten rid of the bad apples on this team when exactly are we planning on changing this team’s image for the better?  Sure the negative image of the Pacers nowadays isn’t on “being a bunch of thugs” but it is still a very negative image of being a bad franchise.  The fact is that for the Pacers to be embraced by the entire Indy community they need to go above and beyond the call of duty.  I have yet to see this happen.  We continue to play a style of basketball that does not attract fans.  We have a coach that has no pull with his team or the community and even Mr. Basketball himself, Larry Bird has begun to be getting looked at negatively.

                I’m going to be honest; it’s been hard this year.  The team is bad, and is in desperate need of a change in philosophy on how it’s going to be competitive in the near future.  Throughout the year however I have been supporting the Pacers relentlessly even though we all know what will happen the rest of this year.  One bright spot for this year although has been my excitement for the upcoming premiere of the Reggie Miller movie that will be shown at Conseco Fieldhouse this Friday.  It’s the only time all year I have truly been excited to go to Conseco and in fact I was so excited that when I won tickets from the Pacers almost 2 months ago I requested my tickets to be for the game vs. the Chicago Bulls on Saturday February 27th.  Maybe it was a pipe dream but I believed that even within this disaster of a season this could be one weekend I could hold on to as a great reason to be a fan of the Indiana Pacers.

                As I have been planning my upcoming trip down memory lane my excitement has grown and grown with each passing week (sorry but you haven’t really gave me much else to be excited about).  But after receiving an e-mail today from the Pacers they told me that they would no longer be willing to give me the tickets to the game I won.  At this point my frustration with the team is reaching capacity.  You want to win fans back Indiana?  Don’t do this to them.  Don’t promise them tickets and then 3 days before game day take them away.  What was almost a bigger slap in the face however was that I was told I could replace the tickets for a different game.  My options: Charlotte, New York, Washington, Sacramento and New Jersey.  I’ve been to a half dozen games this year.  Whenever the arena is half full it as a good night, and yet these are my ticket options after they tell me last minute I can’t have my tickets anymore.  Add up the chances for the John Wall sweepstakes of these teams and it makes up almost 50 percent of the ping pong balls. 

                So my question to you Indiana Pacers?  Why do you hate me when I show you nothing but love?  Odds are you couldn’t sell out on Saturday if you gave tickets away and yet you’re not going to let me receive tickets that you gave me in the first place.  And to add insult to injury you are offering me tickets to mid-week games against horrible teams with the exception of the Saturday Nets game (but who knows, maybe the Nets will break history that night and get their 10th win).  The fact of the matter is this is officially on the organization and the people running it which saddens me because I would really like to see this franchise be successful and also at least stay in the city in the years to come.  We are your fans; throw us a bone or you will lose us (if you haven’t already) and its moves like this ticket job to why you’re attracting no one to your games. 

                And even as I sit here, watching the Blue and Gold get thrashed in Chicago I’m going to sit here for its entirety because that’s what I do.  I love this team and I want to see this team succeed.  I really hope this is also the goals of the people running this organization but at this point I am really starting to wonder what some of the motives of the Pacers are.  Coincidentally Bill Simmons wrote an article today about how the NBA and its teams were treating its fans so poorly.  At the top of the list of these teams; The Indiana Pacers.  This is where we are, Hoosier Hysteria, the birth place of basketball being reduced to a joke.  And with what was supposed to  be the one bright spot of the season in this weekend I can no longer enjoy because the team I love took my tickets away.  Thank you Pacers.

                                                                                                                Sincerely,

                                                                                                                Drsuessrunner07