Pacers Starting Fresh With The Raptors

The Indiana Pacers decided they had enough of their coach Jim O'Brien. It would appear the choice to send him packing was made by ownership according to the Indy Star. O'Brien was fired Sunday after posting a 121-169 in his 3 years plus. He has been around close to the same amount of time as Jay Triano so let's compare shall we? We Shall, Triano is 78-117 in his 3 years with the Raptors. O'Brien had a .417 winning percentage while Triano's works out to be .400 winning percentage. People make the excuse that Triano has not had a lot of talent to work with. Well did Jim O'Brien have a ton of talent? The Pacers best player was who Danny Granger? I know he is not "Mr Popular" these days but Chris Bosh was more talented than him. You can make the argument that the situations are fairly similar. Pacers have had there share of injuries over the last 3 years. Frank Vogel Pacers assistant becomes there interim coach. P.J has more head coaching experience than him. Just stating the facts. Raptors will try not to see there losing streak climb to a dozen. While the new era for the Pacers begins.

The Basics: Toronto 13-35 (4-11 on Road vs East) Pacers 17-27 (Lost 7 of 8)

When Last We Saw Them: The Raptors were in Minny and got utterly embarrassed by the T-Wolves. The less we say about this game the better so we will say no more other than it was the Raptors 11th straight loss. But you already knew that.

Key Match-Ups: Well it will be interesting to see what Frank Vogel does in his debut. One of the reasons for O'Brein's demise was said to be how he handled young players and specifically Roy Hibbert. Our former Raptor for a few weeks. Also on a couple of my fantasy teams not that anyone cares about that. Andrea Bargnani will have his hands full with Roy in the paint. It would not seem likely that the Pacers would play Hibbert on Bargnani on defence. Darren Collison has not exactly taken the Pacers by storm as many felt he might. He has 13.7 points a slight improvement on his numbers with the Hornets but his assists have dipped from 5.4 to 4.8 assists through 41 games played for the Pacers. You also have T.J Ford who is always motivated to play against Jose Calderon, and sometimes that is good news for the Raptors, and other times it is good news for T.J. Calderon and Bayless will need to be better than Collison and Ford for the Raptors to have a chance to win. But the biggest issue will be on the glass once again where the Pacers should have an advantage. They average 43.2 rebounds per game to the Raptors 40.7.

Other Things Of Note: The Pacers demolished the Raptors in their only meeting this season that was also in Indy winning the game going away 124-100, and it is on a growing list of games where the Raptors were embarrassed badly. In case you missed it, I wrote a piece yesterday taking a look at where this is all going for the Raptors in terms of the future. But nothing that I wrote can top what Kevin Durant had to say about our good old buddy Chris Bosh. Seems a good time to mention our event coming up in Toronto for the Bosh return on Feb 16th.

The (Un) Welcome Back Bosh Party @ St.Louis Wings

• Location: 595 Bay St (North of Dundas)
• When: Feb 16th 2011
• Time: Come early if you like. But will have game on with Heat and Raptors that tips @ 7PM
• Details: Were working on them but you can expect a good time, some giveaways and the best place to watch the game outside of the ACC itself. We are even going to try to set up a speakers corner where you can share your thoughts on Chris Bosh and his return. It is going to be a great time so if you can't get tickets for this game this is going to be the next best thing.

The guys at St. Louis Wings had been asking me to come and be a part of a Raptor game for awhile and I said if we are going to do this let's do it big. Looking forward to hosting this event and hope to see many DNB readers come out to have some fun. It is always a treat for me to meet the people that read the blog and Raptor fans in general so I am looking forward to this.

Where Is It On? Sportsnet ( The Rumours they tried to cancel covering this game for a Post All-Star Game Breakdown show are 100% false....Honest...No Really)