AH1971

Edit: the Pacers couldn’t even if they wanted too. Given the Pacers cap situation, the max deal they could offer Braden Smith is a one year $1.35 mil rookie 2nd rd maximum. And that would count towards the Pacers roster limit regardless if he spends the whole season in Noblesville. A two-way contract is the most practical approach and probably the only way it works out for both parties.

Smith could command $4-5mil next year alone by coming back to college. I don’t think there’s anyway the Pacers are going to guarantee Smith $4-5mil as a 2nd round pick or else he’d be signed already. That being said, Smith likely ends any chance of a long term NBA career by walking out on the Pacers.

If Smith ever wants to play in the NBA, probably wise not to walk away from the hometown team that traded up to get him. Financially the move makes some sense, but for someone who has NBA aspirations, coming back to college doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Hall is an immense talent despite some of his baggage and fits a huge position of need. Sisley is really the only 4 on the roster with any kind of game experience and it's limited at that. Alexis is a take if Hall is a no go, but if the goal is to stack your roster with the most talent possible, Hall is the guy you want.

Not sure Yigi isn’t “it”, but he’s not a 28-30 mpg B10 player which is what he would be asked to do under the current circumstances. Based on his previous production, Hall would appear to be a massive talent upgrade at the 4. Having Sisley and Yigi as your front court depth pieces would be huge.

Does he have eligibility left or is he suing and daring the NCAA to do something about it?

Brad is ultra-analytical and Brown by the numbers is a net-negative player on the court despite a lot of raw production.

Who is a scared fan? I’ve seen IU win multiple titles. I’m heady enough to know what Bob Knight did at Indiana isn’t replicable and finding his clone isn’t sustainable. Cycling coaches every 3-4 years has made Indiana an undesirable job and it gets worse by the year. Forget the Brad Steven’s or Dusty May’s, there’s a reason why guys like Josh Schertz or Ben McCollum wouldn’t/won’t ever entertain this job

Trashed the program. Cheated without reprieve and recruited literal convicts and gangbangers to the program. Anybody who supports that is a dirtbag.

It isn’t. Sampson trashed the program and ruined what any image IU had left. Your disdain for Woodson is borderline unhealthy…all because he told you to chill out.

The two most successful coaches in college basketball history weren’t “championship caliber coaches” by years 4 or 5. The best coach in college basketball today didn’t win a tournament game until year 5. This lunacy that you have to fire a coach every 2-3 years is exactly why IU will remain a meddling program going forward. There’s no culture, no continuity, no momentum, no nothing. It’s a wasteland job. The statistical probability of winning a college basketball title is already very low. The probability of catching lightning in a bottle and winning a championship in years 1 and 2 is even lower. Your theory makes zero sense.

Of course he could coach, but there was no way he was freely going to get away with how he operated nor should have it been enabled.

IU was a top 15-20 team for the majority of the season in year 2 and lost 2 starters at the beginning of conference season for an extended period of time. Calling that an underachievement based on where IU has been the majority of this century is the exact reason why nobody takes this program seriously.

I’ve never claimed Woodson a good college coach by the way. But the fan base turned on him the second there was some adversity in year 3 despite some moderate success in years 1 and 2 and it was over. It just fuels the reason why this fishbowl job is continually stuck in neutral.

Which coach doesn’t have flaws? There’s X amount of coaches good enough to reach a F4, win multiple B10 championships and consistently recruit/develop first round talent. If that isn’t good enough for IU, well, we’ll be doing this for awhile. How did IU hire Cig? Pure luck. There’s no reason that guy should have been available for IU to hire in the first place.

Hiring Kelvin Sampson was the biggest mistake IU made in the post-Knight era

Mike Woodson made the tournament his first year and was contending for a B10 title in year 2. What do you have for sale if I may ask?

The problem with going the mid-major route…are you going to give that mid-major coach time to get his feet wet and figure it out? This fan base has put this job so high up on a pedestal that simply doesn’t exist. It’s a lose-lose.

Can they? Kentucky was turned down 5 different times? So was UNC this last go around. Mick Cronin was UCLA's 20th choice back when he was hired, they couldn't even pry Jamie Dixon from TCU. Why would someone like Nate Oats want to leave his comfy perch and go coach at Batsh*t Crazy U...just so he can immediately be fired in 2-3 years for not winning a national title? You don’t need to coach at a blue blood to win a national title these days.

So if actual relevant programs can’t make a serious hire….

Recent blue blood hires Mark Pope—-zero tournament wins at Utah Valley/BYU Mike Malone—-zero college HC experience Hubert Davis—-zero head coaching experience John Scheyer—-zero head coaching experience Mick Cronin—4 tournament wins in 16 years Murray St/Cincinnati; never made it past first weekend Yet Tom Crean (F4) and Archie Miller (E8) were meh hires? What do you call the hires above? At least those schools above have been relevant this century. It’s not 1985, the allure of this job doesn’t exist anymore. The last 3 national title winning coaches came from FAU, San Francisco, and Rhode Island. What is a serious hire today? What serious coach is coming to Bloomington? Blue blood means absolutely nothing in today’s climate.

You’re not going to hire another Cig because another Cig doesn’t exist, he’s 1/1. We’re a quarter century post-Knight and most of you guys still haven’t figured out his clone isn’t walking through that door. Do we really need to do this for another 25 years?

Floundered? He spent 3 years rebuilding a program he inherited with no scholarship players before the portal or otherwise the rebuild would have been accelerated quicker. He won two outright B10 titles and went to 3 S16's in a 6 year stretch, by far the best stretch of Indiana basketball since the early 90's. He missed the tournament (barely) the year after losing two top 5 draft picks and two other 4 year starters while playing a bunch of upperclassmen. He was canned in a year in which he beat two top 5 teams including national champion UNC after losing his best player to an ACL injury while ranked in early January. He never "floundered" at IU once he rebuilt it. Telling a coach B10 championships and second weekend appearances aren't good enough is the reason why IU is where they are today. And we deserve every bit of it.

So IU is too good for conference titles and S16's? Noted Like I said, this fanbase is dumb and delusional.

Also, this isn’t the NBA where you can fail upwards (see Mike Brown). You get fired from a mediocre program like IU, your chances of landing at a bigger gig are slim to none. What Tom Crean did at Georgia is irrelevant and does nothing to discredit his F4 at Marquette or two B10 titles at IU…literal brain dead logic there. Les Miles won a national title at LSU and won 2 games in 3 years at Kansas. Who cares?