A reason for Bird’s departure has not been confirmed, but sources told ESPN’s Mike Wells that the plan had always been for Bird to strongly suggest to owner Herb Simon that Pritchard take over as president when Bird eventually stepped down. Bird’s preference over the years has been to have year-to-year contracts.
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Bird leaves the franchise at a crucial crossroads, with possible free agency looming for franchise star Paul George in the summer of 2018. The Pacers will have to decide on whether to continue to work on selling George on a future with the franchise, or consider the possibility of trading him to extract maximum value before George can leave in free agency.
Marc J. Spears: Larry Bird steps down as Pacers president and is replaced by Kevin Pritchard, source tells @TheUndefeated. @Adrian Wojnarowski first reported.
Adrian Wojnarowski: Bird is expected to continue on as a consultant, working with Pritchard and the Pacers front office, league sources tell @The Vertical.
WNBA legend Tamika Catchings is making her return to Indiana as a director for player development. The star who played for the Indiana Fever for 16 years will be in charge of all three basketball teams in the Indiana area, which includes the Fever, Indiana Pacers, and their D-League affiliate the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. If you look up the word legend, Catchings would be right beside it, and even then that phrase would be considered as an understatement for her. In her 16 year career, she won an WNBA title and finals MVP both in 2012, she was a 5-time WNBA Defensive Player of the year, a 10-time NBA All-Star and Rookie of the year.
George still hopes this remade team can come together in time to influence his thinking about the future -- and help him put the past to bed. "That team is gone," George said of those old Pacers. "It happens. Players move on, organizations move on. You deal with it. You keep playing. We've yet to see what this team can be."
"This season has been a reality check," George told ESPN.com last week in New York. "You think you are gonna be in those playoff battles, playing alongside those guys forever. You have to try and recapture that moment. And that moment for us was having a strong chemistry and identity. We don't have one now. I've never been on a team without an identity -- without a toughness identity."
Meanwhile, the Lakers are integrating new front-office leadership, and Kevin Pritchard, the Pacers GM and Bird's top deputy, is working under a contract that expires after the season, sources say. It could be a wild summer. Bird is ready. "We want Paul," he said. "And we are always going to do what is best for the franchise."
Johnson beat Bird to it. The phone call lasted less than five minutes, consisted mostly of small talk and might have touched only briefly on the fate of Indiana star Paul George. “I wasn’t motivated to move Paul George at the deadline,” Bird said. “I can’t remember if it was even brought up or not. I don’t think it was. It’s all fake news anyway. You know that. Somebody’s gonna start it and [it] just was a snowball effect. [The phone call] was not about Paul George.”
His advice for Johnson is to understand that. “You can put a team together, what you think’s gonna be a pretty solid team on paper, and then when they get out there they don’t mesh well,” Bird said. “I’m sort of going through that this year. We thought we had a decent team that we thought could compete for the fourth or fifth seed. We haven’t played as well as I thought we would all year. That’s the growing pains. That’s the frustration about it.”
“I’ve been here for, I don’t know how many years, 12, 13, and I haven’t made a deal with Danny Ainge yet,” Bird said. “That should tell you something. I’ve always been closer with Danny, because I played with him for all them years, than Earvin. “Talked to Danny about a lot of trades, but never did one. I just feel it’s gotta be a fair deal for both sides and we never got there. Maybe he thought it was fair, but I didn’t think so.”
