Feb

22

Bird Says A Change Is Gonna Come

Posted by Jeff Sack under Main 

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Indiana Pacers President of Basketball Operations, Larry Bird spoke with the media Friday afternoon to give his state of the state address on his team. Bird is not a happy man right now. He told reporters that he actively pursued trades, but did not come up with an answer that would help him solve some of the problems of his squad. The Pacers going into the weekend have a record of 21-33, and are in fourth place in the NBA Central Division just one game ahead of last place Milwaukee.

?The transcript of Bird’s conversation with the reporters is on the Pacers website. Here are some excerpts on what Bird has on his mind “Look, I came here to win. I didn’t come here to start from scratch and lose a ton of games. I understand what people say. I’ve watched, throughout this league over and over, and it’s very hard just to build a team through the draft. One of these days, it might come to that but that’s not me. I want to win. I come here to win. I didn’t come here to lose. I’m not happy with where we’re sitting right now, winning 21 games with almost three-fourths of the season gone. It’s not what I’m about. It’s about winning. To blow this thing up and sit here for five years ? maybe five years ? or 10 years, hoping that these players are coming on but they’re not good enough, let’s go out and get this free agent that’s going to help us. It just never happens. To win, you’ve got to have a nucleus and you’ve got to build around that nucleus. I’m not here to lose. I’m here to win. We’ve got some very good basketball players, we just don’t have a lot of superstars on our team. When I talk about nucleus, I talk about Danny Granger, I talk about Jermaine O’Neal, I talk about Jamaal Tinsley, I talk about Mike Dunleavy. The core group here, really, is Jermaine, Danny, Mike, them are guys you can build around, and Shawne as he gets older. That’s a nucleus and you’ve got to build around that. We have other players. You can go down through there and Jeff Foster, he’s a leader, he’s the type of guy that plays hard every night. But we’ve got to get more talent on this team and we understand that whether it’s through the draft, free agency or trades and we will do that.”

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