Larry Bird delivered a decisive message when he fired head coach Frank Vogel back in May: Nothing would get in the way of the vision he mapped out for the Indiana Pacers—not loyalty, not stability, not even finishing one win shy of a surprising second-round postseason bid.
Indiana's team president wanted his troops to play smaller and faster. He made that much clear at the end of the 2014-15 season. It didn't matter that jettisoning Roy Hibbert and signing Monta Ellis hardly fit the bill. The Pacers squad he watched on the floor in 2015-16 never met his standards.