The fall was so sudden, and so severe, the Indiana Pacers are still processing it even as they try to build a new team good enough that Paul George might stay.
"Our window," Larry Bird, the team's president, told ESPN.com, "closed fast."
The Pacers pushed LeBron's Miami Heat to seven games in the 2013 Eastern Conference finals, and blitzed to a 33-7 start the next season. They smothered opponents with what looked like perhaps the stingiest defense in league history, and sported three potential All-Stars in George, Roy Hibbert, and Lance Stephenson -- plus George Hill, the underappreciated two-way orchestrator.