INDIANAPOLIS—Basketball lives in Indiana. Larry Bird is a secular god here, the hick from French Lick; Bankers Life Fieldhouse doubles as an Indiana basketball hall of fame. They sell Hickory High jerseys in the Indiana Pacers pro shop, after the team wore them in almost a dozen games this season. Hickory High, of course, is the school from Hoosiers, which is the Indiana basketball’s most powerful myth.
And yet in Game 3 of this first-round series with the Toronto Raptors the Pacers announced a sellout, despite hundreds of seats left unoccupied. Late Friday afternoon, there were over almost 1,100 tickets for sale for Game 4 on StubHub, ranging from $13 to $502.