Just when we all thought The Pacers locker room issues couldn’t get any worse, they did. A report on Wednesday about a practice floor fight between Lance Stephenson and Evan Turner on the night before game one of their series. We’ve all seen that Stephenson is a fiery competitor, and we’ve seen that in any game he has played in. This isn’t the first time though in recent weeks that he has clashed with another teammate. Both players have denied any punches being thrown, and Turner claims it was just a “five-second mishap”. (Turner supposedly had a few scratch marks on his neck)
I think it’s clear Frank Vogel has slowly been losing this locker room since the beginning of March and possibly earlier then that. Vogel could be coaching for his job even though he locked up the number one seed in The Eastern Conference. The Pacers went all in this season by adding free agent Luis Scola in the off season, and later in the year adding Evan Turner and Andrew Bynum later in the season. Pacers President Larry Bird may feel Vogel had all the pieces in place to win a championship and anything short of The Finals will be a failure in his eyes. If these issues continue we could be witnessing one of the biggest collapses by a number one seed in NBA history, and the only thing stopping The Pacers from championship run is…themselves.
