Time isn’t on the side of these rebuilding Pacers

I’ll give ’em credit, I really will.

This 2008-09 edition of the Indiana Pacers has shown signs of, yes, improvement and encouragement in what will now be their third straight season of missing the NBA playoffs.

They’ve progressed in a form much more palatable than the not-so-distant days of bar brawls and strip club shootings involving some of the team’s most recognizable faces, including Stephen Jackson and Jamaal Tinsley.

It probably goes without saying that the culture inside Indianapolis’ Conseco Fieldhouse has changed from the days of the team fighting with fans in Detroit, but what’s a Pacers story good for without a mention of the “Malice at the Palace”?

I worry, though, that this progression has and will just simply take too long.

The team is a few years and a lot of talent away from even sniffing the NBA Finals as it did in the final year of Larry Bird’s head coaching tenure in 2000 against the much deeper Los Angeles Lakers.

Now, Bird is commanding the ship from a different vantage point – he’s the Pacers’ president of basketball operations – and the rebuilding process to return the team to prominent form is proving to be quite the tough road.

That road, though, has seen its share of highlights.

Fourth-year player Danny Granger earned his first trip to the NBA All-Star game this season.

Without a few nagging injuries, Granger might have been able to will the team into the playoffs thanks in part to the mediocrity of the NBA’s Eastern Conference.

Injuries also bit guard Mike Dunleavy – a surgery for a bone spur carries a possible retirement from basketball – despite playing some excellent minutes in the middle of the season, including one 30-point game against Miami on Jan. 30.

Of course, one can’t forget the offseason moves during last summer’s NBA draft that saw seven new faces come into the Pacers locker room.

At least you can’t fault Bird for trying.

But many problems remain for the franchise, and for once, they don’t involve off-the-court legal issues.

Rather, the team has yet to win enough to change the perception of a team still saddled with the public relations nightmares caused by the indiscretions of former players.

And the timing of such problems really couldn’t get worse, as the team revealed last month that it has lost money for nine of the past 10 seasons after trying to renegotiate its arena lease deal with the city of Indianapolis.

The organization wants to rid itself of the Fieldhouse’s operating costs in the midst of an economic downturn that, unfortunately, is only partly to blame for Pacers ticket sales.

Such issues leave the Pacers in a position where not only their wins or losses are subject to fan scrutiny, but also the future of the organization as a whole sits at a puzzling crossroads.

Time, of course, isn’t the friend to such situations.

But time is what this team needs in order to see Granger’s stardom continue to rise and restore the name of the Pacers franchise to one of good vibes and consistent winning.

Let’s just hope that time will allow both of those to happen.