ESPN NBA

Updated: January 28, 2005, 2:42 AM ET

Trading Artest: Risk and reward

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By Chad Ford
ESPN Insider
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The Pacers' expectations at the start of the season were pretty straightforward.

Win an NBA Championship ... or bust.

"The Pistons are the champs and you respect what they have accomplished," Pacers GM Larry Bird told Insider in October. "But we can compete with them. In fact, we can compete with them better than we did last year. To be the champs, you have to beat the champs. I think we've got as good a shot as anyone."

That feeling only swelled when the Pacers traveled to Detroit on Nov. 19 and destroyed the Pistons on their home floor.

Jackson

"When we played Detroit up there, we beat them easily," team president Donnie Walsh told Insider. "We did it without two of our starters [Reggie Miller and Jeff Foster]. I think it was at that point that we felt like we were serious, serious contenders."

But minutes before the final buzzer, disaster struck both teams' seasons. The brawl in Auburn Hills, Mich., will go down as one of the ugliest incidents in the history of the NBA. The Pacers suffered the brunt of the aftershocks, losing Jermaine O'Neal for 15 games, Stephen Jackson for 30 games and Ron Artest for the season.

After seeing their team decimated by huge suspensions in the wake of the incident, the goals of the franchise changed dramatically. Championship aspirations were shelved. The Pacers simply wanted to survive.

"We had this incident, it was terrible for us and the league, and we got the suspensions," Walsh told Insider this week. "Our immediate goal was to survive this and win as many games as we can. We felt if we could stay around .500, we'd really have a shot once guys started coming back."

Mission accomplished. On Wednesday in Boston, Jackson returned to the fold with the Pacers clinging to a 20-19 record and the No. 8 spot in the Eastern Conference. After the loss to the Celtics, they were just three games behind the Pistons in the Central Division and 4½ games away from a No. 2 seed in the playoffs.

But Thursday night, the Pacers lost more ground, slipping below .500 after an 88-76 defeat to the Pistons in their third meeting of the season, in spite of having O'Neal and Jackson back. Do the Pacers really have enough firepower, sans Artest, to win it all?

If the answer is no, will Walsh and Bird succumb to the urge to trade Artest for a player who might make the difference between an early playoff exit and the NBA Finals?

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