Henry Abbott describes the following missive from the Newark Star-Ledger’s Dave D’Allesandro as “the cultural equivalent of one of those hard playoff fouls”. If you’re waiting for an Indy comeback that references Adrenalin O.D. and Uncle Floyd, well, don’t hold your breath.
(foreground : pop singer, background : Austin Croshere)
Coming to Indy is an annual rite of spring “ has been since ™92. Prior to that, we only came twice a year, and we didn™t know the place from God™s Little Acre. Can™t say we liked it much back then “ it was slow, sleepy, undeveloped, and we always suspected that somewhere outside of town there was a sign that read, œWelcome to Indianapolis “ This is what death is like.
The place seemed to be the most powerful hypnotic known to man, because hardly anyone left. You knew that by the fact that everyone looked 60 years old, including a few of the Pacers cheerleaders. We used to laugh at a catalogue they put in each hotel room, entitled œIndiana, Our Glorious State. And if you were bored enough to open the thing, you realized that the assortment of glories were a bit on the thin side, unless you had a real hankering to visit the creamery out in Zionsville.
None of that holds true today, though. By any standard, Indianapolis is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of commerce and culture and tall glass buildings, where people wear suits and dark socks, even simultaneously.
We experienced a profound depression watching Game 3 at Conseco last night. The place was dead, with only 14,700 bothering to show, and we™re told more than 1,000 of them were freebies. Nobody cares about the team around here anymore “ partly because No. 31 has left the building, partly because the Artest hangover that still makes the franchise so wobbly, partly because there has been a stunning disconnect between this group of players and its fan base.
We have no idea what the advance sales are for Game 4, but it™s not likely to change much. It™s enough to make you root for the visiting team, and get out of here ASAP.
The joke’s on Diamond Dave. New York writers did the obligatory Indiana-sucks thing WAY better during the Knicks vs. Hicks days of the 1990s. Maybe he should have hit Indiana where it really hurts by noting how quickly the re-re-constituted Gizmos flamed out after moving from Bloomington to Hoboken.
However, I’m with him on the deadened atmosphere, post-MSA. MSA was great for fans and terrible for corporations because it had zero suites, so you could practically touch the court from every burnt-orange seat. Then again, the real old-timers griped how MSA was nothing compared to the Fairgrounds Coliseum, and there was probably someone at the Fairgrounds grumbling how it was a pale imitation to the raucous environment in the Oolitic High gym.