Here Are Your....Las Vegas Pacers!

The ball has started rolling.

The Indiana Pacers, which has reported a $30 million loss this year, has said enough is enough and that the great people of Indianapolis must start paying the operating costs of Reggie Miller Fieldhouse, or else...

So, folks, welcome to the official blog of the 2011-12 Las Vegas Pacers. Of course, that team won't get to play at all that year because of the pending NBA lockout, but that will give them time to move Reggie Miller Fieldhouse to Vegas and it will give me and the Mrs. Thug Mrs. enough time to come back from Liverpool (see previous blog) and find teaching jobs at the MGM so we can still be season-ticket holders.

Before I get too carried away here, I want to thank our most valued readers for their comments on the last blog.

Several points need to be made: 1) My readership has exploded from 12 visitors per day to a juicy 25 readers per day...so a big thank you to those of you who hit the refresh button 10 times when you visit the site; 2) Joel just made an awesome comment about my Pacers and hence has pushed me to blog about the demise of my favorite sports franchise, but Joel's post has pushed other amazing ideas for other readers to the background, such as these; 3) Bo suggested a Roy Hibbert career tracker, and this will begin starting with tonight's game against the Utah Jazz. It would have started after the previous game, but I didn't want to start the chronicalling of his Hall-of-Fame career with a DNP; 4) I owe the Err Dizz an entire blog post and had this Pacer thing not shook my body like an epileptic form of syphilis, then I would have deditcated this to you, but alas! it must wait; 5) Tom is right, thank God that my cat and best friend, Ringo, is not named Yoko or I would have to beat him for not letting Paul release "Carnival of Light"; and 6) Sara, I'm assuming you were speaking of Oasis.

Back to my Las Vegas Pacers. Reports surfaced last night that the Capital Improvement Board is saying that the Pacers can't afford to pay the $15 million operating cost of Reggie Miller Fieldhouse and that the CIB must take on this money. The CIB said that the Pacers have not threatened to leave the city, but it's pretty obvious that it was implied. Now, today, the Pacers owners have finally spoken out and are repeating what was said last night that they need to get the team financially stable before they give it to their "heirs" whoever the hell those people are. I'm assuming their "heirs" are distant relatives of the Coreleone family living in Vegas. If I could, I'd like to officially announce my name for consideration to be one of the Simon heirs. I'll do whatever it takes to get this, whether I need to put a dead horse in David Stern's bed or lock lips with my own brother while on a trip in Cuba, I'll do whatever needs to happen.

Now, the Pacers claimed they've lost money in nine of the past 10 years, which is probably not good. Obviously the tax breaks that come with owning a sports franchise is good enough that the Simons haven't said anything until this year, when their malls are being bent over and Kobe'd into oblivion by the economic crisis.

Had the Colts not gone all crazy and made the CIB pay for their new stadium, then we probably wouldn't be having this discussion because the Pacers would already be on Mayflower moving trucks and heading for the Vegas Strip.

The question now (which is in the poll to your right) is which NBA team should I start secretly rooting for so I can ultimately make the switch to another team w/o going into a seismic depression upon the Pacers scooting out of town. There are several teams that can't even be mentioned as possible destinations for my love, and they include -- the Knicks, Lakers, Pistons, Heat, Clippers and Bobcats (for obvious reasons). I've narrowed the list down to three teams that can earn my heart, and they are -- the Rockets (based solely on the fact that I just listened to their 32-year-old GM for an hour on the Bill Simmons podcast), the Las Vegas Pacers (new city, but same name) or...the Chicago Bulls (this could only happen if three things happen -- the Clown Joke (that's Joakim Noah for some of you who aren't in the know) is shot, tarred and feathered and hung from the rafters during pre-game introductions -- that their GM and coach is given the same treatment as the Clown Joke and -- that the 1981 trade between the Pacers (giving up the 1984 draft pick) and the Blazers (giving up journeyman Tom Owesn) be rescinded and burned from history, therefore giving the No. 2 pick in the 84 draft back to the Pacers who then draft Michael Jordan instead of dumbass Sam Bowie and therefore those "six" championships the Bulls won in the 90's are then transferred to the now defunct Pacer team. Lots of options to deal with here.

So, now there's a crisis brewing in Pacer land. Reggie Miller Fieldhouse's future is in jeopardy. Will the Hibby Hibby Shakes continue to rock Indy for the next 20 years? In order to help us cope with this crisis, I present this video...

You Tube...no, you're a tube