Jackson to start season as starter for Pacers.

[pooh]

Reggie Miller broke a bone in his left hand in the first half, opening the gates now for Stephen Jackson to start the opener against Cleveland on Wed.

[ducks]

humm
will jackson try to hard to prove he should be the starter

[pooh]

Well if pre-season is any indication, he'll be fine. Tomorrow, they'll know the extent of Reggie's injury.

[samikeyp]

that sucks about Reggie. I want to see how Jackson deals in the regular season as a starter.

[pooh]

Now we'll soon see.

[Kori Ellis]

Is Jermaine out a couple weeks?

[pooh]

Jermaine might go on the IR to start the season. For sure he won't play on opening night.

Artest spoke tonight about losing Reggie for at least six weeks and not having Jemaine on opening night:

“We’ll be fine; I’ll make sure we’ll be all right. We’re looking forward to winning. I’m not looking forward to our teammates being out to injuries. We’re going to do everything right that we can to get better, have less mistakes. Jamaal is getting to be a better shooter, Stephen Jackson can score with the ball, Croshere can shoot, Fred has been improving. Without JO and Jeff, I’m going to have to pick up the slack on rebounding on the other end of the floor. We’ll be all right.”

I think they will be.

[pooh]

In the locker room at halftime Friday night, Austin Croshere was watching the face of the X-ray technician when he walked over to Reggie Miller to reveal the bad news on the film.

"It was just disbelief," Croshere said.

That was the general reaction among the Pacers, who suffered yet another major blow in the first half of a 98-79 loss to Denver in the preseason finale as Miller suffered a broken bone in his left hand in a collision with Nuggets guard Voshon Lenard. The initial prognosis of a 4-6 week recovery period was revised upward to 6-8 weeks after a follow-up examination on Saturday.

This latest injury means the Pacers will open the season without at least two starters, possibly three if Jermaine O'Neal's sore foot doesn't show remarkable recovery in the next few days.

"We're going to have to figure it out," said Coach Rick Carlisle, looking s -shocked. "Obviously, now it's a great thing that we have an extra two-guard sitting over there. It's going to be Freddie (Jones) and Steve Jackson that are going to have to carry us at the two spot until Reggie gets back. We're going to have to deal with it.

"It's a little different kind of adversity than we've had here the past couple of years with all of these things happening at once. But there are always going to be challenges. Some are greater than others. This is tough, but we're going to have to deal with it."

In a three-day span, the Pacers have received nothing but bad news on the injury front. Starting center Jeff Foster underwent hip surgery on Wednesday morning. Backup point guard Anthony Johnson suffered a broken finger on his right hand in Wednesday night's victory over Memphis. Both will miss six-to-eight weeks. On Friday, O'Neal revealed that he expects to open the season on the injured list because of lingering pain in his sore left foot.

Carlisle said he was told Miller's injury is similar to that suffered by Johnson, who broke the fourth finger on his right hand. The good news is Miller's broken finger is on his non-shooting hand. Miller will be re-evaluated by team doctors on Saturday. If Miller does miss at least four weeks, it would be the most prolonged absence of his career. He has never missed more than 12 games in any season; there are 14 on the November schedule alone.

There may well be no room left on the three-man injured list for Miller.

"This is tough, but this is what teams go through, at times," Carlisle said. "Fortunately, we still have some guys sitting over there that are ready to play. Right now, we're going to have to go to war with them."

Jackson likely will move into the starting lineup, with Jones moving up a notch in the rotation. As it stands now, the lineup for the regular-season opener in Cleveland on Wednesday night will feature Jamaal Tinsley at the point, Jackson at shooting guard, Ron Artest at small forward, Croshere at power forward and Scot Pollard at center.

"It's tough that you don't have three of your starters, your key players, coming in (to the season)," said Jones. "But that's why they built this team. We've got depth. Everybody can play. We'll just switch the roles around and play alright for the first few weeks of the season."

Carlisle said he'll have to make substantial adjustments to the team's style of play because the injuries have changed the nature of the personnel. The Pacers are perilously thin in the frontcourt, which likely means a variety of smaller lineups will be deployed. Some help could be on the way if rookie center David Harrison (right shoulder) and veteran forward Jonathan Bender (sore left knee) come back next week.

"We're going to have to make some changes based on what our situation looks like right now," Carlisle said. "Obviously, we can't play the same way we had planned without some of our main post-up guys.

"We're just going to have to be a very precise team in the short-term – not that you don't have to really be that way, anyway, to win at a high level. But when you're short guys, we're going to have to be a low-turnover team, we're going to have to be a very good rebounding team and we're going to have to do a better job, defensively, because we've really struggled. We've continuously put the opponent on the free-throw line game after game after game in the exhibitions. We've got a lot of work to do in the next four days."

The remaining healthy players will be very busy in the interim as Carlisle tries to re-shape the team.

"I think you make up for it with the basics," said Croshere. "You go out there and play harder than you might normally. You always try and play hard but in a situation like this you dig down and find something extra to kind of make up for it."

Artest scored 59 points in the last two preseason games, including 24 against Denver. For the time being, he will become the focal point of the offense.

"We're going to be fine. We're going to be fine," he said. "I'll make sure we'll be alright."

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