Indiana Pacers President Larry Bird has issued a call to arms. And elbows. And ... - Indianapolis Star

Indiana Pacers President Larry Bird has issued a call to arms. And elbows. And knees. And other body parts that might get involved in this skirmish of an Eastern Conference semifinal playoff series between the Miami Fighting Heat and the Indiana Battlin' Pacers.

Like the rhetoric hadn't been ratcheted up enough already.

I like it.

And I think you'll like the Indiana team that comes out tonight and stretches this to a seventh game in Miami.

There's no issue here with Bird's proclamation, which he made in a late-night, postgame phone call to Indianapolis Star reporter Mike Wells. He was right, wasn't he? (Although Dwyane Wade, owner of a cut over his right eye, may take issue with the suggestion the Pacers were soft.) But they were competitively soft, falling to pieces when they lost their top scorer and captain, Danny Granger, to an ankle injury.

"It was disheartening," Granger said. "The whole night was. Everything we said we needed to do to win, we did none of it. We abandoned the game plan."

This doesn't rank with "Remember the Alamo!" or any William Wallace entreaties as inspirational calls to arms go, but it should have its desired effect. At the very least, Bird hopes history repeats. After the Lakers ran the Celtics out of the Boston Garden in Game 4 of the 1984 Finals, Bird called his teammates "sissies." The next game, Boston's Kevin McHale clotheslined L.A.'s Kurt Rambis in a move that's credited with turning the series.

Bird isn't calling for more fouls with malicious intent. He isn't calling for the Pacers to gain revenge on the Heat, the way Udonis Haslem and Dexter Pittman got revenge on Tyler Hansbrough and Lance "Born Ready For Garbage Time" Stephenson.

He's calling for more competitive toughness, a renewed will and belief and effort.

It was as if the Heat snatched the Pacers' hearts out of their chests and made a nice roast with them. There was no push-back, no nothing.

That can't happen again.

That won't happen again.

For all of those counting out Indiana, my question is this: What have you been watching all year? This team has been tough-minded and resilient all season. It has had some bad performances, but the bad basketball hasn't lingered. Pacers coach Frank Vogel said the other day, "They haven't seen our best game." Tonight, with the season on the line, the Heat will get the Pacers' best game, even if it means Granger plays on one leg.

Media and fan overreaction is the lifeblood that courses through every playoff series (guilty as charged). When the Heat lost two straight, all the national media came into Indianapolis to circle the carcass and write the Big Three basketball obituary. Now the Pacers have lost two straight, losing Game 5 the way the Heat lost Game 3, and there are local proclamations of doom -- like everybody has forgotten what the Pacers have done in this series, what they've done all season.

It's just a flesh wound.

The big problem for the Pacers is, they finally have the Heat's attention. Maybe it was some of the pre-series talk. Maybe it was Stephenson's foolish "choke" gesture. Probably it was the fact the Pacers were going toe-to-toe with them and pushing the Heat to the brink of utter desperation.

Now the Pacers are in that spot.

They've got to limit Miami's transition. They've got to out-rebound Miami. They've got to pass the ball. They've got to rediscover Roy Hibbert: Vogel and Hibbert's teammates have made like magicians, and made the 7-footer disappear.

And they've got to fight -- not fight in the hockey sense, but fight back competitively, man up and refuse to go quietly in a series they've made so compelling and competitive.

We can say this now after watching repeated replays of the flagrant fouls committed by Hansbrough, Haslem and Pittman: This series has gotten out of hand.

It's one thing to level hard, purposeful fouls during a heated playoff series, but this thing has gotten downright dirty, unsavory and dangerous. NBA Commissioner David Stern and Stu Jackson, the league's executive vice president for basketball operations, got this one right, suspending Haslem for one game and Pittman for three games.

"The talk has fueled the physical play," Miami's LeBron James said after Game 5, "and the physical play has fueled the talk."

If these teams played with gloves, they would have dropped them already.

But this shouldn't be about evening the score on the stitches scoreboard. It should be about evening the score in this series, and making Miami sweat a seventh game in a series that deserves a seventh game.

Bob Kravitz is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Call him at (317) 444-6643 or email bob.kravitz@indystar.com. Follow Bob on Twitter at @bkravitz.