NBA Playoffs Preview: Indiana Pacers

Racebannon - Satan's Kickin' Yr Dick In (2002)

There's no reason to preview a team that won 37 games and backed into the playoffs in a pathetic East battle for the 8th seed that featured Charlotte trading away their best player to save money, and a dreadful (Cthulhu-level dread) Bucks offense. Fans were even figuring out what the Nets needed to do to make it after sweeping Toronto in London to get to only 20 games under .500. At one point, Detroit GM Joe Dumars talked about the team making a run for the post-season... after half of his players walked out of a shoot around in protest of embattled coach John Kuester. The Pacers won the race to the bottom, or did they lose it? Not sure how that works.

Let's be honest, who has made it through an entire Pacers game from beginning to end since the Malice at the Palace stripped any exciting players the team once had? Quinn Buckner and John Cougar Mellencamp? No one has ever listened to an entire Racebannon LP either, not even Johnny Cougar. In fact, Racebannon is the anti-Johnny Cougar. Their discordant noisy jams and raw, unhinged vocals confounded punks and emos alike. They found an audience by being perhaps the strangest band to be grouped into the "screamo" genre, achieving peak weirdness with a rock opera called "Satan's Kickin Yr Dick In", quoth Pitchfork:

It's the story of Rodney, a musician whose material is piss-poor and can't draw a crowd. In desperation, he makes a deal with Satan, who turns him into a gorgeous chanteuse named Rhonda Delight, as whom he wins fame, riches, and decadence-- everything his heart desires-- until his inevitable fall, when celebrity takes its toll, and Satan returns to drag him to hell.

If the Pacers made a deal with Satan in order to go 8 games under .500, that would be horribly sad. But I wouldn't put it past a desperate Mike Dunleavy, who played 600+ regular season games without tasting the playoffs, and saw his brother in losing Troy Murphy suddenly get a cush spot as the 9th man on the Celtics. Will it be worth going to hell (i.e. the Charlotte Bobcats) to get blown out by the Bulls in front of 12,000 strong at Conseco?

It's hard to deny the supernatural aspects of the Pacers' 54 point quarter against the Denver Nuggets back in November. The Pacers went 20-21, a Josh McRoberts desperation heave at the buzzer away from the perfect quarter. That's some Angels in the Outfield shit. Kadeem Hardison and Marlon Wayans already signed on to star in the feature film about it. The only clearer case of a deal with the devil in Indiana was Butler getting to the NCAA championship game and then shooting 18% from the field. That's straight out of a Rod Serling screenplay, except it would somehow be about boxing.

On second thought, Butler just sucked.

Though I could never hang with Racebannon, they did win me over with a very good cover of the Captain Beefheart classic "Electricity". This has nothing to do with the Pacers but I've already bored myself thinking about them more than I have to. Bulls in 4. RIP Don Glen Vliet.



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