(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
The Indiana Pacers forever etched their name into the NBA history books Tuesday by winning the league’s first-ever play-in game, walloping the Charlotte Hornets 144-117. The Pacers will line up this Thursday against the Washington Wizards for the final spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Wizards dropping a 118-100 decision to the Boston Celtics.
The Pacers are something of an anomaly in that despite being in the NBA, the crème de la crème of basketball worldwide, they are not the sport’s top dogs in their home state. College basketball is more popular, with Indiana and Purdue and Butler and Ball State plus others taking turns atop the higher education totem pole, yet even they pale in comparison to the overwhelming, omnipresent, universally beloved art of high school basketball. If you live in Indiana, and you go to high school which, despite the state usually dismissed as flyover country, most residents do the game is in your blood, a