WASHINGTON – Being bullish on the Indiana Pacers didn’t seem so preposterous before their smallish backcourt looked so ill-fitting side-by-side, the team Larry Bird aggressively built to run ignored how fast breaks begin with rebounds, and Paul George began to blame conspiracy theories for a perceived lack of respect from referees.

More than a third into the season, the Pacers (16-18) have been a disappointing blend of inconsistency and indifference. The quality of their effort has often been determined by location and opponent: good at home; bad against losing teams. They’ve been spared the embarrassment of being too far gone by the jumbled mess that the Eastern Conference has been aside from Cleveland and Toronto. How long that lasts remains unknown but is running short on being acceptable.

“You can’t be relaxed, thinking it’s going to be like this all season,” George recently told The Vertical about the East. “These teams are going to start building momentum. They’re going to start getting into their strides. They’re going to start separating themselves and we don’t want to be that team at the end of the season, trying to scrap and fight our way into it, give everything we have and have nothing left for the playoffs.”

George came into this season believing he was ready for LeBron James, ready to be in the MVP conversation and surrounded by a team that could put the Pacers back among the elite. But what he had hoped the Pacers would become – with the offseason additions of Jeff Teague, Thaddeus Young and Al Jefferson, a new coach in Nate McMillan and a rising young big man in Myles Turner – has taken much longer than expected.

“You’ve got to have chemistry. You’ve got to learn guys. That usually takes some time. We hate to keep preaching that, because we need to be able to win these games now,” George told The Vertical. “You don’t understand how to really win games until everybody knows what everyone’s agenda [is] and what everyone on the court is doing.”

The rush to prop up another possible contender in an East that James has shown no indication of surrendering made it easy to overlook the possible defensive woes posed by a Teague-Monta Ellis backcourt, the troubles caused by having a frontcourt tandem in Turner and Young that spreads the floor with shooting but fails to control the glass, and the redundancy of several scoring wing players coming off the bench. McMillan replaced Frank Vogel, who favored a more grind-it-out style, but has been unable to help a squad of mostly offensive-minded players find a way to stop opposing teams. McMillan recently stated how that process of making so many unfamiliar pieces fit doesn’t come easily or quickly: “We want to be great. But we first must be good.”

“We still got a couple of games to get under our belt,” Teague told The Vertical. “All we need is one game to give us that boost to where guys feel good about themselves. We just go on a run. It happened to us when I was in Atlanta [in 2014-15]. We were struggling, then we won [19] in a row. So, it can happen. We just got to find a groove. It takes just one game. I think it’s coming soon.”

The Pacers will need a turnaround soon because the franchise’s hopes of retaining George before he hits free agency in 2018 are directly tied to how swiftly they return to contention. They have shown an ability to hang with the best, recording wins over Cleveland and the Los Angeles Clippers, but they also have blemishes against Philadelphia and Phoenix. “We’ve yet to find consistency. We’ve yet to find an identity. We’ve yet to put full, complete weeks together, where we can get three, four wins in a row,” George told The Vertical. “We’re just not that team right now.”

George has been critical of the team’s vacillating performances and recently called this “one of the most frustrating seasons” he’s been a part of – a pretty loaded statement considering he lost almost an entire season because of a broken leg. But George hasn’t absolved himself of the role he has played in the Pacers’ struggles. He’s admitted to having a sour attitude and being too distracted by officiating. His claim this week that NBA referees have treated his franchise like “a little brother” earned him a $15,000 fine. McMillan’s defense of George, which included a $10,000 fine for the coach, led to a meeting in which the two discussed how the superstar player would have to be careful how he reacts to the attention he’ll receive from defenses for the remainder of his time as an offensive focal point.

“I owe this team more,” George said. “And I’m going to give more. Regardless of what’s going on on the court, I’m going to make sure I’m having fun.”

Though he is back to being the player he once was, and more, George can’t help but sometimes get lost in what the Pacers used to be: a team more concerned with a top seed than simply reaching the postseason. The only holdover from the Pacers team that reached the conference finals in back-to-back years from 2013-14, George had the benefit of improving and growing with a core that has been shattered and scattered through Bird’s desire to be a more entertaining, up-tempo team.

After losing Lance Stephenson in free agency, having David West give back millions to shamelessly chase a championship, and jettisoning Roy Hibbert and his remaining confidence, Bird dealt George Hill in a draft-night trade last summer to Utah.

Teague, who replaced Hill as point guard and resident Indianapolis native in that three-team deal, has the 317 area code and his hometown skyline tattooed on his left forearm, but his return home after spending the previous seven seasons in Atlanta inauspiciously began with him struggling with his shot and looking out of sorts. He has since settled down with some performances reminiscent of his All-Star moments with the Hawks.

“I’m so used to playing with certain guys, knowing what they were going to do, what plays we were going to run, we knew how we were going to move the ball and get open shots,” Teague told The Vertical about his early adjustment. “No one knew each other. We knew we were a talented group, but we didn’t know how we’d connect. Coming to a team, where everybody pretty much [is a scorer], somebody had to take a hit. You have to sacrifice a lot of things. We didn’t figure it out from the beginning, but we’re still working and trying to get better. We’re just trying to find a rhythm, a groove. I mean, we’re all coming from different philosophies, different everything and we’re also trying to learn.”

While helping his new teammates get acclimated, George has seen his scoring and usage rate take a dip from previous seasons. Taking a step back has helped Teague become more comfortable, allowed Turner to showcase his promise at the tender age of 20 as a scorer and shot-blocker, and let Young expand his range to the 3-point line, where he is shooting a career-high 43.2 percent.

George is encouraged by the nights when the Pacers can pull their talents together and share the ball – such as Friday’s 111-101 win over the Chicago Bulls in which Teague had 17 assists – but he needs the team to reverse its current course to regain its footing in the East. “We can’t afford to take steps backward,” George told The Vertical.

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