Indiana Pacers – Summer starts – Furphy ready! Colts keys to GREAT training camp! Tank or no tank!

Pacers summer league tonight is go. 5:00 from Vegas. The Pacers take on the Cavaliers. Seems like it’s just been maybe a couple of weeks, if that, that the Pacers last played and it’s already summer league. What’s going on? Of course, it was because the Pacers were in the NBA finals for the second time in their franchise history. Some people are saying that the Pacers need to tank because Tyrese Hallebertton’s not going to be able to play in 2025 26. You’ve got to lose them all and get a lottery pick. Stop that. Nobody tanks. Nobody should tank. Teams that tank fail. Winning brings winning. Losing brings losing. And I’m going to give you a great example of that. This is an opportunity for Johnny Fury to show what he’s done to grow his game over the last year. Second round pick out of Kansas. Fury played a little bit as a rookie for the Pacers. not many meaningful minutes, but they Kevin Pritchard said the other day that maybe Johnny Fury is a guy who can be a rotational player in 2025 2026. So that’s the interesting part of the summer league. The other part I I don’t know. Everybody gets together in Vegas. They got to have something to do. So they they get some summer league games together. You can sit and you can watch basketball. I think that that’s basically the purpose of the summer league. Summer league guys, the rookies you get to see show out a little bit. Speaking of that, Cam Jones unlikely to be a participant for the Pacers, the second round pick, 38th overall pick. They traded to get Cam Jones. Uh, and so people a little bit excited about the Marquette kind of point guard last year, but a wing the the years prior. And we’ll see whether Cam Jones plays. He’s got a hamstring. Whatever. I’m not too worried about summer league. We’re going to talk about the Colts. Nahhem Hines says that he’s got his explosiveness back and so people are saying that the Colts ought to go out and get Naem Hines. It’s not always that simple. Nahhem Hines asked to leave Indianapolis. He didn’t want to be here anymore. Sometimes that means something. You know what I mean? Maybe it’s Naim doesn’t want to be here. And if he’s offered a contract here, maybe he’d say, “Nah, maybe I want to play someplace else. Maybe I want to go to Chicago. Maybe I want to go to the Vikings. Maybe I want to go to the Broncos.” Hell, I don’t know where Nahhem Hines wants to go. But it may not be Indianapolis. If I were Nahhem Hines, somebody called, I’d pick up the phone, I’d say, “Yeah, I’ll be right there.” That’s me. you you get on a jet ski and you wreck your knee and you come back a couple of years later and somebody expresses interest, you you reciprocate that interest. I I think that’s simple math, right? Uh training camp starts in 13 days. So two weeks from yesterday, first workout and it’s going to be a full practice. Pacers have got to get going. The Pacers have got to find a way in this training camp to prepare themselves to play on September 7th in a way that they have not prepared themselves to play since 2013, the last time they won a season opening game. I mean, come on. September 7th against the Dolphins, Colts have got to win that game. Am I right or am I right? We’re going to talk about the quarterbacks in the AFC South and the odds of all four teams of winning the AFC South. We’re going to talk about the uh Devin Booker extension. Uh the Suns, are are they crazy? Are they insane? Like we say it all the time, you don’t overpay for mediocrity. And Devin Booker is not a mediocre basketball player. He is a really good basketball player, but being really good does not justify paying him more per year than anybody in NBA history. Goodness sake. I I love Matt Ishbia as uh an owner I think does some really really smart things as the owner for the Suns. This was not among them. And this is Breakfast with K. It’s historic Shirt Week. This of course a uh an original Ivan Ranco says Muck Fishan shirt. And and so we adorn this today to celebrate the great Dan Doitch and his invention of Ivan Ranco in order to catch a leaker of information within the Indiana Basketball office over 30 years ago. It’s Thursday, July 10th, 2025, brought to you by the great people at Today’s Dentistry. Hey, look, you got a dental problem. you haven’t seen a dentist in a long time and and you got holes in your teeth, you got to call somebody. And if you’re going to call somebody, call the best. That’s Dr. Mike O’Neal. 3178492933. Ask for Julie. Tell her that Kent told you to call. Make sure and subscribe because subscribers have an opportunity to win prizes. I show this one every day because it’s the biggest box. That is a Chicago Bears helmet. A replica speed helmet signed by the great Matt Brown. A wonderful safety back in the day for the Chicago Bears. He was a touchdown machine. We’ve got a uh Carolina Panther autograph uh Steve Burlin ball an autograph Jack Young Bloodood jersey that Rams jersey. We’re giving away the uh Mike Tomzac. For those of you who are Mike Tomzac freaks, God help you. Um, there you go. There’s the Mike Tomzac ball. And then, of course, we have the Payton Manning 8×10 personally autographed photo that would look so good on your wall. You’ve got to be a subscriber to be able to win. We give away the prizes every single Monday. And the phrase that pays today is go Pacers, go. We want we want a summer league championship. Don’t hang a banner in Cambridge Fieldhouse for winning a a summer league championship. But let’s win a summer league championship. Go win something out there in Vegas. Let’s go. Um, right. Hit the like button because that’s what polite people do. Hoosiers are polite in Norwegian. Hooser means and it’s uh spelled different. It’s spelled with a YH somehow and there’s a J in there. Hooser in uh Norwegian. It means polite, polite and astute citizen of the world. That’s what Hooser means in Norwegian. Uh so hit the like button and if you want to make a donation, make a donation. No big whoop, but please include a comment or a question that elevates the level of discourse on the channel. Can you? Thank you, Julia. Very nice of you. Um let’s talk about the Indiana Pacers. Summer league basketball starts today, five o’clock on NBA TV. All these games that the Pacers play are going to be televised. The first two on NBA TV and then the last one on ESPNU. That’s a good thing. We’ll get to see this summer league basketball. And this will be just like preseason football where we kind of look forward to it because hey, at 5:00 on a Thursday afternoon, what do we have to do other than sports related? Watch Pacers summer league basketball. But a quarter into it, you’re going to say, “Wow, this really isn’t so very interesting. Why am I doing this?” Well, you’re doing it to watch Johnny Fury, see if Cam Jones plays. Uh, see how Enrique Freeman, Quinton Jackson, Kay Teima Tomaga is going to play. Remember the kid, the Asian kid from Nebraska who’s a three-point machine kept sticking it right in Indiana’s ear. He’s going to play again. Buddy Beahheim is going to play. The uh the son of uh Coach Beheim from Syracuse. How about that? Three months to the preseason. So, not much time. And this is the last basketball we’re going to get for a while. NBA style basketball. So, try to enjoy it. Why not? Good thing. Um, let’s talk for a minute about IU football. All right. IU football. This is interesting to me because I think more people when I talk to people about Indiana athletics, more people are talking to me about football this off seasonason than basketball. That has never happened. Hey, what do you think about Signetti? Hey, what do you think, you know, about Fiser and Kamar and Ponds coming back? What do you think about the offensive line transfer from Notre Dame? What, you know, what do you think about the new quarterback from Cal? All these questions. What what’s Roman Hebi going to be like as running back? He transferred from Maryland, right? How’s recruiting going with Indiana football? It’s never ending. And I rarely hear anything about basketball. And that’s fascinating to me. Uh Indiana football four first team uh all Big 10 selections uh by a service. And and that’s interesting because that’s the first time I can ever remember that happening. Uh Mendoza, the quarterback from Cal, the affforementioned Mendoza. Uh he’s an upgrade and that makes him interesting. He’s an upgrade over Curtis Work because last year Curtis Work played with a torn ACL. this guy’s going to be able to move. Can IU maintain focus? This is question for IU. Can IU maintain focus with the increased popularity of the IU program? Meaning really any popularity because when was the last time that Indiana football was popular? I got to go back to like 1993 probably. Uh, and this is more than that, but IU football is a subject of more passionate conversation than IU hoops. and and maybe it’s the way they want it, right? Because football football keeps the lights on and basketball is something we do between football seasons, right? That I’m talking about college athletic fans. Um, let’s talk about the Colts. Nah, Hines has tweeted that he’s got his explosiveness back and he’s ready to return to the NFL. So, people I saw this Jonathan Taylor retweeted and said he’s back. uh about Naem Hines and Colts fans. Excuse me. This is live. So, what are you going to do? Uh Colts fans would like Nahm Hines back in a Colts uniform. Hell, who wouldn’t if he’s able to play at the level that he played when he was with the Colts first time around. However, Nahheem Hines asked to be traded from the Colts. They accommodated that request, sent him to the Buffalo Bills, and then he’s got the the jet ski accident. And now the Colts are are you would expect Naim Hines to call the Colts and say, “Hey, could you take me back after I requested the trade?” I I wouldn’t take the call. Tell you the truth, you ask out, you are out. We are not inviting you back. It’s like a prom date. You You get a prom date. The prom date says yes. And then two weeks before the prom, the prom date says, “I I found maybe a better guy to take me to the prom, so I’m going to go with him.” Are you going to take that prom date back if things don’t work out during that two weeks? And now she comes crawling back and says, “It didn’t work out with that guy. I was wrong. I like you.” Do you take her back? Some would, some wouldn’t. I would not. I have more self-respect than that. Uh, what do we need out of training camp in order for it to be a really, really good training camp? We need health. First and foremost, always health. And that means Nick Ross, no hitting Josh Downs during a no contact, seven on seven. Come on. Can’t have that happen again. Although I think in the end it was good for uh Nick Cross because Nick Ross came out of that. Somebody got his attention after that. I said you got to cut him. I may have been premature. That was not would not have been the right decision. When you draft a kid who’s 20 years old out of Maryland, right, a safety that you think has the physical attributes necessary to play safety at a really high level and you draft him to develop, you know what, that is a guy you’re going to have to develop. And that means a lot of different things. Here we go. Sports says if IU basketball makes a comeback, football uh will suffer with share of the money. No, they’re they’re not going to change the uh the amount of money that’s extended toward basketball. That’s going to be roughly 15 million to football of the 20.5 million, 4 million to basketball, and then uh the rest to women’s basketball, baseball, volleyball, that kind of thing. That’s the way that’s going to work. Uh you need to hit in camp. football people, especially old-time football people, right? Uh who were around before people got all analytic about everything will tell you that hitting in camp will while it might cause an injury or two during camp, it will save more injuries during the season. So, you got to hit a little bit and that hitting helps prepare you for September 7th, which is the point of camp. The odds to win the AFC South, uh, Texans plus 110, uh, Jags plus 300, Colts plus 310, Titans plus 750. We will talk about the quarterbacks this afternoon and the differences between the quarterbacks assuming that Anthony Richardson winds up being the starter for the Indianapolis Colts because you know you got Cam Ward from Miami now who’s going to be the starting quarterback in Tennessee. That makes this division really interesting and it makes that Titans at plus 750 really interesting too. Uh, but we’re going to talk about especially the comparison between Richardson and Jones this afternoon in in some more I’m not going to say arcane, but less publicized statistics that show these guys from an accuracy standpoint are a hell of a lot closer than people will tell you. Like people think people look at Daniel Jones and they say, “Oh yeah, he delivers the ball more accurately than Anthony Richardson. Richardson throws it deeper and and so he might be a little bit more erratic with deep throws because he’s throwing more of them. But is Daniel Jones actually more accurate? That’s an interesting question. We will uh answer it this afternoon. To tank or not to tank, you don’t tank. You never tank. That’s not a rational conversation for a real front office. Pacers need to tank to get a lottery pick for 2026 2027. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. You don’t. You never tank. Your franchise is either about winning or it’s not about winning. And it better be about winning if you’re going to win. And this Pacers team is about winning right now. And you don’t corrupt that with any kind of other nonsense. Uh morning Kent from Go Pacers. Go Colts. uh record prediction this year for the Colts, they’re going to win eight or nine games because that’s what the franchise is. That’s what it is. That’s the DNA. That’s what they do. Uh absolutely. Devin Booker signed an extension that is going to pay him at the end of his current run of years. I think it goes through 2930, $72.5 million per season. He is a four-time all-star in nine years. That means he’s missed the All-Star game, including this past season, more often than he’s made it. Now, he has scored 25 or more points, I think the last six or seven years. So, there is that. He finished fourth in the MVP voting once. He is not a mediocre basketball player. Like, we talk about Miles Turner being mediocre, mediocre among starting centers in the NBA. Devin Booker is not mediocre in any sense, but he should not be the highest paid player in the NBA either. And by making him the highest paid player, at least as it stands right now, in those final two years of his now current deal with the Suns, the Suns have made themselves, they painted themselves in a corner where they’re not going to be able to pay other guys around Devin Booker at a level which will allow them to win. Let’s celebrate some birthdays, shall we? today. Kevin Fowler celebrating a birthday. The great Kevin Cole celebrating a birthday. The great Fred Mitchell celebrating a birthday. A sports writer that I read and read today. I read what he posts on Facebook. Facebook is great because it gives people Dave Kindred, Fred Mitchell, those guys can post stuff their thoughts and I enjoy that. I hope that Rick Boosezich does that also. Jason Davis, happy birth as he retires. Boosezich is retiring. Denver Crawl, happy birthday. Tammy Lynn Hecman Culvin, happy birthday. Uh, would I take Chris Paul for a one-year while Tai is out? Yes, I would. That is the guy that I pointed at the entire time and said, “That’s the guy we want.” Absolutely. Chris Beldoni, happy birthday. The great Chris Buyers celebrating a birthday. Terrific, terrific basketball coach. Uh, Randy Clemens, happy birthday. If today’s your birthday, you celebrate like hell. If it’s not your birthday, you celebrate somebody else. That’s best done with an honest and specific compliment. Lift each other up. Don’t pull each other down. Be good to each other. Be happy for somebody’s success, not covetous of that success. Work your ass off today because you know what? Working your ass off is a hell of a lot more fun than not working your ass off. All right, we’ll talk to you later today. I can’t wait. Inside Indiana sports now just 8

Pacers Summer League team set to tip against Cavs in Vegas at 5p! Johnny Furphy’s chance to shine!
Colts Camp 13 days away – keys to a great camp! Odds Colts win AFC South not long enough!
Devin Booker extension too huge for Suns to win!
Pacers fans – some are advising team to tank in 2026! Is that right call?

Here is the link for the only autobiography ever published without praise for its author: https://www.amazon.com/Oops-Art-Learning-Mistakes-Adventures/dp/173420740X

https://kentsterling.com/2025/07/03/rule-for-kent-sterling-conest/

45 comments
  1. IU Basketball has been such a disappointment that I have zero expectations. On top of that, new coach, all new roster and IU hasn’t done a very good job connecting with fans since the hire.

  2. Go Pacers Go! By the way Kent, my son was an All State defensive end with Randy Gregory at HSE. I traveled to 48 states for my job but never missed a game in 5 years. Randy had his problems but he was his best friend. Is a Good person.

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