It’s official. The Indiana Pacers are coming to Fort Wayne.
Greg Schenkel, vice president of corporate and public relations communications for the Pacers, confirmed multiple Internet reports Thursday that the Pacers will play a preseason game this fall in Memorial Coliseum.
Full details, including the date, the opponent and ticket prices, will be released at a news conference next week in Fort Wayne.
“We haven’t announced the preseason schedule yet, so right now we don’t have all of that in place,”
Schenkel said. “But there are eight preseason games, and I am willing to confirm that one of them will be in Fort Wayne.”
The Pacers last played in Fort Wayne in 1997, Larry Bird’s first year as head coach. The game against Toronto drew a near-capacity crowd at Memorial Coliseum, and the Pacers won 104-100.
“The reality is, as the name says, we’re the Indiana Pacers,”
Schenkel said. “So we need to continually make sure people know that within a reasonable distance of Indianapolis that there is a pro franchise that we would like people to be exposed to.”
The Pacers’ team that will appear at Memorial Coliseum will be preparing for a season of transition. After nine straight playoff appearances, the Pacers have endured back-to-back sub-.500 seasons, going 35-47 in 2006-07 and 36-46 in 2007-08. It was their two poorest seasons since 1988-89.
And at the end of this past season, two mainstays departed. In June, just before the draft, the Pacers traded former All-Star center Jermaine O’Neal to the Toronto Raptors for T.J. Ford, Rasho Nesterovic and the Raptors’ first-round pick, who turned out to be Georgetown center Roy Hibbert.
In addition, CEO and team president Donnie Walsh left after 21 years to become head of basketball operations for the New York Knicks.
