Paul George and Lance Stephenson are in a dogfight with the Hawks. (GETTY IMAGES)

The Indiana Pacers were in a fighting mood the day before the 2014 NBA playoffs started. Unfortunately, they were fighting themselves.

Lance Stephenson and Evan Turner got into a scuffle during practice, according to Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, and had to separated by teammates David West and Luis Scola. Turner walked away from practice with a cut.

The fistfight is symbolic of how the last three months have gone for the Pacers.

They have gone from being title contenders to punchlines on social media, and the hits just keeps on coming. The Pacers, the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, are in a dogfight with the eighth-seeded Atlanta Hawks, who finished with a sub-.500 record during the regular season.

On paper, this first-round series should be an easy one to predict. The big, bad Pacers against the undersized Hawks. But somehow, the paper got wet as the Hawks are looking like the contenders and the Pacers are acting like a bunch of pretenders.

Pacers All-Star Paul George summed it up best after his team lost Game 3 to fall behind 2-1 in the series. He said, “Our toughness is questionable right now.”

That’s a bold statement coming from the team’s best player.

Toughness was supposed to be the Pacers’ calling card. It was the foundation of their vaunted defense. George and Co. had the second-best defense in the NBA this past season, and they have a roster loaded with Ruff Ryders.

But sometimes having physical toughness doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have mental toughness. That’s where the problem lies with the Pacers. Between the ears.

Confidence is a fragile thing, and it’s hard to get it back once you lose it.

Right now, the Pacers have lost their swagger. Instead of walking around with their heads held high, they’re looking around for excuses when things go wrong. And the guy on their team that has lost his mojo is 7-2 center Roy Hibbert.

When Indiana coach Frank Vogel was asked if Hibbert will start Game 4 against the Hawks, Vogel said: “We’ll see.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

“He’s our anchor,” Vogel said. “We won 56 games with him as a starter. We’ll see. Probably.”

You can understand Vogel’s hesitation when the subject of benching his “anchor” came up. It’s a tough call. Benching Hibbert could have a domino effect. He could lose Hibbert mentally for the rest of the playoffs. He could alienate the rest of the team. He could also save the Pacers from elimination.

The Hawks and their perimeter-oriented offense is a bad matchup for Hibbert. His forte is protecting the rim, but if the Hawks are staying away from the rim then there’s no need to have rim protector. Hibbert looks like a fish out of water guarding Hawks center Pero Antic, who prefers to drift outside the 3-point line. It’s a terrible matchup for him.

One solution is to start Hibbert but pull him after 3-4 minutes, and insert Luis Scola at center to team up with West. Scola has been much more effective than Hibbert in the Hawks series and arguably the Pacers’ second-best player at the moment.

But Hibbert is just one part of the multiple issues the Pacers need to address.

The starters look gassed and Vogel may need to reach out to his bench to stay afloat.

Indiana also has too many ball-stoppers on the floor and not enough shooters. Spreading the floor could open up lanes for George to drive and kick.

But mainly, the Pacers need to address their locker room. They are a fractured group. They have two guys in Stephenson and Turner looking for the their next contracts. That’s likely why they were fighting. They’re both after the same thing and they will go through each other to get it.

Money is the root of all evil.

Joel Huerto is the editor and publisher of OneManFastBreak.net. Follow him on Twitter @onemanfastbreak.

Roy Hibbert powered the Pacers into the Eastern Conference finals. (GETTY IMAGES)

The NBA slogan “Go Big or Go Home” definitely applies to the 2013 playoffs because three of the four teams left have one thing in common: They’re big.

The Indiana Pacers are in the Eastern Conference finals thanks in large part to 7-foot-2 center Roy Hibbert. The Memphis Grizzlies are in the Western Conference finals for the first time in franchise history because of Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, arguably the best center-power forward tandem in the Association. The San Antonio Spurs are back in the West finals for the eighth time in Tim Duncan’s 16-year career mainly because of the emergence of 6-11 center Tiago Splitter.

The Miami Heat are the only team left in the 2013 playoffs that prefers small ball, but they have four-time league MVP LeBron James. What makes Miami the exception to the rule is LeBron’s ability to fill two roles: power forward and point guard. LeBron is not only the best power forward in basketball, but he’s also the best point-forward in basketball.

For the past few years NBA coaches have become enamored with small lineups, moving small forwards to the power forward spot and turning shooting guards into small forwards. The term “stretch 4” is like that new mobile app everyone is downloading, as more and more teams look for big men who prefer to play out in the perimeter instead of the low post.

But like all trends, they tend to fade away. Remember the “wildcat” offense in the NFL? It was so popular two years ago, now you hardly see it. The same can be said about “small ball” in the NBA. It took off during the 2004-05 season when Mike D’Antoni unveiled it in Phoenix and several teams embraced it, including the last two NBA champions: Dallas and Miami.

Entering the 2013 playoffs, the Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, Houston Rockets, and the Oklahoma City Thunder all ran a variation of the small-ball concept. They play an up-tempo, exciting brand of basketball that seemingly filtered around the league. However, all of them are now home watching the playoffs.

Small ball has taken a huge hit this postseason, none more evident than the New York-Indiana series in the Eastern Conference semifinals. The Knicks were absolutely pounded on the boards by the big, bad Pacers with a traditional frontline that includes Hibbert, 6-9 power forward David West, and 6-10 small forward Paul George. The size and length of the Pacers eventually wore down the Knicks, as Indy won the series in six games. The Knicks’ bread-and-butter was the 3-point shot, and when that was taken away they struggled to score points.

“You always construct your team to beat the world champions, which is the Miami Heat. But nobody thought about the Indiana Pacers,” Knicks superfan Spike Lee said on ESPN’s First Take. “We were not constructed to deal with them dudes. They’re too big, too strong, and they’re young. So, we were looking at Miami but were sleeping on the Pacers.”

The Pacers pounded the Knicks on the boards, outrebounding them 269-222 in the series. After the Pacers outworked the Knicks 53-40 in Game 3, New York coach Mike Woodson ditched his small-ball starting lineup in favor of a more traditional lineup, as he paired Kenyon Martin with Tyson Chandler. But it didn’t matter who Woodson threw out there. Hibbert and West were too much. Hibbert was a beast on both ends, tipping in missed shots on offense and shutting down Knicks drives on defense.

“The beauty of this team is we really don’t adjust to other teams,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. “We do what we do in terms of our starting lineup and our rotations.”

The signature play of the series came with five minutes left in the fourth quarter of Game 6 and the Knicks ahead 92-90. Carmelo Anthony spun past George on the baseline and thought he had a clear path to the basket. Hibbert met him at the rim and rejected Anthony’s potential dunk with his left hand. That play sparked a 7-0 run by the Pacers and eventually closed out the Knicks’ season.

Hibbert was simply too big and too strong for the Knicks. That’s been the theme of this year’s playoffs.