Try as they might, the Indiana Pacers can?t seem to drop out of first place in the NBA?s Eastern Conference.
This, of course, says a whole lot more about the relative strength, or lack thereof, of the East than it does about the championship aspirations of the Pacers.

Over the same stretch of the past two weeks during which the Pacers were losing six of seven games, including six in a row, the Pistons were out on the West Coast continuing to flail about as their losing streak ran up to seven. Then there were the Nets, who were having trouble beating anyone but the Knicks on their home court, dropping six of their last 10 games.

So as March began, the Pacers found themselves in the curious situation of playing their worst basketball of the season yet remaining in first place, not only in the Central Division but the entire Eastern Conference.

Indiana departed home Monday to begin its own critical stretch of games on the West Coast, beginning Tuesday night at Golden State, where the Warriors have turned from reliable patsy to possible playoff contender in the far superior West. What follows are games at the Lakers, Kings and Trail Blazers.

Indiana easily could play well in all four games and return to the heartland with another four defeats. What has become abundantly evident for Indiana is how fragile its grasp on excellence has been this season.

Reggie Miller has been a Pacer for 16 years. He knows a thing or two about the subtle difference between winning and losing.

?It?s all the little things,? Miller said. ?We?ve got to get back to executing our offense. Defensively we?re where we want to be at, holding teams to 35 to 40 percent shooting. Offensively we?re a step behind. We?ve got to get out and get some more easy baskets. Obviously, we?re stopping people, but we?re not getting a lot of fast break points. I think that was one of the combinations we had earlier this season, the combination between fast break points and our half court offense.?

Michael Jordan was the thorn in Miller?s side during Indiana?s run of excellence in the 1990s. As a Washington Wizard he is little more than a pest, but is nonetheless qualified to assess the Pacers? recent problems.

?I think they?ve lost their continuity a little bit,? Jordan said after helping the Wizards run the Pacers? losing streak to six a week ago. ?It seems to be that way. When you lose that rhythm, that connected feeling among all 12 players, it?s tough.

?Everybody goes through it over the course of a season. This is their time to go through that. They?ve got to fight themselves through it. We?ve done it, other teams have done it. This is not a perfect time to have it when you?re fighting for the division lead and possible home court advantage, but it makes the team stronger if you can fight your way through it.?

Of course, it is hard for a team to maintain continuity and ?connected feeling? among all the players when one of the players becomes such a distraction that his behavior threatens to overshadow everything anyone else on the team does.

Like it or not, that is what the Pacers face the rest of this season with Ron Artest, the NBA?s most enigmatic player.

Artest is a prime candidate for Defensive Player of the Year because he is the league?s best individual lock-up defender. The award usually goes to a shot blocker/rebounder like Ben Wallace or Dikembe Mutombo. But Artest merits consideration because he is capable of shutting down even the most athletic of big guards and small forwards, the most skilled players on the court.

But the remarkable intensity Artest brings to this unappreciated task too often has gotten the better of him this season. Celebrated outbursts of temper have resulted in suspensions, both by the league and his own coach. The fact Artest gets angrier at his own failures than the actions of others doesn?t ameliorate the negative effect his behavior has begun to have on his own team.

His teammates, of course, pay lip service to continuing to support him.

?He?s got my back and he?s still my boy,? Al Harrington said. ?That?s it.?

Except that?s not really it. Whether or not they admit it, Artest?s occasional lapses of logic have contributed to the Pacers? recent malaise.

For one thing, both his suspensions and his recent sit-down with NBA officials at league headquarters appear to have affected the very intensity that had made Artest such a feared player.

?I don?t know,? Miller said. ?You can never get into someone else?s head. But for us to be as successful as we were earlier this year, Ron was a big part of that. So by no means would we ever turn our backs on him. Hopefully there will be resolution between him and the league.

?He plays hard and sometimes he crosses the line. As a teammate you?ve got to be able to pull him back. There?s been some times when I?ve scratched my head, and other times when a lot of the things he?s done have helped us win. Sometimes you?ve got to take the good with the bad.

?He has to understand when he feels he?s crossing the line, and that?s where we?re in somewhat of a gray area.?

All of this leaves Pacers coach Isiah Thomas in a quandary. Thomas has done his best to imbue his squad with the same spirit of toughness that characterized his Pistons championship teams of 1989 and 1990.

Thomas has resisted the attempts to call the Pacers ?the new Bad Boys,? all the while doing his best to get his team to emulate the hard-nosed play that earned Detroit back-to-back titles during his best seasons.

Artest, of course, would have been a perfect ?Bad Boy.?

So if the Pacers helped to foster the ?loose cannon? image Artest carried with him, well aware that his menacing reputation often had a chilling effect on opponents, they must bear the consequences when he occasionally crosses that line to which Miller refers.

Thomas adamantly defends both Artest and his team?s approach.

Attempts to compare Artest with Portland?s mercurial Rasheed Wallace or, worse yet, former Piston Dennis Rodman, he says, are utterly inane.

?I see no analogy with Rasheed Wallace,? Thomas said. ?Two different people, two different backgrounds. All they have in common is skin color. Same with Rodman. People have said, 'Isiah and Rodman' and all this other stuff. I can tell you this, when Dennis Rodman was with me that stuff wasn?t happening. If you want to talk about Dennis Rodman, the Rodman I had wasn?t the Rodman other people got.

?Ron?s a young player in this league and he can have a really bright future. It?s not too farfetched to one day be talking about Ron Artest on the Olympic team. He has that type of talent and is that vital a player. You want to help those guys.?

Artest, of course, has to want to help himself first, and it appears he is making a sincere attempt to do so.

Meanwhile, his most recent crossing of the line kept the Pacers from making a clear break from the pack at the top of the Eastern Conference. The race at the top of the conference likely won?t be decided until the final few days of the season.

Bucks coach George Karl, whose brutal honesty usually gets him crosswise with his own players, accurately summed up the East the other night when he first asked, then answered, the question: Is there a single (Eastern) team that really scares the (heck) out of you??

His answer, of course, was, ?No.?

Since he was seated in the visitors locker room of Conseco Fieldhouse at the time, we can presume he hadn?t forgotten to consider the Pacers as a frightening team.