" Basketball is now a far different game for Tyler Hansbrough.

Except for rare occasions like Sunday - when he was loudly cheered by many in the crowd at Time Warner Cable Arena even when he fouled somebody - Hansbrough is no longer the focal point of much of anything.

He is a rookie power forward for the Indiana Pacers, who lost 104-88 to the Charlotte Bobcats on Sunday.

Hansbrough still wears No.50, his number at North Carolina where he set the school's all-time scoring record and won an NCAA title his senior season.

But his uniform Sunday was an unfamiliar golden hue, and Hansbrough came off the bench.

Sunday marked his first time as an NBA player in Charlotte. The No.13 pick in the 2009 NBA draft, he scored eight points and had six rebounds and five fouls in 21 minutes. They were respectable numbers - coming very close to his season averages - but nothing close to the sort he routinely put up as a Tar Heel.

"He's got a long way to go," Indiana coach Jim O'Brien said of Hansbrough after the game.

A slew of Carolina blue royalty witnessed Hansbrough's effort, including North Carolina coach Roy Williams, who made the trip west from Chapel Hill and sat in the front row.

If you had wanted to put together an all-time Tar Heels team strictly based on the men inside the Bobcats' arena, you could have started Michael Jordan, Phil Ford, Sam Perkins, Raymond Felton and Hansbrough and had two basketball hall of famers - Williams and Bobcats coach Larry Brown - to coach them."