"Watch Sarunas Jasikevicius now. Watch him in this Olympic basketball tournament, playing the style he plays best, working that high pick-and-roll, finding cutters or stepping back and hitting his shots for the unbeaten Lithuanian national team.

This is the player the Indiana Pacers thought they were getting when then-general manager Larry Bird signed him to a three-year, $12 million contract in July 2005. This is the player Jasikevicius thought he would be as he made the move from the Euroleague to the NBA.

It never happened.

A year and a half after Jasikevicius came, he was gone, traded to the Golden State Warriors. Now, the point guard is back in Europe, playing for Greece's Panathinaikos and for Lithuania in international competition.

"I was pretty much miserable (in Indiana)," Jasikevicius said Thursday night after an emotional victory over Russia. "Those were bad times for me. Obviously."

Those were bad times for everybody connected to the Pacers organization. The team was in post-Reggie Miller, post-Brawl meltdown mode, falling apart on the court, off the court and in the stands.

Jasikevicius, whose signing drew great applause from here at the time, had the look of a player who would Super Glue Jamaal Tinsley to the bench and be the selfless leader this mercurial team needed. He could pass. He could shoot the stand-still jumper. Mostly, he could lead.

We never saw it in Indiana. Never saw the game, never saw the passion, never saw anything.

"How could you see it when I was at the end of the bench right next to you?" he asked, laughing.

Jasikevicius doesn't mince words: He blames most of his problems on former Pacers and current Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle.

"Obviously, the (up-tempo) style of play Rick promised me was never there, the opportunities to play were never there, and the players who were supposed to be gone by the time I came were still around," he said. "Rick did a great false recruiting job on me, like college recruiting where they say, 'If you come here, we promise you the world.'

"But Larry (Bird) being such an honorable man, and (then-president) Donnie (Walsh), too, they hire the coach and let him coach the way he wants. Rick's a half-court man, no question."

In Carlisle's defense, his issue with Jasikevicius was his defense, or the complete lack of the same.

Jasikevicius could generate perimeter offense in the most creative ways -- that was never a question in any league -- but his lack of foot speed made him an easy target for opposing guards. At times, Carlisle, a man-to-man proponent, relented and played a zone when Jasikevicius was on the floor in the hope of protecting his guard.

It should also be pointed out that when Jasikevicius was in Golden State and playing a wide-open European style of game, he still couldn't get off the bench for Don Nelson.

"I don't know that there's any reason to respond,'' Carlisle said later