No, 'Cer.

On my favorite NBA team's dumb slogan.

As the Indiana Pacers continue their so-far roaring postseason run, I’ve been thinking a lot—too much, really—about a certain word. That word is ‘Cers.

I first encountered this linguistic abomination last October when the team announced its new slogan: Yes ‘Cers.

“No,” I thought at the time.

Then: “Please, God, no.”

But, yes. A group of credentialed marketers for a professional sports brand with global reach sat in a conference room or Zoom call and listened to someone pitch a slogan featuring an obscenely clunky abbreviation of the team’s name that, in 30 years of fandom, I have never heard one single Pacers fan say. And they said, “Works for us!”

It does not work for me.

It might be a slight exaggeration to say that the existence of Yes ‘Cers has tainted an otherwise amazing Pacers season for me. But it has inflicted a not-insignificant amount of psychological distress—not only on me, but presumably on all fans who care about words and how they are supposed to work.

As a unit of language, ‘Cers is so thoroughly objectionable that I feel dirty even typing it. It sounds like what a person pretending to be a fan would say. “Hey fellas, how ‘bout those ‘Cers! That Tyrone Haliburton sure is something!”

Also, it just looks bad.

The crimes this slogan commits against syntax and good taste might be forgivable if the ends justified the means. But Yes ‘Cers is just a big, dumb exclamation. If all we’re doing is declaring affirmative feelings about the team, “Go Pacers” was working fine, thanks.

Maybe I feel so strongly because this issue hits close to home. I’m a copywriter. I mean no shade toward the writer who came up with Yes ‘Cers. I’ve written plenty of lousy taglines in my time. As a copywriter, you depend on your colleagues and clients to help filter out the clunkers. So how did a flagrant airball like Yes ‘Cers get green-lighted?

I’ve thought this over a bit, and I have theories. Here’s the most interesting one: Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe Yes ‘Cers is a great slogan. Maybe the fact that I’m bashing it here is actually evidence of its greatness. It would be less successful if I never thought about it at all, right?

And maybe Yes ‘Cers has something else more substantive going for it than just the any-publicity-is-good-publicity factor. Maybe its defining feature—its aggressive and unabashed awkwardness—actually fits this Pacers team perfectly.

Think about it. Tyrese Haliburton, for all of his gifts, lacks the athleticism of many of his peers. His shooting form is infamously wonky. His voice goes from reedy to husky in the space of a second. His personality grates on opposing players so much that they voted him most overrated in the league.

Myles Turner, the Pacers’ longest-tenured player, famously builds Legos and loves Star Wars. He himself says he was “awkward and different” in high school. T.J. McConnell is a “pest” and an “annoying little shit.” Bennedict Mathurin bakes cookies in his spare time.

Maybe a dorky slogan like this one is perfect for this group. Maybe that was the galaxy-brained idea all along, and the Pacers marketing team is playing 3D chess while I’m sitting over here clutching my David Ogilvy books. Maybe I’m just an old man yelling at a cloud, and my concern with the aesthetics of a professional sports team slogan says far more about me than anything else.

Or: Maybe this whole argument is based on a category error. Maybe sports slogans aren’t supposed to be good. Maybe they are, by their very nature, inane nonsense.

Now that I think of it, yes. That’s it. Yes, indeed. Oh, what the hell: Yes—

No. Can’t do it. Go Pacers!