INDIANAPOLIS — Kevin Pritchard hired Nate Bjorkgren to take the Indiana Pacers in a new direction.

They wound up going the wrong way.

After struggling defensively, missing the playoffs for the first time in six seasons and amid reports of locker room drama, the Pacers pulled the plug Wednesday when Pritchard, their president of basketball operations, fired Bjorkgren as coach after just one season.

“The 2020-21 season was not what any of us hoped or anticipated it would be, and our results on the court certainly did not meet the standards for what our organization and our fans have come to expect,” Pritchard said in a statement.

Indiana went 34-38, finishing the season with an embarrassing 142-115 loss to Washington in the play-in tournament. The Pacers also produced their first losing season at home in 32 years, and at times the effort didn’t appear to be there, either.

A rash of injuries was part of the problem. Indiana’s top scorer in 2019-20, T.J. Warren, suffered a season-ending foot injury after just four games. NBA blocks champion Myles Turner went down with a season-ending foot injury on April 18. And after trading two-time All-Star Victor Oladipo for swingman Caris LeVert in January, LeVert missed the next 24 games after team doctors found a cancerous growth on his left kidney.

NETS: Brooklyn’s James Harden will miss Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals on Thursday in Milwaukee because of the right hamstring injury that forced him out of the series opener. Harden left 43 seconds into that game with tightness but the Nets haven’t missed him, taking a 2-0 lead over the Bucks.

Harden missed 20 of 21 games late in the season because of the hamstring. Coach Steve Nash said Harden is progressing and he was optimistic for the All-Star guard’s return, but gave no timetable for that.

Nets forward Jeff Green also will miss at least one more game with a left plantar fascia strain. He was been out since Game 3 of the first round and is progressing but still not practicing.

HEAT: Miami President Pat Riley was fined $25,000 by the NBA on Wednesday for being too clear that he’d eagerly welcome a reunion with LeBron James. The league said Riley violated its anti-tampering rule with his remarks during an interview Friday on Dan Le Batard’s radio show.

Riley said he would “leave the key under the doormat” if James called and said he wanted to return to Miami. James led the Heat to two NBA titles and four straight appearances in the finals before returning to Cleveland in 2014. Riley is the second executive to be fined in three days for tampering. The NBA penalized Philadelphia’s Daryl Morey and the team $75,000 apiece on Monday for a tweet about Stephen Curry.

AWARD: Utah’s Rudy Gobert won his third Defensive Player of the Year award after helping the Utah Jazz to the best record in the NBA.

Gobert had the most total blocked shots and defensive rebounds in the league this season and became the fourth player to win the award at least three times.

A night after a game-sealing blocked shot in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals, Gobert received 84 first-place votes and 464 points from a global panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters.

Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons was second with 15 first-place votes and 287 votes, and Draymond Green of Golden State was third with 76 points.

Gobert was the Defensive Player of the Year in 2018 and 2019. Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace each won it four times and Dwight Howard three.

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