Now in the middle of his 12th NBA season, David West isn’t in the mood to think about the future. But, after a disastrous summer for his Pacers, that’s exactly what he’s been forced to do.

A combination of injuries and free agency eviscerated a Pacers team that had gone to back-to-back Eastern Conference Finals. Paul George was lost for the season with a broken leg suffered while playing with Team USA and Lance Stephenson opted to sign with Charlotte as a free agent, leaving the Pacers to hope for a run at the eighth playoff spot — at best.

“Sometimes you can’t script things,” West said last week, before a game in Brooklyn against the Nets. “There’s no science to how things will work out.

“Injuries happen, they are a part of the game, and you just have to be able to adjust and deal with it.”

But how do you deal with a loss as massive as subtracting George, one of the best two-way wings in the league? George’s gruesome injury happened too late in the summer for the Pacers to even attempt to replace his (and Stephenson’s) play-making.

“I think the biggest thing,” West said, “is to just know we’re approaching this as professionals, and just trying to … everybody is trying to do their job, and do what we can to try to make the best of this situation.”

It wasn’t so long ago the Pacers’ core went toe-to-toe in the postseason with the title-vintage Heat. In the past three seasons, the Pacers played a total of 20 playoff games against LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, replacing the Derrick Rose-less Bulls as the Heat’s primary Eastern Conference foil.

Frank Vogel did that by turning a raw, young core into a hardened defensive juggernaut, as George, Stephenson and George Hill provided length and athleticism on the perimeter while West and Roy Hibbert gave them toughness and a physical presence in the paint.

Vogel is a unique personality in the world of coaching, usually full of curmudgeons and grumps. That isn’t Vogel at all. He almost always wears a smile on his face and is always willing to answer any question thrown his way.

When pressed on the subject of how he’s keeping that positive outlook this season, however, even he needed a beat to collect his thoughts.

“Maintaining perspective,” he said. “Understanding the situation we’re in. It’s no fun losing. We do have a belief that we can have a strong season if we’re able to get healthy and come together and gel. It hasn’t happened yet, but we suffered some great losses this offseason. Paul George going down and then the injuries we’ve had.

“Every coach goes through it, and nobody’s feeling sorry for themselves here. But we believe in what we do, and we have good guys, and the guys have, to their credit, really stayed together and stayed persistent in their work and their belief that we can turn things around.

“Like I said, it’s no fun losing, but we’re still maintaining hope we can turn things around.”

Despite the odds being stacked against them, the Pacers have begun to do exactly that. They are tied for 10th in the East with a 12-21 record, only two games behind the eighth-place Heat. Vogel once again has constructed a top-10 defense to compensate for having the 29th-ranked offense, better only than the hapless 76ers.

A stingy defense and a willingness to work hard for 82 games is a recipe for a middle-of-the-pack team in the weak East. After dealing with injuries to West and Hill, the Pacers have won four of their last six games – including comfortable wins over the Nets and Heat and a two-point loss to the Bulls.

“The one thing is we’ve got a group that competes and plays hard,” West said. “That’s a big piece of it, and we feel like that as sort of who we are, if we can keep working towards that, working towards getting healthy, and obviously bettering our system and getting guys more comfortable with what we’re trying to do … who knows what the last two or three months of the year hold?”

It may hold a playoff berth. In addition to the usual steady production from their mainstays — West, Hill and Hibbert — the Pacers have gotten an unexpected boost from second-year swingman Solomon Hill.

The 23-year-old Arizona product barely played as a rookie behind George and Stephenson. Given an opportunity this season, his numbers aren’t spectacular – 10.4 points, 4.5 rebounds, and 2.4 assists while shooting 39.6 percent from the field and 31.2 percent from 3-point range – but Hill also has been tasked with George’s usual assignment of guarding the top perimeter threat from the opposing team. Vogel has been pleased with the results.

“He’s had a great impact,” Vogel said. “He’s been a reliable player all year, and as a second-year guy, probably is among the leaders in terms of minutes and contributions because he’s guarded the best player.

“He’s been Paul George for us this year. He’s guarded the best perimeter player, and he’s done a great job.”

It’s things like this – competing every night, developing young players, clawing their way into the playoff picture – that keep the Pacers moving forward. It’s not quite the same as being a legitimate contender, like they have been the past two years, but it gives West and his teammates a goal to work toward each day.

“I mean, our thing is to just try to keep continuing to get guys healthy, and to make strides towards improving this group,” West said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to put up some wins and gain some momentum.

“We’re getting through some pretty tough stretches of our schedule, in terms of teams that we’re playing, so we feel like our schedule favors us down the stretch, and that by then we’re healthy and we’re playing a good brand of basketball and we see what happens after that.”