Be honest. If Herb Simon accidentally bumped his shopping cart into yours in the nearest Wal-Mart or Target, would you know he was the co-owner of the Indiana Pacers?

(Note: Some imagination is required here. Simon and his brother, Melvin, have been successful real estate developers for nearly 50 years, so Wal-Mart might not be a frequent stop.)

You get my point, though.

The Simons, for lack of a better description, have been the anti-Mark Cuban since purchasing Indianapolis’ professional basketball franchise in 1983. Monuments to invisibility in an era in which profiles of the accomplished are only a Google search away.

Until now.

Herb, at 73 the younger Simon brother by eight years, apparently has seen enough. Enough losing. Enough underachieving. Enough off-the-court troubles by immature players. Enough decline in home ticket and merchandise sales.

Yet, the announcement that Simon finally exited his cave and is going to preside over the Pacers’ day-to-day operations as chairman and CEO seems to have touched off one massive shoulder shrug.

Such skepticism is common when your once-fervent fan base spends three years digesting mediocrity when it remembers how “blue-and-gold” was much more than three words and a pair of hyphens.

Since Ron Artest commandeered that scrawny fan in Auburn Hills as a horizontal punching bag, the majority of Pacers fans over time have been programmed to anticipate the worst. The glass isn’t merely half-empty; it’s almost entirely void of water.

What Simon has up his sleeve regarding the Pacers franchise is unknown at this juncture. Simon himself might not know until he spends a week or three behind the big desk.

Maybe he can find methods of shipping high-priced veterans Jermaine O’Neal and Jamaal Tinsley to other franchises in return for quality, rather than bodies to park at the end of the bench.

Nonetheless, it’s a move that had to be made. Saying Simon has an investment in all of this qualifies as the Manute Bol of understatements.

Reading between the lines, the co-owner’s decision to use himself to replace the departed Donnie Walsh hints at not having complete confidence in Larry Bird, the Pacers’ oft-criticized president of basketball operations.

With Walsh gone, this was supposed to be Bird’s opportunity to shape and mold the Indiana roster as he saw fit. As a player, no one was more automatic when left all by his lonesome than Bird.

Now, it appears he’s one-third of the franchise’s three-man managerial weave, along with Simon and new team president Jim Morris.