As if declaring their annoying Hoosierness would be enough to defeat the Lakers, the Pacers trotted out all the weapons of the breed Sunday, from David Letterman imploring “Make Daddy Proud” to Gene Hackman’s hackneyed pregame movie speech to the scoreboard boasting “in the other 49 states, it’s just basketball, but this is Indiana.”
So thoroughly disgraced is Bobby Knight that the Head Hoosier of the Heartland was ignored altogether, there apparently being little inspiration in zero tolerance.
If championships could be won on peripherals, the Pacers would sweep the three games here. The citizens are more genuine, if not passionate about how all of this turns out, at least collecting in larger and louder piles to make it seem that way. “A lively crowd,” conceded Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
Conseco Fieldhouse, the Hanging Gardens of basketball arenas, has it all over the Staples Center in the way that a bed and breakfast outclasses a place that leaves the light on for you. Arguments may follow, but so help me, I’ll take the Pacer Mates over the Laker Girls, as I would rhubarb pie over a soy shake.
Still, all that mattered in the Pacers’ 100-91 win in Game 3 was not that the NBA Finals had arrived finally and for the first time in Hoosierville, but that Los Angeles had to play with one Kobe tied behind its back.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with Kobe being there or not being there,” insisted Pacers coach Larry Bird. “Not if you’re working hard and making shots.”
Oh, sure. And “Godfather III” was the same movie with Sofia Coppola instead of , well … anyone else.
Without Kobe Bryant and his sprained left ankle appearing even on the Lakers’ bench, Shaquille O’Neal staying randomly interested in playing without him and Glen Rice responding to the challenge like a truant to a roll call, the Pacers were allowed to believe that more of the same lies ahead.
“We’re not the JV team,” said Jalen Rose. “We’re here to win it. They’re the same as us. They haven’t won a championship.”
If Bryant continues too infirm to lace up his own shoe, and if O’Neal continues to shoot free throws as if he is uncorking wine, scrubbing a moose, snaking a gutter, take your pick, Rose may be taken seriously.
Whatever O’Neal is doing, he is not shooting foul shots with any similarity to the great centers of the game, with whom O’Neal insists he compares. There would be no Hack-a-Shaq if O’Neal simply made uncontested shots from the free throw line. We do not see, for example, Rap-a-Reggie or Ax-an-Austin.
“I’m not a big fan of fouling Shaq every time down,” said Bird, who nevertheless resists the impulse to do otherwise. “The one thing you have to do is keep yourself in the game. If Shaq shot 70 or 75 percent from the line, you wouldn’t have to worry about it. If he continues to struggle from there, you have to think about it.”
While this Finals is surely establishing O’Neal as the pre-eminent athletic creature on earth, it is also exaggerating the great flaw that will forever keep him out of the highest regard.
Every free throw that clanks mocks every slam that rattles. O’Neal will be a freak of nature rather than a basketball player until he can do what ordinary stick-figure humans can do, make a shot without anyone guarding him.
“We can’t just ride Shaq’s back,” said Laker Robert Horry, looking no less like a jockey than Rice and the rest.
As for the Pacers, they must ride the same horse as always, the kinetic and erratic Reggie Miller. If they try to jump off, Miller will just run under them until they get back on. Unlike O’Neal, who insists that his teammates are an equal part of whatever happens, Miller appears to feel as if his destiny has finally been lit in a light bright enough to be deserved.
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“It always comes down to me,” Miller said. “This is my team. I have to step up.”
So grave is Miller’s notion of his own importance that he went dashing into a bunch of Lakers to rescue Mark Jackson, who really didn’t need it. It isn’t as if Jackson was about to be pantsed or anything.
“Reggie’s got to learn that in the playoffs, you expend too much energy doing that,” Bird said. “You have to save all your energy. You can’t be wasting it.”
Wise man, Bird. Bird has been where no Indiana Pacers team ever has been, in several victory parades. Best to listen. Wisdom from a Hoosier, the Hoosier, as a matter of fact.