Lakers Stop Miller With a Team Effort : Pro basketball: Pacers’ star gets only eight shots and eight points as L.A. wins, 104-96.

Reggie Miller was silenced Sunday night, no small feat under most circumstances but even more noteworthy this time, right here in Hollywood and right there where he does his best talking, the court.

The Lakers used one true shooting guard, one part-timer and one permanent point guard to match up with one of the game’s premier scorers and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, they prospered, holding Miller to only eight shots and eight points in beating his Indiana Pacers, 104-96, before 14,223 at the Forum.

The same player who came in averaging 26.1 points, fourth-best in the league, and 19.2 against his hometown Lakers was held to four-of-eight shooting overall and a miss in his only three-point try in 35 minutes. In the fourth quarter, when the Pacers had erased an 18-point deficit from the second period, he touched the ball 11 times in the final 8 1/2 minutes--and managed one basket, one miss, one assist and three turnovers.

“A lot of switching, a lot of holding, a lot of grabbing,” Miller said later, after his worst offensive output since April 5, when he had six points against Washington, all on free throws. “The same as I’m accustomed to. Usually, I get a little help from the refs.”

Added Pacer center Rik Smits, when asked the last time a team had handled the former UCLA Bruin any better: “I don’t think I remember seeing it this season. They did a good job, and it made it difficult for us to get going in the first half.”

That was when, with Anthony Peeler out of the starting lineup and out of uniform for the next week because of a sore foot, Eddie Jones got the first crack. Miller had one shot, a 19-footer that he made, in the first quarter and no shots in only three minutes of the second quarter as Pacer Coach Larry Brown tried Ricky Pierce instead.

Early in the second half, Sedale Threatt, an experienced and talented defender, but five inches shorter nonetheless, took over. Miller made two of five shots in the third quarter.

Come the fourth, during the Pacer comeback that also translated into another Laker meltdown, Miller got a lot of Threatt again. When he came out, 6-1 point guard Nick Van Exel, of all people, not wanting Jones to get his sixth foul too soon, volunteered to take a turn. Then Jones finished the job.

“Eddie did a terrific job and got a lot of help from his friends,” Laker Coach Del Harris. “Reggie’s a great player. You have to work awfully hard to contain him, and I thought we did a real good job.”

Said Jones, who made five of six shots for 15 points in 27 minutes in his first start since late last season: “That tells us we worked hard out there. We were in our game plan. We worked hard on Reggie.”

Tunnel vision can do that.

“A couple of times,” Threatt said, “I couldn’t even see where the ball was. Just Reggie.”

That was enough. While Jones, Threatt and Van Exel combined to hold Miller to 11 points fewer than his previous season low, Cedric Ceballos, the defender Miller expected to see but rarely did, had a career-best six steals.

Van Exel also had 26 points. Elden Campbell added 16 points--including four in a row late that put the Lakers ahead to stay--and 10 rebounds.

Laker Notes

Anthony Peeler is expected to sit out at least a week because of the sore right foot, long enough to cost him five games in a busy week for the Lakers. It does not appear, however, they will put him on the injured list today, even with another guard, Frankie King, eligible to be activated for Tuesday’s game at San Antonio. “I don’t think so,” Coach Del Harris said. “He’s an important player. If he’s ready to go in five or six days, I want him. Everybody’s important on our team, but he’s a key.” The flip side, of course, is that Peeler could be out beyond next Sunday. “We’ll give it a week’s rest and go from there,” he said. “It’s a little bit painful now and a little bit discouraging, but we’ll know more in a week.” . . . Cedric Ceballos’ latest free-throw streak ended in the first quarter against the Pacers, a miss after 25 in a row. That was still 15 shy of tying the team record held by Gail Goodrich, but significant in that Ceballos, a career 71.4% from the line, earlier had runs of 38 (dating back to 1994-95) and 20 consecutive makes. He has improved to 84.4% for the season.