Pacers Provide a Bad Memory

What do the Lakers remember about their 111-102 loss to the Pacers on Jan. 14 at Conseco Fieldhouse?

“I remember going in with a winning streak of 16 games and they broke it,” forward Rick Fox said.

“It went down to the last four minutes of the game, down the stretch, where Travis Best kind of went to the pick and roll and we weren’t ready and prepared for that defensively. It hurt us.

“And we made some adjustments the second game here [on March 3] and it allowed us to get a win.”

Fox, a nine-year veteran making his first appearance in the NBA finals, said he knows exactly what Reggie Miller, Mark Jackson, Rik Smits and all the other veteran Pacers in their first finals are feeling.

“That’s a veteran squad that is obviously seeing this as a chance--and maybe their only chance--to win a championship as group,” Fox said.

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Laker Coach Phil Jackson smiled and said he figured his relationship with Shaquille O’Neal reached a new plateau after Sunday’s Game 7 victory over Portland.

“I gave him a real big hug after Sunday’s game, and I allowed him to drench me with the sweat on his body,” Jackson said. “That must be the ultimate moment of our relationship.”

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O’Neal added a new, well-delivered punch-line to a standard response about whether it takes winning a championship to define a great player.

“If I’m walking in Utah and you tell me that John Stockton and Karl Malone aren’t great, I’ll punch you in the face,” O’Neal said. “If you tell me Pistol Pete Maravich wasn’t a great player, I’ll punch you in the face.

“I think guys like that are great: [Charles] Barkley, [Patrick] Ewing, [Alonzo] Mourning . . . “

Then a pause for emphasis, to set up the kicker . . . “Shawn Bradley.”

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This is a chance for all the Lakers and a second chance for two Lakers.

Brian Shaw and O’Neal made it to the NBA finals once before, in 1995 with the Orlando Magic, only to be swept by the Houston Rockets and Robert Horry, a current teammate. Not that that came up much this season.

“We have talked about it pretty much all year long,” said Shaw, a reserve guard. “One of the plays that we did that we carried over from the Orlando days, the spin lob that we do pretty frequently, we call that the Shaw-Shaq Redemption. That’s what we feel like. It’s our opportunity to redeem ourselves from the showing we had in the ’95 finals.

“It’s something that we’ve been discussing. Robert is on the team as well, so every time something comes up on ESPN Classic and they show flashbacks from that series--and Phil [Jackson] made a comment about it [Tuesday]--Robert always kinds of ribs us a little bit. He’s reminded us. Now we’re all together this time.”

Reminds them? Sort of.

“I don’t talk about it all,” Horry said. “They look at me when something is mentioned. I just smile, and they always say, ‘Forget you, Rob.’ I don’t say anything. There’s no need to say anything.”