The Offense Is Grooving Once Again

That sure didn’t feel like Game 1 of the NBA finals.

It was just like a regular-season game with more decoration.

All of the banners draped around Staples Center and the giant decals slapped on the court looked nice, but once the ball went up it turned out to be the same story we’ve seen 60 times or so around these parts.

That’s good news for the Lakers, bad news for the Indiana Pacers, NBC, and just about everyone else not wearing gold and purple.

It was Lakers 104, Pacers 87. It was as if Sherman and Mr. Peabody set the Way-back Machine to March, when the Lakers were 15-1 and the rest of the league was hiding in the shadows.

This was the Return of the Lakers, which means --at least temporarily--a return to the ho-hum days.

Let’s face it, when the Lakers function properly they are coldly efficient on offense, they shut other teams down on defense and they don’t leave much room for drama. That’s why only 10 of their 67 regular-season wins were decided by five points or less.

Not every game can be as heart-pounding as Game 7 of the Western Conference finals. I doubt that would fall under the coverage of most medical plans, anyway.

But Wednesday night was the same as watching Shaquille O’Neal toss rings on milk bottles at the carnival booth.

Indiana offered such little resistance and O’Neal was so dominant, the Lakers didn’t even need their one-two punch, a.k.a The Combo. If it weren’t already taken, Shaq could have called himself The Big Unit.

O’Neal scored 43 points, or 10 more than the entire Pacer starting frontcourt.

“I told him, ‘Thanks for the night off, Chief,’ ” said Kobe Bryant, who got by with 14 points Wednesday.

The Lakers did the smart thing and went to their favorable matchup over and over again. They also moved without the ball and passed well.

The offense looked triangular again. Phil Jackson could dispense with the animal references and get back to talking about things such as “spacing”, “counter-action” and a “non-pressure, deliberate kind of attack.”

In other words: “We could use all our options that we wanted to use tonight,” Jackson said.

The Lakers had assists on 16 of their first 24 baskets and finished with a healthy 25 for the night.

It’s kind of different without Scottie Pippen around to swipe balls, take charges and block shots, isn’t it? It almost makes you want to bring him back to spice things up.

“We took advantage of what the defense gave us,” Laker guard Derek Fisher said. “We have more of an ability to move the basketball against them tonight then we’ve had in the past. We got a chance to take advantage of more things.

“They may make some changes on Friday and try to take a few more things away from us. We definitely flowed freer in our offense.”

“It looked a lot more fluid, due to the fact that we were able to penetrate the middle by having Shaquille touch the ball so close to the basket,” said Laker forward Rick Fox, who played like a scorer, not a fighter and finished with 11 points.

“[O’Neal’s] not going to be stopped one-on-one. The Big Fella, when he plays like that, everyone seems to step up.”

The tell-tale statistic with the Lakers is always points in the paint, and in Game 1 the Lakers had a 64-34 advantage.

No, Reggie Miller won’t shoot one for 16 again the way he did Wednesday night. But as long as the Lakers keep shooting inside and the Pacers keep firing away from outside, the series will be tilted in the Lakers’ favor.

O’Neal also made an impact on defense, by blocking three shots and giving the general impression that the Pacers were better off trying their luck elsewhere.

It was the same old formula, give the ball to O’Neal funnel the other team’s players to O’Neal.

Jackson expects something to change, for the Pacers to develop some way to counter the Lakers as the series progresses.

“Familiarity breeds a certain sense of how to defend a team,” Jackson said. “As this series continues on, we anticipate the Pacers will extract a more dedicated effort to [keep the Lakers from] moving the ball and us finding ways to get into our offense. In fact, it was rather easy to get into our offense, to get the ball into Shaquille.”

O’Neal was asked what he would do if given the daunting task of guarding himself.

“I would just go home,” he said. “I would fake an injury or something.”

No need to pack up and leave.

We’re all here. We might as well play the NBA finals.

Maybe they’ll begin on Friday.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his email address: j.a.adande@latimes.com