Some Pain, Big Gain

“No! No! No!”

The shouts began at one end of Staples Center, trickling through the building like a panicky sweat.

“No! No! No!”

Nine of the 10 players were on one end of the floor. Everybody was staring at the one who wasn’t.

The one writhing alone on the three-point line. Their injured child. Kobe Bryant.

The Laker season had just landed painfully on Indiana Pacer Jalen Rose’s foot. It had twisted and turned. It had limped to the locker room.

With 3:26 remaining in the first quarter of the second game of the NBA finals Friday, Kobe was gone. The Lakers were done. Maybe not just for this game, maybe for the summer.

Then it happened, as it happened last Sunday against Portland, the Lakers saying the same sort of thing they always say after they have crumpled.

Their season is stronger than one foot.

Just because they are sprained does not mean they are broken.

Three hours later, the sweat dried, and the chants changed.

Glen Rice drained a three-pointer. Shaquille O’Neal floated in a leaping hook. Robert Horry banked in a reverse layup.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

The Lakers held off the Pacers for a 111-104 victory that felt like two victories.

They lead the series, two games to none. Heading to Indianapolis for three games, they lead in bad luck by a mile.

Kobe can take Sunday off to nurse his badly sprained left ankle--which it appears he will do--and the Lakers can lose Game 3 at Conseco Fieldhouse and still be in control.

That will give Kobe four full days off until Wednesday’s Game 4.

Considering he played in Portland last week after resting his sprained foot for just one day, that quick return seems possible.

Of course, two wins from this city’s first professional championship in 12 years, everything with this team seems possible.

Including winning a finals game with one hand tied behind its back.

“Well, for one game,” said a wincing Rick Fox, who hit a driving layup down the stretch as the Lakers held off a Pacer threat that closed the gap to three points in the final two minutes.

“Now, the question is, can we do this for two games?” Fox added.

So went the sentiment in the confusing postgame locker rooms.

The Lakers were happy, but worried.

“This is nice . . . but we would certainly much rather have Kobe,” Fox said.

The Pacers were mad, but hopeful.

“I think the opportunity was there tonight,” Pacer Coach Larry Bird said.

Leave it to aching Kobe Bryant to sum it all up.

“The good thing is, we have a cushion now,” he said.

There was nothing soft about Friday’s stretch run.

There were flagrant fouls, and technical-foul shots, and 16 foul shots by Shaq, nine of which were successful.

As usual, the last gasps showed the depth of the chest of the biggest Laker.

It also, perhaps, exposed the Pacers for lack of the same.

In one amazing four-possession stretch after the Pacers had cut the lead to four points early in the fourth quarter, the only Pacer taking shots was Austin Croshere.

Reggie Miller, still not the Broadway Reggie the Pacers need, couldn’t get the ball. He took only two shots in the quarter, and missed both.

Travis Best seemed tentative. Jalen Rose seemed confused.

Little wonder Bryant said that while sitting in the Laker locker room, he was “Cussing at the TV set.”

Who wouldn’t want to slug a retreating opponent?

The final minutes were symbolized by a loose-ball battle between Croshere and Derek Fisher that ended with Fisher staring down a guy eight inches taller.

“It was no big deal, but I wanted to let him know that being a small guy does not mean people can get away with bullying you,” Fisher said. “I just wanted to stand up to him.”

That wasn’t just a quote, that was the Lakers’ mission.

Not that they had a choice.

“When I looked at Kobe laying there on the floor, I thought, well, that was all right early in the season . . . but now?” Fox recalled. “I thought, this is not a good time to go on vacation.”

The Lakers, as you have no doubt been reminded a dozen times this morning, were 12-4 without Kobe this year.

All but one of those games, however, was at the start of the season when he recovered from a training camp hand injury.

This is different. And from the moment his left foot twisted grotesquely on Rose’s foot after Kobe made a 18-foot jump shot with 3:26 left in the first quarter, everyone knew it.

Kobe grabbed the foot, writhed in pain, tried to run down the floor, before finally the whistle blew.

When he was helped to the locker room, and did not immediately return, everyone knew it was serious.

“It was just pain, it was just flat-out pain,” Bryant said afterward. “Normally when you get a sprained ankle, you can pretty much push off the back of your heel, which I try to do most of the time.”

But which didn’t work this time. He said the pain shot up and down the ankle.

He wanted to return but was talked out of it by, among others, Magic Johnson.

The X-rays were negative. But about playing Sunday, Bryant is not positive.

“It’s not a do-or-die situation for me to play on Sunday,” Bryant said. “The doctors probably will try to keep me out. [But] if I can walk and put pressure on it, I’ll be ready to play.”

The good news for Laker fans was, he arrived at the interview session with a smile.

The bad news was, he arrived there on crutches.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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Bryant Factor

The Lakers were 12-4 without Kobe Bryant this season, and might be forced to play without him Sunday. If the regular season is any indication, Glen Rice and Derek Fisher will need to step up their production. A look at points per game with Bryant and without:

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WITH BRYANT

Rice: 15.5

Fisher: 5.3

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WITHOUT BRYANT

Rice: 17.9

Fisher: 10.9