Rice Is Finally Expected to Get His Shot

For the past year, a silent year, the longest year, the ball has been somewhere else.

Sometimes with the big guy. Sometimes with the kid. Occasionally with the memory of a man named Ed-die. Always embedded deep in a playbook with never enough pages.

For the past year, Glen Rice has waited.

Sometimes angrily. Other times hopelessly. Always uncomfortably.

The Lakers have won, so he has stifled his ego and adjusted his game and perhaps even sacrificed some of his future.

This spring in particular, he has sighed, and shrugged, and grabbed whatever Laker magic he could grab, even the large parts that didn’t include him. The ball was somewhere else, and that is where it would stay.

Or so he thought.

Then Kobe Bryant crashed.

And the ball came back.

And today, perhaps a week before the end of his brief Laker career, a part of that career finally begins.

In the wake of an ankle injury that could sideline Kobe for Game 3 of the NBA finals, Glen Rice has been found again.

“You figure, Kobe would take 20 shots, I would take 20 shots,” Shaquille O’Neal said. “So if Kobe’s gone, Glen is getting those 20 shots.”

And can he bring back memories of a different-jerseyed time with those 20 shots?

“I hope,” Shaq said.

Rice can help the Lakers win a third consecutive NBA finals game against the Indiana Pacers here, all but clinching the league championship.

Rice can end the debate of whether the Lakers should have traded Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell for him with a giant period.

More than anything, he can shoot again.

Of course, he can miss, and his critics within the organization can cluck their tongues again.

Perhaps the only thing Glen Rice cannot do with the ball today is change his Laker future.

He is a free agent at the end of the season. It is well-known that the money and responsibility he wants cannot be shaped into a triangle.

Then again, on second thought, if he’s a hero, and they win the title, and Jerry Buss doesn’t want to break up a good thing and . . .

Keep this team together for another year?

Who knows, beginning today, maybe Rice can even do that.

“I’m ready to seize the moment,” he said after practice at Conseco Fieldhouse on Saturday.

Either way, what a moment it should be.

Not that Rice is excited or anything, but while teammates conducted interviews, he shot. And shot. And shot.

“You wanna talk?” he said between 22-footers. “C’mon out here on the court. I’ll talk here.”

He said that if Bryant doesn’t play or is not at full strength, there will be only one small difference.

“The only change is that I will be looking to do a little scoring,” he said.

Which is like saying that the only change during a thunderstorm is that somebody is looking to get a little wet.

Rice came to the Lakers averaging at least 21 points per game for five consecutive seasons with Charlotte and Miami.

He has since dried up.

His first season as a Laker he averaged 17.5 points.

This season that figure dropped to 15.9 points.

In these playoffs, his numbers have whittled even further, to 12.6 points.

He is ideally such a part of the offense that this sports section still publishes charts lumping him with O’Neal and Bryant as The Big Three.

But let’s be honest. Three is a crowd.

The Lakers are the Big Two, with an occasional bit of Rice tossed about their shoulders as they take this team down the aisle.

Jalen Rose, a friend and fellow University of Michigan alumnus, put it another way.

“I have never seen Glen pump-fake and pass-fake like he does now,” the Pacers’ Rose said. “Never.”

Is his buddy comfortable in the Laker offense?

“No,” Rose said.

Will he return to the Lakers?

“I would be surprised,” Rose said. “I see him as being a bigger contributor [somewhere else].”

Rice isn’t saying. He has survived more trade rumors than knee pains without saying. He’s not going to start now.

A couple of times this postseason, though, he let his finger-rolls do the talking.

In Game 4 against Portland in the Western Conference finals, he scored on a slashing layup to start the third quarter, his first of 12 points in the period to lead another stirring Laker comeback.

Then, Friday in Game 2 against the Pacers, he made five of six three-pointers after Bryant left the game in the first quarter because of an ankle injury that could sideline him today.

With Bryant gone, Rice finished with 21 points on 18 shots, five more attempts than his playoff average.

“We forgot what a great jump shooter he is,” the Pacers’ Austin Croshere said, shaking his head. “He stepped up when he had to.”

Even Phil Jackson, who inherited Rice and whose vision has never really included him, agreed.

“If [Bryant sitting out] is a possibility, then Glen will have to figure in a more prominent role,” Jackson said.

Jackson acknowledged that “Glen’s a gifted shooter.”

But he also said that he has struggled to work those gifts into the offense.

“As a consequence, he hasn’t had a rhythm a lot of times,” Jackson said.

With the game beginning today at 4:30 p.m. PDT, Rice is tapping his feet as we speak.

“You have to realize, anything that helps my game also helps the team, that’s what it’s about,” Rice said. “The first thing you wish is that Kobe would not have gone down. The second thing you say is that you have to step your game up.”

And don’t the Pacers know it.

“They didn’t run a lot of offense for him during the regular season,” Derrick McKey said. “But they’re going to have to do it now.”

The ball has come back.

The Laker nation squints at the screen today in hope that Glen Rice remembers what to do next.

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Rice Statistics

Playoff statistics of Laker forward Glen Rice:

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Points: 12.6 High Game: 21 FG%: .403 FT%: .836 Rebounds: 4.4 Steals: 3.0

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Glen Rice’s Postseason Results

Which of Glen Rice’s teams made the playoffs and how they fared:

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Team Season Playoffs PPG Miami 1989-90 Did not qualify Miami 1990-91 Did not qualify Miami 1991-92 Eliminated Round 1 (0-3, Chicago) 19.0 Miami 1992-93 Did not qualify Miami 1993-94 Eliminated Round 1 (2-3, Atlanta) 13.0 Miami 1994-95 Did not qualify Charlotte 1995-96 Did not qualify Charlotte 1996-97 Eliminated Round 1 (0-4, New York) 27.7 Charlotte 1997-98 Eliminated Round 2 (3-1, Atlanta, 1-4, 22.8 Chicago) Lakers 1999 Eliminated Round 2 (3-1, Houston, 0-4, San 18.3 Antonio) Lakers ‘99-2000 In NBA finals 12.6

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