Message to Kobe: Get Well Now

To: 8isEnuf@achingankle.com

From: Panickyguy@arrgggh.com

Kobe, dude. Hate to distract you from that Guys Who Love Buzzer Beaters chat room, but this is important.

You spent Sunday’s game hidden in that tiny Conseco Fieldhouse locker room, in front of a large TV, then secretly limped out a back door afterward.

There was something I wanted to tell you.

Get well soon.

No, not soon.

Now.

You know how you can use your computer keyboard to make a smiling face?

What is needed here is a frightened face.

The Lakers lost Game 3 of the NBA finals to the Indiana Pacers, 100-91, before 18,345 balloon-rattling, Gene-Hackman-loving Hoosiers who didn’t miss you very much.

The Lakers missed you.

They were deleted because of you.

They crashed because of you.

(Don’t worry Kobe, I’ll run out of computer references before too long. LOL!)

After watching your teammates outrebounded, out-defensed and outhustled without you, one could only agree with the Pacers’ Reggie Miller (as difficult as that is to admit).

“It wasn’t the real Laker team,” he said with a shrug.

Your teammates pretty much agreed.

“We can survive one game without him like we did Friday, but are we as great of a team? No,” Rick Fox said.

But, oddly, none of the Pacers were celebrating and none of the Lakers seemed worried.

“I’m not concerned, because he really could have played today,” Fox said. “I expect him to be back next game.”

Is that true, Kobe?

Was your badly sprained left ankle--which you injured early in Game 2 Friday--really back at 75%, as some indicated?

Did you really put on your uniform about a half hour before the game and try to talk Coach Phil Jackson into letting you play?

Did Jackson really ask you to do a little defensive dance?

And when you said the ankle hurt during the dance, did he really forbid you from playing?

“I said, ‘Well then, let’s save it,’ ” Jackson related.

But were you still going to sit on the bench until Jackson became worried that you would play without his permission?

“I told him, ‘Just get in the layup line, then go to the bench, and when nobody is looking, just check yourself into the game,’ ” John Salley said. “He could run in there real fast before Phil could stop him.”

Were you then ordered to stay in the locker room so that wouldn’t happen?

That’s all very cute and funny.

But, Kobe, this is as serious as a virus.

If you do not return Wednesday for Game 4, it does not appear the Lakers can win that night.

In fact, judging from Sunday, the Lakers might not be able to win either of the two remaining games in Indiana if they don’t involve you.

If you return as expected, but still aren’t yourself--as Jackson intimated before the game when he said, “Realistically speaking, he won’t be 100% for a while”--then this series is going back to Staples Center.

While we all knew the Lakers would miss you, we had no idea how much.

On Sunday, they were a fancy TV without the remote control, a fancy suit without the shirt, a fancy Indianapolis house without the wheels.

They were the Lakers without the “La.”

The most obvious loss was your scoring, although that wasn’t all your fault.

Glen Rice could have filled that gap, but Jackson used this game to show the world what he thinks of Glen Rice.

Obviously, not much.

Kobe, you probably already knew that Jackson feels Rice has no place on this team.

On Sunday, the rest of us found out after Jackson played him only 27 minutes, including only the final 1:29 of the fourth quarter, even though Rice made a nifty three-pointer at the end of the first half to keep it close.

So Rice is done here, not only when he becomes a free agent at the end of the season, but right now.

So Kobe, the Lakers desperately need your shot.

Even more, they need your defense.

That is surely one of the reasons that Jackson benched Rice, although he never said. He was beaten about the head by Jalen Rose, who scored 21 points, and you know how Jackson loves defense.

You would have guarded Rose sometimes, you also would have guarded Mark Jackson (six assists) and sometimes even Miller (33 points).

Actually, as we realized Sunday, Kobe, you pretty much guard everybody.

“Because of his length and the way he moves, he causes so many problems for other offenses, and we really missed that,” Derek Fisher said.

Then there was rebounding. Who would have guessed how much the Lakers would miss your rebounding?

They were outrebounded, 39-33, by the soft Pacers. Indiana even had one more offensive rebound, which should be pretty difficult with a large appliance in the way.

“He gets those big rebounds which really helps our transition game,” A.C. Green said of you. “We really didn’t have that transition game today.”

Finally, Kobe, the Lakers mostly missed that special thing that makes you, well, Kobe.

That thing that carried them in the final seconds against Phoenix, during entire games against Portland, and in every single playoff game in unfriendly places.

They miss that energy, that unpredictability, that . . . fearlessness.

That’s it.

Without you Sunday, the Lakers were cautiously competent.

With you, they are fearless.

With two remaining finals games in a hostile, crowded room where the Lakers have yet to win, they need fearless.

That’s you.

So put your foot to the floor and get back here quick, Kobe.

Take those Pacers in your hands and Microsoft them.

*

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