Lakers Need to Stay Alert Because the Enemy Has Arisen

Well, that’s one sleeping dog that isn’t asleep any more.

Or maybe the Indiana Pacers were dead dogs. In either case, the pooches who got walked on on the West Coast are awake or alive again so if the Lakers can’t deal with them when Kobe Bryant comes back for Game 4, this is going to turn into a different kind of a series.

“These guys played with heart today,” said Coach Larry Bird. “They battled today, unlike the first game we played against the Lakers. I thought they really took it serious.”

The Lakers, meanwhile, seemed to take it like a team with a 2-0 lead that found out just before the game it wouldn’t have one of its stars, easing into it like a Why Bother Special.

If they have a degree-of-urgency index, it’s the number of times the ball goes into Shaquille O’Neal and in the first quarter, it wasn’t many. O’Neal got only a handful of touches, taking two shots and making both, which may have been a 1.000 shooting percentage but wasn’t about to stop the Pacers from maintaining the lead.

By then, Reggie Miller had seven of the 33 points he’d score, which was another thing that went wrong for the Lakers. Miller has revived. Austin Croshere, who was out on his feet for the last six games of the Eastern Conference finals, is knocking aside everyone Phil Jackson sends at him. O’Neal is bricking free throws. Ron Harper has been the second-best Laker for two games, so what does that say about all the other guys?

“Reggie’s Reggie,” said Robert Horry at the post-game press conference. “ . . . Y’all took one game that Reggie played [Miller’s one-for-16 shooting in the opener] like it’s the end of the world. . . . He just had one bad game. That’s the game of basketball. Some nights you shoot it well, some nights you don’t.”

The nights you don’t, you’d better not be playing in the NBA finals or people are going to say bad things about you as they did about Miller, before and after his Game 1 nose dive and his Game 2 semi-revival, when he scored 21 points but none in the fourth quarter.

If Sunday night turned into a disaster for the Pacers, Miller didn’t have to guess whose doorstep the carcass was going to be left on.

“I think it’s always going to come on me,” he said. “It always comes down to me. This is my team and I’ve got to step up and I’ve got to do everything.

“I felt like I didn’t take enough shots the fourth quarter of Game 2. . . . Tonight, a lot of offense was funneled my way and guys got looks. I went to the free-throw line six or seven times.

“They just play me differently [with two Laker defenders going after him when he cuts off screens]. Guys are going to get wide-open looks if they funnel the ball my way.”

Miller being Miller, he wasn’t averse to finding something else to to get upset about and, fortunately for him, the referees obliged by letting the Lakers bump him several times on shots without giving him the calls.

Miller screamed, gesticulated and kept firing. Enough of them fell to get the Pacers over the top, although Bird said he still doesn’t like Miller’s rages.

“Naw,” said Bird. “He’s wasting too much energy arguing with the officials. It’s a very emotional game. One thing he’s got to learn is you can do that in the regular season but in the playoffs, you expend so much energy even before the game and during the game, you can’t get down there and verbally get into something or pull people around [as Miller did, when he ran up to pull Mark Jackson out of an argument with the entire Laker bench].

“As you seen late in the game, I think he got fatigued. You have to save all the energy you can and forget about that stuff.”

Well, saving energy might have worked for Bird but then, he was Larry Bird. Miller merely being Miller, he has to make it work any way he can.

“I’ve got to let it pour out,” he said. “I can’t play quiet. There’s just no way. I play on emotion and excitement. It’s always been like that.”

He plays on fear too, and there was no shortage of that in Indiana. At halftime, interviewed by NBC as he was going off the floor after playing 24 minutes, Miller said, “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

That could have come as early as Wednesday, at least in the professional sense, if Game 3 hadn’t gone the Pacers’ way, but it did. They live. They breathe. The Lakers’ momentum has been broken and if the Lakers don’t break back in Game 4, their opponent will be the one with the momentum, not to mention a pivotal Game 5 on its home court.

Things change fast in the finals. New heroes and goats are chosen every game and nominations are still being taken.