There’s No Defense for This

The other Laker concern--beyond being pushed at least to a Game 6--is that they have gone from No. 1 in the league in the regular season in shooting defense and No. 6 in scoring defense to getting shredded in those areas at a critical time.

The Indiana Pacers made 57.4% of their shots in a 120-87 victory in Game 5 Friday, 56.9% in scoring 86 points through three quarters, before Coach Phil Jackson went deep into his bench for late mop-up duty. Of even more concern to the Lakers, it came two days after the Pacers scored 104 points in regulation, 118 overall and made 50% of their shots.

“The thing that bothers us most as a coaching staff is defensively,” Jackson said. “Our inconsistency [in] really playing the kind of defense of coming off screens, challenging shooters and putting some pressure on the ball so that they [the Pacers] haven’t gotten the rhythm that they like to play with.”

The problems were most apparent Friday in the first half, when the outcome was all but decided. The Pacers, the best three-point shooting team in the league, were left open several times on the perimeter, Laker defenders not so much as contesting their shots. Indiana capitalized by making all six of its three-point shots in the opening quarter en route to going 10 for 20 in the game.

“We laid an egg,” guard Ron Harper said. “They came out from the beginning and hit shots and then just kept hitting shots.”

In the first 100 games--82 in the regular season, 17 in the first three rounds of the playoffs and the opener of the championship series--the Lakers gave up 100 or more points in consecutive games only once without overtime, a three-game stretch in mid-March. And now they’ve given up triple-digit point totals in the last four.

This defense is going to win a championship?

“We can,” Harper said. “We are a pretty good defensive team. We’ve been in the top five in defense all season long. We aren’t worried about our defense.”

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Rick Fox and Pacer Reggie Miller have officially declared war, the surprise being only that it took this long for hostilities to break out, given their respective track records.

Friday night, they got matching technical fouls early in the fourth quarter for exchanging words. Indiana’s Mark Jackson also got involved in the discussion, so someone asked Fox later what happened between him and Jackson.

“Nothing between me and Mark Jackson,” Fox said. “We have a great relationship. It’s my relationship with Reggie that’s not as good.”

Ah.

“He [Miller] gets away with so much of the flopping and so much of launching himself, propelling himself into defenders, guys that are just standing around guarding other people,” Fox said. “I don’t know if it’s something he’s done for so long it’s just accepted now, that it’s just a part of his game you just blow the whistle whenever you see him flopping.

“Reggie likes to create the contact because it keeps the defenders off balance. It keeps the defenders hunting him out as prey, and he’s allowed to create contact and flop like a 90-pound bass.”

Miller, of course, did not retreat, quietly or otherwise.

“Well, a lot of the scuffles are coming from them, which is a shock,” he said. “Everyone thinks they’re so nice and pretty and, you know, they’re the glamour boys, it’s Los Angeles, Evian, cafe latte, all that [stuff]. They’re doing all the pushing, the holding, [and] they look at the refs like they’re not doing anything.”

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Kobe Bryant’s sprained ankle isn’t expected to be at 100% before the end of the series, but it was reduced to a minimal problem in Game 5. “It’s OK,” he said. “It’s a lot better.”

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If the Lakers had won the title Friday, it would have come a year to the day after Jackson was hired.