When the Battles Get Personal

In the time since they fought after a game at Staples Center nearly a year ago, Kobe Bryant and Reggie Miller have not spoken and have not seen each other, according to Bryant.

Not that Miller didn’t want to.

“He tried reaching out and calling me,” Bryant said in an interview before the Lakers boarded a flight Monday to Indianapolis. “I never got around to calling him back.”

Slipped his mind, perhaps.

“Well, I mean, I’m a busy man,” he said. “I’m sure he’s a busy man. I don’t know if we’re going to sit down and talk about it. I don’t think it’s that big a deal. But he’s a great basketball player. I respect him in that regard.”

It was a big enough deal on March 1 that Bryant threw a punch at Miller, the momentum of which carried them both over the scorer’s table. Bryant was suspended for two games, as was Miller, for fighting back. Afterward, Bryant, who’d thrown the first punch, said he had simply defended himself, but acknowledged the fight was “a mistake.”

There was a sense that Miller, a notorious trash-talker, had gotten too personal at a time and place where Bryant might have been vulnerable.

“Kobe has other issues he has to deal with,” Miller said several days later. “They had nothing to do with me or the ballgame played Friday evening.”

Bryant responded curtly: “Reggie doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know me at all. And I’ll never argue with fools.”

They’ll share a floor tonight at Conseco Fieldhouse, as will Shaquille O’Neal and Brad Miller, who would have fought last season had Miller not fortuitously turned his back during a game at Chicago. Miller was traded to Indiana last February, and it won’t be the first time they’ve matched up since the incident.

Bryant predicted there would be no carry-over from the skirmish with Reggie Miller. O’Neal, as usual, declined to comment.

Meantime, it appears to many that Indiana Coach Isiah Thomas is building the Pacers in the image of the Bad Boy Detroit Piston teams he captained a decade ago. It’s a charge Thomas denies and Laker Coach Phil Jackson, who battled the rugged -- and dirty, many suggested -- Pistons as coach of the Chicago Bulls, ignores.

The focus of the observation is Ron Artest, the muscular swingman who has twice been suspended by the NBA in recent weeks for acts of violence, drawing comparisons to the unpredictable Dennis Rodman and the seething Rasheed Wallace. Artest is serving the last of a four-game suspension for insolent acts committed last week in Miami, so he will not play against the Lakers.

“They’re supposed to be a physical team, but they don’t have a real physical makeup besides Artest, who’s a wide-bodied kind of kid,” Jackson said. “[Brad] Miller’s not exceptionally big or strong, but he’s tall. He’s a rugged player and ...”

And here Jackson could not help himself ... “he leads the league in flagrant fouls.”

He added, “This is not a team you look at and fear physically.”

Clearly, there is more lingering between Bryant and Reggie Miller, and perhaps O’Neal and his Miller, than there is between the Lakers and Pacers, who 2 1/2 years ago played in the NBA Finals. The Lakers used that series as the impetus for two more titles; the Pacers needed to retool but this season are challenging to come out of the East again.

As for the individual emotions, Jackson said he’d wait and see.

“They know about it, they register it,” Jackson said. “But I don’t know what it means. Have they resolved it individually themselves? Have they come to terms with it? I’m not sure.”