Pacers-Lakers Preview

By SANTOSH VENKATARAMAN
Posted Jan 21 2012 7:07PM

Kobe Bryant is continuing to encourage his teammates as their perimeter shooting problems persist.

The Indiana Pacers have no such worries about their 3-point attack.

The Pacers ended a lengthy road losing streak against the Lakers last season, and they enter Sunday night's matchup with the better record as they seek a winning three-game trip.

Bryant is in his usual place among the NBA's elite with his 30.4 scoring average, but hasn't been getting adequate help. The Lakers (10-7) are one of the league's worst 3-point shooting teams at 25.7 percent.

Los Angeles made 6 of 20 3s in each of its two road losses this week, falling 98-87 at Miami on Thursday and 92-80 the next night in Orlando.

"I tell them (teammates) that they have to keep shooting them," Bryant said. "They are much better shooters than the statistics are showing right now. We just have to keep shooting them."

Indiana (10-4) is one of the NBA's better 3-point shooting teams at 38.2 percent. The Pacers have split their first two on this trip after making 8 of 16 from beyond the arc in Friday's 94-91 win at Golden State.

Starters Paul George and Darren Collison are southern California natives who are among the NBA leaders, with George shooting 48.9 percent on 3s and Collison 48.1.

The Pacers had dropped 14 straight on the road to the Lakers - including three defeats in the 2000 NBA finals - before a 95-92 victory Nov. 28, 2010. Roy Hibbert had 24 points and 12 boards while Danny Granger added 18 points as Indiana overcame Bryant's 41 points.

Bryant scored 31 and Pau Gasol added 28 as Los Angeles won the rematch, 109-94 at Indiana on Dec. 15, 2010.

The Pacers have two new starters from those games in George and David West. They faced one of the departed starters in Brandon Rush on Friday and will face the other, Josh McRoberts, on Sunday.

McRoberts signed with the Lakers as a free agent after developing into a starter in 2010-11 - his third season with the Pacers. He has been a non-factor of late as a Los Angeles reserve.

While the Pacers lost one Indiana native in McRoberts, they added another in George Hill. The former Spurs guard came up big Friday when he stole the ball from Monta Ellis and converted a three-point play with 1.8 seconds remaining.

"Obviously the play of the game was George Hill," said Pacers coach Frank Vogel, an advance scout for the Lakers in 2005-06.

Granger scored a season-high 26 points on 10-of-16 shooting. He shot 34.1 percent and averaged 13.7 points over his previous three games.

"We want him to be assertive," Vogel said. "He's an All-Star. We want to go to him."

The Lakers are trying to stay patient with their struggling shooters. Derek Fisher is shooting 24.1 percent on 3s and Metta World Peace is at 12.1 (4 of 33).

Los Angeles shot a season-low 38.2 percent overall for the second time in three games Friday.

"We got a lot of good looks ... a lot of them," Bryant said. "We just have to keep hitting the open man and those shots will fall."

Hibbert leads Pacers past Lakers, 98-96

Posted Jan 23 2012 1:39AM

LOS ANGELES (AP) Roy Hibbert wasn't going to let a broken nose stop him, especially against the Los Angeles Lakers and twin towers Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol. The Indiana center just kept playing and ended up having a big finish to help the pull out a tough road win.

Hibbert, the Pacers' second-leading scorer, left the court with the broken nose after fouling Kobe Bryant with 6:46 left in the first quarter. But Hibbert persevered and scored eight of his 18 points in the fourth to help them beat the Lakers 98-96 on Sunday night.

"Kobe spun baseline, I jumped straight up and he inadvertently elbowed me in the face," said Hibbert, one of six Pacers to score in double figures. "It didn't hurt that much. I couldn't get it fixed up because they didn't have a doctor here to put it back in place, but I went back here and got an X-ray done."

Tyler Hansbrough replaced Hibbert and missed all five shots during Hibbert's brief absence, but grabbed seven rebounds. Hibbert reported back in with 5:12 left in the second quarter after a trainer stuffed cotton up his nose, but he had difficulty keeping it in at times. He also had eight rebounds in 27 minutes.

"They didn't want me to come back out, but I told them I'm going to no matter what," said Hibbert, who was still bleeding after coming out of the showers. "So if I got hit again, that's fine. I could always get cosmetic surgery at the end of the season to fix it. I'm a tough player, and I just wanted to play through it and make sure we got this win. This game was really important to us. I just wanted to make sure I found open shooters and cutters and score whenever I could."

Hibbert, more than willing to get his nose dirty, scored six consecutive points in the paint to cut the margin to one with 6:15 left, and former UCLA guard Darren Collison's 3-pointer tied it at 86 with 5:32 left.

Bryant, who scored 33 points, missed what would have been a tying 3-pointer from 30 feet from the top of the key with 3.5 seconds to play and Indiana clinched it at the free throw line.

"We knew we had to stop Kobe," Danny Granger said. "He's the key to their offense, so that was our main focus. We did our best to make his shots tough and to take the ball out of his hands at times. And it worked for us."

The Pacers (11-5) are off to their best start since 2003-04, when they won 14 of their first 16, finished the regular season 61-21 and came within two wins of getting to the NBA finals.

"We have a lot of guys that are experienced," Granger said. "David West is in his ninth year, Roy is in his fourth year now, I'm in my seventh and Collison is in his third. And we also have George Hill coming off the bench, and he's in his fourth year coming from the Spurs. So we have a deep team and it's tough to beat us."

The Lakers, coming off road losses to Miami and Orlando, failed to reach 100 points for the 11th straight game - their longest streak since a 12-game stretch in 2003-04.

"We're really not shooting the ball well. We have to start knocking down some of those shots," Bryant said. "The opposition is shooting the ball much better than we are, especially from 3. After the first quarter, we opened the floodgates and just let them score at will. Then you compound that with the fact that we're having a tough time scoring."

Bryant beat the third-quarter buzzer with a 16-footer from the right of the key to give the Lakers a 78-77 lead, and former Pacers forward Troy Murphy got his first points of the game on a 3 that made it 82-77.

West ended the first half with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from the top of the key, capping a 15-6 run and slicing the Lakers' 13-point lead to three at 52-49. He finished the half with 15 points, helping offset 17 by Bryant. Granger's 3-pointer 1:37 into the third quarter gave Indiana a 55-54 lead, its first since Paul George's game-opening dunk.

"We've got to give Indiana credit because they outworked us," coach Mike Brown said. "It's too bad, because we came out and played great defense. But then the last three quarters, we didn't play with a sense of urgency. We thought Indiana would fold to a certain degree, and we kind of went through the motions. This game was tough to swallow."

Notes: The National Anthem was sung by Kareem Rush, whose seven-year NBA career included stints with the Lakers and Pacers. ... Bryant is 180 points away from overtaking Shaquille O'Neal (28,596) for fifth place on the career scoring list. The two-time NBA scoring champ also is 20 field goals shy of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Lakers career record of 9,935 and needs to make 11 more free throws to eclipse Jerry West's Lakers career record of 7,160. ... Pacers associate coach Brian Shaw, who won three NBA championship rings playing for the Lakers and two more as an assistant coach under Phil Jackson, made his first trip to Staples Center since leaving Los Angeles. He and most of the Lakers players - particularly Bryant - were hoping he'd be hired to replace Jackson as head coach instead of Brown, and Shaw was upset that he had to learn about Brown's hiring from media reports instead of from general manager Mitch Kupchak. ... The last time the Pacers faced the Lakers at Staples Center, they won 95-92 to snap a 14-game road losing streak against them - including three losses in the 2000 NBA finals. ... The Lakers have a rematch with the Clippers on Wednesday night, trying to even the season series after a 102-94 loss Jan. 14. ... Lakers F Josh McRoberts, who spent the previous three seasons with the Pacers, played 20 scoreless minutes and took two shots in his first game against them.

Notebook: Pacers 98, Lakers 96

By Dan Arritt, for NBA.com
Posted Monday January 23, 2012 1:30AM

THE FACTS: Once the Pacers began hitting their 3-pointers with regularity and stepping to the free-throw line at the same rate as the Lakers, they were able to focus on their other strength, tough defense, coming from 13 points down at the end of the first quarter to win, 98-96, at Staples Center.

QUOTABLE: "We didn't win the free-throw battle like we want to win, but sometimes you're not going to get the calls on the road and we expect that, and our guys gutted it out for a big win for us."
-- Pacers coach Frank Vogel.

THE STAT: After missing their first four 3-point attempts, the Pacers converted nine of their next 10 to erase the early deficit. The Pacers, who came in as the league's fifth-best 3-point shooting team at 38.2 percent, shot 10-for-18 from beyond the arc. The Lakers, meanwhile, entered as the league's worst 3-point shooting team at 25.7 percent. They shot 2-for-9 from past the stripe, including a critical wide-open miss by Matt Barnes with 47.3 seconds remaining and the Lakers trailing by a point.

TURNING POINT: The lead changed hands 14 times in the second half before the Pacers grabbed it for good on a tear-drop runner from point guard Darren Collison with 1:15 remaining. Barnes then missed his 3-point attempt on the other end, Lakers point guard Derek Fisher stole the ball back but air-balled a runner of his own. After Collison made two free throws to stretch the lead to three, Kobe Bryant missed a potential tying 3-pointer with 9.9 seconds left. Bryant scored 33 points on 30 field-goal attempts.

HOT: The night couldn't have started much worse for Indiana and 7-foot-2 center Roy Hibbert. He committed his second foul with 6:46 remaining in the first quarter and suffered a broken nose in the process. He was announced as questionable to return, leaving the Pacers to guard 7-foot centers Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol with 6-9 forward David West and 6-8 forward Tyler Hansbrough. However, Hibbert returned to the floor with 5:12 left in the first half, sporting blood-stained tissue in his nostrils. He put the Pacers on his shoulders in the second half, scoring 16 of his team-high 18 points on 8-for-9 shooting.

NOT: Gasol had a significant height advantage for most of the game as Hibbert elected to guard Bynum on most possessions while they were on the floor. Still, he managed just eight points on 4-for-12 shooting. He missed a wide-open 13-footer with 1:25 remaining and the Lakers leading by one. The Lakers missed four straight baskets in the final 85 seconds before Gasol scored on a meaningless layup at the buzzer.

GOOD MOVE: The Lakers took 16 free throws before Indiana took its first with 9:14 remaining in the first half. The Pacers didn't complain, however, they just kept on working and the fouls began to even out. By the end of the game, the Lakers had shot 22-for-33 from the line. The Pacers were 16-for-19.

BAD MOVE: The Lakers seemed to have plenty of indecision down the stretch, as Bryant elected to pass off to both Barnes and Fisher, but they failed to come through with big baskets. Bryant finally took matters into his owns hands, but by then Lakers needed a 3-pointer and his long-range shot in the closing seconds banked wildly off the backboard.

QUOTABLE II: "It's a good win for us and we've come a long way. We feel like we're one of the elite teams in the league."
-- Vogel.

NOTABLE: The Lakers failed to reach 100 points for 11th straight game, their longest such streak since the 2003-04 season ... Lakers small forward Devin Ebanks played eight minutes in the first half, his first playing time since Jan. 13 ... Kareem Rush, who played parts of eight season in the NBA, including his first three with the Lakers from 2002-05, sang the national anthem.

UP NEXT: For the Lakers, Wednesday vs. L.A. Clippers, Saturday @ Milwaukee, Sunday @ Minnesota. For the Pacers, Tuesday vs. Orlando, Wednesday @ Chicago, Friday @ Boston.

• Pacers: --
• Lakers: Blake, Caracter

• Pacers: --
• Lakers: Bynum

• Lead Changes: 14
• Times Tied: 9

• Arena: Staples Center, Los Angeles, CA
• Officials: #41 Ken Mauer, #18 Matt Boland, #44 Eli Roe
• Attendance: 18997
• Duration: 2:25