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Pacers' Team Report First-game jitters in the past, Indiana aims to get even
Posted: Friday June 09, 2000 01:09 AM
By John Donovan, CNNSI.com LOS ANGELES -- The Indiana Pacers, in their first NBA Finals, acted Wednesday night exactly as if they were in their first NBA Finals. They missed easy shots; they let the Los Angeles Lakers push them around; they came out as flat as a Lakers' home crowd ... All in all, it was an inauspicious NBA Finals debut for the former ABA squad, despite the fact that the Pacers are a team filled with veterans. "We got the first-game jitters out of the way," backup forward Austin Croshere said Thursday after the Pacers' off-day practice. "Now we move onto Game 2." Coach Larry Bird didn't come right out with it, but he seemed to say that Reggie Miller's awful adventure in Game 1 -- 1-for-16 shooting -- was partly because of the bright lights and the newness of it all. Some may disagree, but something surely was going on. "It wasn't anything that was noticeable in the locker room," Croshere said of the Pacers' possible jitters. "It wasn't a lack of confidence or an air. But just missing the types of shots we normally make has to be attributed to something." Those jitters -- if, indeed, that's what they were -- better be gone for Friday night's Game 2, or Indiana may not have to count much beyond the number four. One guy who plans to make sure they disappear is point guard Mark Jackson, one of the few Pacers who had a good game (18 points) Wednesday night. "That's one of my jobs, one of the things I take pride in," he said. "Leading this team." When asked if he thought it was necessary to stoke the team before this game, he said, "I think it was necessary before [Wednesday] night. "Look, first of all, we didn't come here to split. We came to win two," he added, just warming up. "But if we win [Friday] ... we're back in the driver's seat."
Strategy of the DayBe Aggressive. It was written all over the Pacers in their Thursday practice. Be aggressive, on both offense and defense. On offense, that means taking the ball to the middle at O'Neal in hopes of either getting easy baskets or getting him into foul trouble. On defense, it means better -- and quicker -- double-teams on the big guy. That, the Pacers hope, will be the big adjustments in Game 2 that will pay off. "We'll be fools if we don't adjust. We have to. He's put a stamp on it. He's proven his point," Jackson said of O'Neal. "We don't have one guy that can stop him. I don't think there's one guy on the face of the Earth that can stop him." The Pacers, whenever they've used double teams, do it with Jalen Rose coming off the top down on the opposing player, basically stopping the player's move into the middle. Now, the Pacers plan on using different people, from different sides, to get to O'Neal, making it a bit more difficult to read the defense before he shoots or passes off. They also hope to get to O'Neal quicker, get tighter on him and get their hands more active in an effort to either strip the ball or make it difficult for him to see any open teammates. "We need more body-to-body on him," forward Dale Davis said. That's some of their thinking, anyway. "The best we can do is keep throwing guys at him, mix up different double teams and give him different looks," Davis said. "Overall, I think the main thing is, just play him with more force and just make it tougher for him." And if that doesn't work, they can always foul him.
Quote of the DayMiller, on getting out of his slump: "It can't get no worse. It can only get better. So I'm going to shoot my way out of it."
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