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Lakers' Team Report L.A. desperately wants to end this series in six games
Posted: Monday June 19, 2000 07:29 PM
By John Donovan, CNNSI.com LOS ANGELES -- The Indiana Pacers are desperate, as they'll tell anyone who listens. One more loss and they're bounced from the NBA Finals. But the Los Angeles Lakers, up 3-2 on the Pacers, have a desperation all their own. Sure, the Lakers have two chances to get the one win needed to take the title. And both of them are on their home court, here in L.A. But no way do the Lakers, stunned by the Pacers by a whopping 33 points in Game 5 on Friday night, want this series going to a seventh and deciding game. The Lakers want to end this thing right now. In Game 6 on Monday night. "We don't want to take a chance," said L.A.'s Glen Rice. "One thing we've been saying all along is that we'd like to take care of things as quickly as we can." That, of course, has been the problem for the Lakers all along. They went to a deciding fifth game against Sacramento in the first round. They had Phoenix down 3-0 in the best-of-seven second round and let the Suns win Game 4. And, in the Western Conference finals, they were up 3-1 and found themselves fighting for their lives in the fourth quarter of Game 7. "No one wants a seventh game in a situation like this. The reality is, we know seventh games are difficult situations for us," said L.A. coach Phil Jackson. "There hasn't been a Game 7 since Houston-New York [in 1994]. We're going to do our best to close it out earlier." Reggie Miller, the Pacers' hot-handed shooting guard, has said several times that the pressure of this series has now shifted onto the Lakers' shoulders. They are the ones that are expected to win. The Pacers, Miller says, have nothing to lose. But the Lakers know better than that. They know that, if these Finals go to a seventh game on Wednesday night, the Pacers have everything to lose. "They have a championship to lose," L.A.'s Kobe Bryant said. "So do we."
Strategy of the DayThe Lakers knew coming into this series that the Pacers were deadly from outside. Maybe now it's just starting to sink in. "In the Western Conference, everything starts in the paint. With these guys, they attack from the perimeter. They spread you out, take jump shots, penetrate the ball down the court," said Bryant. "So we kind of have to change our schemes, defensively." What that means is the Lakers have to challenge the outside shooters more and make the Pacers beat them by taking the ball inside. That, too, is a risky business, considering that Indiana is an excellent free-throw shooting team. Certainly, they can't let the Pacers do both. "What we didn't do in the last game was we allowed them to not only get to the outside but also find penetration from [Austin] Croshere, and [Jalen] Rose, too," Jackson said. "That double-combination whammy really cost us."
Quote of the DayThe Lakers' A.C. Green: "Talent doesn't necessarily mean a lot. You can be a great team on paper, and the potential is always there, but it's all about taking care of business when the opportunity is there. That's what we haven't done."
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