Patience rewarded

The Lakers have worked for 10 years to get here, the Pacers 24.

By DARRELL FRY

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 7, 2000

LOS ANGELES -- The years have flown by, many more than Indiana and Los Angeles would care to count, yet the goal has remained the same.

The Lakers have been tweaking their roster for nearly 10 years to get back to the NBA Finals, the Pacers for 24 to get to the Finals for the first time. Each team has had the talent. It's intangibles -- chemistry, timing and good fortune -- that have blocked them from the league title series.

Now the Lakers and Pacers are finally here -- Game 1 of the seven-game series is tonight at the Staples Center.

"Any time you have been in the league as long as some of our guys, you think and talk about (getting to the NBA Finals) for so long," Pacers forward Jalen Rose said. "And as the years go on, you wonder if you'll ever have an opportunity to make it happen. Not to say it's more important for those guys than it is for guys my age and younger, but at the same time, you always want to win for the older guys."

The Lakers, returning to the Finals for the first time since 1991, at least have their championship days of the 1980s to feel good about. The Pacers have no such history to sustain them.

Only the six-time champion Chicago Bulls took longer than the Pacers to reach their first Finals, 25 years. The previous six years, Indiana has come close, posting one of the league's best regular-season records only to be stopped four times in the Eastern Conference final, including the past two.

The Pacers, even with Larry Bird as coach, became the Utah Jazz of the East, a team branded as too one-dimensional (i.e., Reggie Miller) and too old to win a title.

But this season the Pacers didn't get better by getting younger; their younger players simply got better. Rose and Austin Croshere, who were being groomed as key contributors, blossomed simultaneously, giving the Pacers more weapons besides Miller.

Rose's rise has been so dramatic that he won the league's Most Improved Player Award. In the post-season he is averaging 20.1 points a game, compared with Miller's 23.8.

Croshere is finally delivering the results the Pacers hoped for when they drafted him. He has given Indiana quality minutes off the bench and solidified himself as a reliable perimeter shooter.

He is averaging 7.4 points and is tied with Rose as the team's second-leading three-point shooter at 40.7 percent.

"This year we've had more of a combination of younger guys and veterans," veteran forward Derrick McKey said. "We needed those younger guys to step up and help out because we're getting older and a lot of nights we just don't have the energy to go out and do it. But these younger guys always bring a lot of energy to the game."

The Lakers also have teetered on the threshold of the title series for nearly a decade as a regular-season heavyweight that fizzled in the post-season.

Having three superstars -- Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and Glen Rice -- wasn't enough to get them past San Antonio and Utah in recent years. They were the classic underachievers, a team with volumes of talent that became its curse.

What was missing apparently was not a player but a coach. Bringing his Zen philosophy and championship experience from Chicago, Phil Jackson has masterfully blended all of Los Angeles' many talents into a cohesive machine. Along the way, he convinced fans that the days of Showtime could be revived even while everyone else was pointing to Portland as the conference's likely champion.

"I'm going to tell you why we made the finals this year," Lakers forward Robert Horry said. "It's because nobody picked us. We didn't have any pressure on us. When nobody predicts you to do anything, that's when you usually do something. It's that old jinx that if you say something's going to happen, it won't happen. If you don't say anything, it usually happens."

The Pacers have never won an NBA title (not counting ABA titles), and it has been 12 years since the last of the Lakers' six championships.

Pacers guard Mark Jackson could have been speaking for both teams when he said: "We want to capitalize on this chance because you never know what could happen. You have to take care of business while you have the opportunity."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.

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