Kobe Bryant's coming-out party in Indiana dashed the Pacers' title hopes 25 years ago

New York Times

18 hours ago

INDIANAPOLIS — Kobe Bryant held each hand out in front of him near his waist, palms pointed to the hardwood as he jogged to the defensive end. His head tilted, confusion painted on his face, the Lakers guard gently pushed down, as if he were testing the softness of a mattress. He wasn't confused about his readiness for this moment, but how everyone didn't share his conviction that he was divinely fashioned for the grandest stages, the brightest lights, the highest stakes.
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He'd been declaring it for four seasons, in word and deed, through playoff air balls and All-Star Games. So when Shaquille O'Neal fouled out in overtime of Game 4 in the 2000 NBA Finals, on the road in raucous Hoosierland, he didn't believe panic was necessary. Worry wasn't welcomed.
Twenty years before, another precocious Lakers' player also faced a finals crucible. In 1980, when the Lakers played the 76ers in the championship series, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar badly sprained his ankle in the third quarter of Game 5. He somehow managed to return to help the Lakers win and take a 3-2 series lead. But he left the Great Western Forum on crutches and was done for the series.
Magic Johnson, then a bubbly rookie point guard, sensed the team's dread after the news about Kareem. So when Magic got on the team plane to Philadelphia, he lightened the spirits of his squad by sitting in Kareem's seat. As his teammates boarded the plane, they were greeted by the interim captain, smiling and declaring, 'Never fear, Magic is here.'
He then played all five positions in Game 6 and went for 42 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists. The Lakers won the title, Magic won Finals MVP, and a star was born.
In 2000, Bryant did the same to ignite a new generation of Lakers dominance.
He wasn't smiling, though. He didn't use words. He laced jumpers like daggers into the hearts of the Pacers. Then Bryant gestured to his teammates, to the fans, to everyone who had yet to fully comprehend the level of No. 8.
Everybody, calm down. Kobe is here.
A superstar was born.
'You only get a few of those players,' Ron Harper, Bryant's Lakers teammate, said to The Athletic this week. 'You can count on a few of them: Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas. They get to those special moments when the game slows down in their eyes, when it speeds up for everybody else.
'He went and got the game. He allowed the game to come to him, but he went and got the game.'
Twenty-five years ago Saturday, in the same building where the Indiana Pacers are, today, waging a pitched battle with the Oklahoma City Thunder in hopes of finally winning the franchise's first NBA title, the last Pacers team to make it this far was in an equally daunting fight. As with this season's team, those Pacers were heavy underdogs to Kobe, Shaq and the Lakers. And those Pacers, like the current iteration, faced a pivotal Game 4 of the finals on their home court, knowing one more home win dramatically increases Indiana's chances at a ring.
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That night in 2000, the Pacers played well, and very well on occasion. Reggie Miller overcame a bad first half shooting to make multiple clutch shots down the stretch. And Indiana got a huge gift when O'Neal fouled out of the game midway through the overtime period. Without the Diesel, the Lakers were suddenly at a major disadvantage against Indiana's 7-foot-4 center Rik Smits, the Dunking Dutchman. The Pacers were down just three when Shaq fouled out. They were in position to change the series.
But Kobe Bean Bryant was having none of that.
With three clutch baskets in the last two-plus minutes of OT, he lifted the Lakers to a 120-118 victory and a 3-1 series lead. Five days later, O'Neal (41 points, 12 rebounds) and Bryant (26 points, 10 rebounds) led the Lakers to a Game 6 victory over the Pacers, securing the franchise's first championship since 1988.
'Shaq fouled out,' Harper said. 'Phil (Jackson) was talking and (Bryant) was like, 'I got this, coach. You guys just play. I got this.''
That night, Kobe Bryant, all of 21 years old, showed the world who he already was, and who he would become. As the kid morphed into the Mamba, Pacers big man Dale Davis kept yelling at Miller, Indiana's greatest player.
'I'm like, 'Reg, yo, control this young kid,'' Davis told The Athletic on Wednesday, 'And he's like 'Man, I'm trying.''
Miller would have had more luck catching water with a tennis racket.
He and his Indiana Pacers found out, in real time, that Bryant was every bit as good as he'd told the world he'd be. That he was worth every drop of sweat and angst from Los Angeles Lakers' ultra-tightly wound GM, Jerry West, who'd bet that a high school kid from outside of Philadelphia would be the franchise's next great superstar. That he could carry a team to an NBA championship, by himself, if he had to.
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With the passage of time, the Lakers' three-peat from 2000-02 now seems preordained. West, already a Hall of Famer for his majestic playing career for the franchise, was one of the best talent evaluators ever. Jackson, hired specifically to bring L.A. multiple titles, just as he did with the Bulls, would become the winningest playoff coach in league history, with 11 championships, two more than Red Auerbach. O'Neal and Bryant, while often chafing at each other as teammates, were both destined for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
But the path was anything but smooth.
The Lakers, who won 67 games that year, were pushed to a win-or-go-home Game 5 in the first round against Sacramento, featuring Chris Webber and Vlade Divac. Then the Lakers were down 15 points early in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals to Portland, before, somehow, rallying to beat the Blazers, in a game punctuated by Bryant's alley-oop pass to O'Neal for the series-clinching dunk.
'We were a veteran team,' said Harper, who'd won three rings in Chicago with Michael Jordan and the Bulls before going to the Lakers in 1999. 'When I first got there, I sat him and Shaq down. I said, 'This team's only going to go as far as you two take us. We have a bunch of great role players here, but you two are going to define us. … whatever y'all do is going to be us.
'First, second, third quarter, we're coming to (O'Neal). But if you miss a couple of free throws in the fourth, we've got one of the best closers since MJ.'
Bryant's pain threshold became a huge part of his legend. Famously, he walked off the court in 2013 after tearing his Achilles tendon, rather than be carted off in a wheelchair — a direct shot at Paul Pierce, who'd been carted off during Game 1 of the 2008 finals against the Lakers, only to return to the game a few minutes later and help the Celtics win.
But in 2000, no one yet knew that side of Bryant. They soon would.
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Early in Game 2 of the series against the Pacers, Bryant went up for a jumper. Indiana guard Jalen Rose slid his foot underneath Bryant as he came down to earth. Bryant's foot came down on top of Rose's foot, and Bryant crumpled to the floor. It was a sprained ankle — a bad one. Bryant left the game and didn't return after playing fewer than nine minutes. The Lakers won Game 2 without him, but Jackson held him out of Game 3 as a precaution, and Indiana won Game 3 at what was then called Conseco Fieldhouse, 100-91.
Rose did it on purpose.
'One of the things that happened in my career, I don't think it's cute or am I proud of it,' Rose told ESPN.com in 2021.
'I came from an era where you did whatever it takes to win,' Rose said. 'We also realized very quickly we couldn't guard him. This dude is something different. So I acted like I was contesting the jump shot and purposely made him come down on my foot. In my mind, I didn't want him to break his ankle. But I wouldn't mind if he missed the next few games because we would have a better chance to win.'
With round-the-clock electrical stimulation treatment, and with two days between Games 3 and 4, Bryant at least had a chance to play in Game 4. But it wasn't a certainty until the Lakers' longtime celebrated athletic trainer, Gary Vitti, went to work on Bryant's foot.
'We want those bones in your feet to be mobile, to have some movement, so they can absorb shock and transfer force,' Vitti told The Athletic in 2021. 'And so his cuboid, which is one of his tarsal bones, is really, really tender. And I'm working on it, and I'm mobilizing it, and I'm mobilizing it. And I do a mobilization technique. And I can feel a pop, and he can feel a pop.
'And we both look at each other. And I'm like, 'Holy s–, man, I think that's it.' And he looked at me, and he goes, 'That's it.' And he got off the table and he walked around, and said 'That's it.' And he put his shoe on, and he ran.'
Bryant started Game 4. He also started slowly, missing three of his first four shots as he tried, in real time, to assess how much he could do on the ankle. The Pacers led by 10 in the second quarter, but couldn't put L.A. away, and led just 54-51 at the half.
Bryant picked up his fourth foul a minute into the third quarter, but was able to stay on the floor and get himself going, despite Rose and Pacers guard Mark Jackson both trying to draw a fifth foul on him via post-ups. He scored 10 points in the third as the Lakers took an 80-77 lead after three.
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'He had that supreme confidence,' Harper said. 'I was like, 'All right, young boy.' I'm like, yeah, he's feeling it.'
The fourth quarter belonged to Miller, who hadn't made a fourth-quarter basket in the first three games of the series. He made five of six shots, including three 3-pointers, the last of which put Indiana up 101-99 with 3:18 left. But the Pacers didn't score again until Sam Perkins' 3 with 35 seconds left in regulation tied the game at 104. Inexplicably, the Pacers' backup guard Travis Best took the last shot of regulation for Indiana rather than Miller and missed, sending the game to overtime.
The Lakers led by four early in OT. But O'Neal picked up his sixth foul with 2:33 left in overtime, heading to the bench with 36 points and 21 rebounds. He'd even had what was, for him, a great night at the line, making 10 of 17 free throws.
After O'Neal fouled out, 'I was like, (on to) Game 5,' Lakers forward Rick Fox told The Athletic Wednesday. 'You're thinking about the odds in that moment.'
Tyronn Lue coached the Cleveland Cavaliers to an improbable comeback from a 3-1 finals deficit against the mighty Warriors in the 2016 finals. In 2000, he was a Lakers reserve guard.
'Shaq fouled out, and so everybody kind of panicked,' Lue, now the Clippers' head coach, said on the 'All The Smoke' podcast.
The Lakers led 112-109. Many doubted that lead would last, especially after Smits immediately tossed in a hook over Shaq's backup, veteran center John Salley, to bring Indiana within one.
Yet Bryant, the youngest player on the court for both teams by several years, was completely in his element.
On the Lakers' next possession, Bryant got a screen from Robert Horry on Miller, but Miller was able to stay in front of Bryant. Didn't matter. Bryant went between his legs with the dribble to create separation, and pulled up for a 22-footer that hit nothing but net, to put L.A. back up by three. As he went down the court, Bryant raised and pushed both his hands down, with a smirk on his face, as if to say, 'Everybody calm down.'
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Smits tossed in another hook to make it 114-113.
'I remember him scoring two or three straight on Reggie Miller,' Jackson recalled on his podcast, The Mark Jackson Show. 'I say to Reg, 'I got him. Let me get him one play.' Stupid New York City mentality.'
So Jackson picked up Bryant. He didn't plan to actually stop him, just hammer the youngster and send a message. This was Indiana's time. And some kid wasn't stealing the Pacers' moment.
Jackson never got the chance to deliver. One crossover and a sudden pull-up just inside the arc and Kobe was mid-jumper before Jackson could even react. He drilled the 23-footer from the top with 1:20 left to keep the Lakers up three.
Jackson promptly passed the assignment back to Miller.
'I'm like, 'Reg, you got him,'' Jackson said. ''I got nothing for you, man. You got him.' That was it.'
Miller made two free throws at 1:05 to make it 116-115. Smits got a piece of Bryant's jumper at the other end, but the Lakers crashed the glass for two offensive rebounds, the second from veteran guard Brian Shaw, whose putback again gave the Lakers a three-point edge with 46 seconds left. Smits made two free throws with 28.1 seconds remaining to pull Indiana within a point, 118-117. Indiana didn't foul, opting to play it out.
Miller face guarded Bryant to keep him from getting the ball, leaving Shaw to create a shot. He wound up with a runner across the lane.
It missed. But Bryant didn't, hitting the offensive glass and tipping the ball in with his left hand to make it 120-117 with 5.9 seconds left.
Indiana got a last chance to win the game, after Fox was called for a dead-ball foul before the ensuing inbounds pass, giving the Pacers a free throw plus possession. Miller made the free throw and had a great look at a potential game-winning 3 at the buzzer off a double-stagger screen. But it rimmed out. The Lakers, now with a 3-1 series lead, closed Indiana out in Los Angeles five days later.
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It's hard to understate how significant this game, this performance, was for the Lakers. Title windows are finicky. Nobody knows that better than the Pacers; missed windows close faster. Do they become a dynasty if they don't pull through in Game 4? Would losing in their first trip to the finals exacerbate the drama perennially hovering over those Lakers? This was year four of the Kobe and Shaq experiment. Does West get impatient and switch up if they don't win? Basketball history may have hung in the balance
Everybody, calm down. Kobe is here.
Now familiar with triumph, the Lakers went on to smoke the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2001 finals, and the New Jersey Nets in 2002, to secure their three-peat. And Bryant led L.A. to two more titles in 2009 and 2010. But the moment of alchemy was here, in this city, where Oscar Robertson unfurled his burgeoning greatness at Crispus Attucks High School in the mid-1950s, and the Pacers ruled the ABA in the 1970s.
Kobe is here. Basketball graffiti, written in two-and-a-half special minutes, on the fieldhouse floor.
'Kobe left his shoes in the locker room after that game,' Fox said. 'And as he was walking out, I was like, 'Yo, Kob – your shoes.' And he was like, 'Nah, I don't want them.' He just left them there.
'He was so focused and locked in. When I tell you, he was a different animal after that game. He became Kobe.'
(Top photo of Kobe Bryant: Bob Rosato / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)