Well, Kobe Bryant

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didn't exactly become a bubble boy because he and the Lakers decided to hold him out of Game 3 with the sprained left ankle he suffered Friday night in Los Angeles, but his absence of commentary and presence was more than a little conspicuous during the Lakers' 100-91 loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game 3 Sunday.

"Actually, he came in the coaches' room about 35 minutes before game time and said, 'I can go,'" Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. "And he said, 'I can try it.' I wanted to see him do some lateral slides and I asked how it felt. He said, 'It hurts.' I said, 'Well then, let's save it. We can save this one.'"

They might have saved the war, but they certainly lost the battle for a number of reasons that included Bryant's absence. Everybody expected Glen Rice to step up big and revert to the big-time scorer he failed to become during the regular season because the shots hadn't been there with Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal garnering at least half the shots between them all season.

Instead, he was just 3-for-9 with 7 points and played just 27 minutes.

"It hurt not having Kobe because he creates so much for us," Rice said. "We weren't as aggressive as we should have been and I don't know why I didn't play more. But when we have Kobe, even if the shot clock is running down, he can create something good for us. We needed more from everybody."

The Lakers handled the Pacers fairly well in Game 2 on Friday despite losing Bryant in the first quarter. They also got 40 points from O'Neal, and 21 apiece from Rice and Ron Harper. This time around, Shaq had 33 and Harper 14 to go along with Rice's 7. That's 54 points as opposed to 82 on Friday, making it clear the team just didn't play as well overall, ... particularly with Harper turning the ball over five times and O'Neal three.

"We're not going to make excuses," O'Neal said. "We know exactly what we have to do and we're going to come back at full health. It wasn't really a disruption at all. We came in here knowing we didn't have Kobe, but we didn't play smart. Every time we got back into the game, we shot ourselves in the foot. So we have to play smarter."

And you can count on Bryant being back on Wednesday, even if there was no official statement either way. And the Pacers haven't even begun to delude themselves into believe it won't be a different story come Game 4 with Bryant back at even 75 percent of his normal athleticism.

We're talking about 21.7 points, 4.5 assists and 4.2 rebounds a game ... not to mention the intangible excitement and athleticism he brings every time he touches the ball. And that's before we even get to the defense that put him on the All-Defensive first team this season. Still, they were 11-4 to start the season when he was sidelined with a broken right hand, so it was nothing new.

Point guard Derek Fisher played a series-high 27 minutes and responded with 10 points and 10 assists without a turnover.

"It would be a totally different game (with Bryant)," Fisher said. "We are definitely more potent on the offensive end and defensively as well with Kobe in the lineup. But it really shouldn't matter who is out on this team unless it's Shaquille."

Free throws cost Shaq, Lakers

So dominant was O'Neal in the first two games of the NBA Finals that all the usual hyperbole was trotted out in the name of humor to explain how to stop him.

But a simple part of basketball bothered him again Sunday: free throws. O'Neal was 3-for-13 from the free throw line, including 1-for-7 in the fourth quarter.

"It's a good thing he missed them," Pacers forward Derrick McKey said. "He does so much else that carries them, the free throws helped us out when we needed them most."

The Lakers' Fisher shrugged off the stats.

"We know that Shaquille is going to shoot most of our free throws and we know that he's at least going to give us one," Fisher said. "The majority of the time we are going to shoot 60-plus percent, because he takes so many of them. So it's not that we can't overcome that. But when you combine it with turnovers and mental mistakes and breakdowns on defense, then it really starts to stand out."

O'Neal finished with 33 points, but the Pacers patted themselves on the back for not allowing him to duplicate his 43 and 40-point performances in Games 1 and 2.

O'Neal was outscored by Pacers center Rik Smits, 6-5, in the first quarter. Dale Davis of the Pacers helped hold him in check.

"He did a good job of standing behind him and trying to force him out a little bit," Pacers coach Larry Bird said. "The task is almost impossible, but Dale will battle you. That's what he did today."

"He controlled the first two games," Pacers guard Mark Jackson said of O'Neal. "He was a nightmare. Today, he had to make a variety of different shots. We made him work a little bit more."

Tony, Tony, Tony

The tall, lean and smiling man carrying around the baby girl like a trophy was getting kisses, hugs and high-fives everywhere he turned. It was a homecoming of the strangest form for Antonio Davis, who was traded by the Pacers to the Toronto Raptors for the rights to high school grad Jonathon Bender during last year's NBA Draft.

It was a tough blow to the team to lose the popular power player, but it came at his behest because he wanted to start instead of being the first power player off the bench.

"This is hard for me to see this because I love Indianapolis and these guys," Davis said. "But that's the way it goes."

Actually, there was a lot more to it than that. Pacers president Donnie Walsh said he had to make a decision between Antonio Davis and Dale Davis in the deal for Bender. And with Al Harrington entering just his second season after being their first high school draftee in 1998, he wanted Bender even more in his desire to make the team younger.

Nonetheless, it was a gamble for Walsh being this was a veteran team that had been to the conference finals four times since 1993 and come away empty-handed each time. To have failed again would have set him up to be vilified for the deal not only from the fans and the media, but the veterans on the team that knew they had a great shot at winning the Eastern Conference.

"I hated to trade Tony, but I had to make the deal so we could continue to get younger," Walsh said. "I knew we were close, with him or without him, but I also knew a chance to get Bender was a once-in-a-lifetime shot. We feel he's that good. So I went with the gamble and it worked."

So the Pacers are happy. Davis got his wish, sort of, and the twains met on Sunday night.

"Of course I want them to win," Davis said.

But he'd still prefer to say us.

Shots from the perimeter

• O'Neal, with his 3-for-13 from the free throw line and 2-for-11 in the second half Sunday, now is 22-of-58 from the free throw line in the series, just more than 36 percent, and 47 percent for the playoffs. On the flip side, Pacers star Reggie Miller was 9-for-9 Sunday, 20-for-20 in the series and is 96-of-103 in the playoffs (93.1 percent). They both scored 33 in the game, however, O'Neal is leading all scorers in the playoffs with a 29.8 scoring average compared to Miller's 23.3, which is eighth.
• The Lakers never led in the game.
• For the series, the Lakers are shooting 53.7 percent from the free throw line compared to the Pacers firing away at an impressive 83.7 -- which is a Finals record differential.
• The Lakers had outrebounded the Pacers in each of the first two games by an average of 6.5. Sunday, despite O'Neal's 13, the Pacers outmuscled the Lakers 39-33. "We were just much more aggressive," said Pacers forward Dale Davis, who led his team with 12 boards. "This is the way we have to play for the rest of the series."
• Smits continues to be completely ineffective, scoring 6 points with 6 rebounds in 19 minutes on Sunday. The 33-year-old free-agent-to-be, who is pondering retirement, has played just 18.3 minutes in the series with 7.3 points and 4.3 rebounds. "I don't know what we're going to do about Rik," Pacers president Donnie Walsh said. "He's young, and he's been talking about retirement because of his feet, but he's really been pretty healthy this year for the first time in a long time." Healthy until the finals, where the 7-foot-4 native of Holland is suffering from a severe case of Shaqitis.

SportsLine.com's Mark Alesia contributed to this report.