Consider the midnight phone call.

Earlier in the playoffs, Pacers guard Mark Jackson told Miller he was Superman, chatting him up like a boxing promoter. And the guy responded by warming up for his next game in a man of steel T-shirt that invited derision if he failed. Around midnight before Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Sunday, with the Pacers down 2-0 to the Los Angeles Lakers, Jackson and Miller talked on the phone.

Screamed on the phone, actually.

"We had to get off the phone last night because we got each other going so much," Jackson said. "We had to hang up. We were screaming and hollering. We were ready to play last night, in the middle of the night.

"Screaming and hollering and trash talking and saying what we're gonna do and what we have to do. We even designed a play that we ran, and it worked. We just missed the shot."

Statistics, such as Miller's 25 percent shooting in Games 1 and 2, do not temper the emotion. They fuel it.

"I have to let it pour out," Miller said. "I can't play quietly. There's just no way. I play on emotion and excitement. It's always been that way."

Miller still doesn't have a field goal in a fourth quarter of the NBA Finals. But he does have a victory in the series, taking care of that with a 100-91 Game 3 win. Miller had 33 points, and made all eight of his free throws in the fourth quarter.

So the Pacers can still dream. Anybody really think they can win one game in Los Angeles, let alone two? That was beside the point in their locker room. Losing would have put the Pacers in a hole from which no team has emerged in any NBA playoff series.

No matter how many points Miller scored, a 3-0 deficit would have put Miller's 25 percent shooting from the floor in Games 1 and 2 in bolder print. That included a 1-for-16 performance in Game 1. And 1-for-5 from 3-point range in Game 2. He averaged only 14 points in those games.

"It always comes down to me," Miller said. "This is my team. I have to step up. I have to do everything."

That is Jordan-like arrogance, which is acceptable when backed up. It is even preferable to, say, a star such as Scottie Pippen who fades away in crunch time. Miller's attitude might even be the only way the Pacers can possibly beat the Lakers in this series.

He says he wants to be mad. This is a guy who has a baseball card of himself as a little leaguer taped to his locker. It's an awfully cute pose of Reggie as a kid, in uniform and holding a bat. But he wants to be the villain. Go ahead, boo him. Loudly.

But this time, he was in front of the adoring home fans. So he went into the Lakers' huddle at one point Sunday to make something out of what Pacers coach Larry Bird thought was nothing.

"I'm still more upset with myself for Games 1 and 2," Miller said. "There was a lot of pushing and grabbing going on. Mark (Jackson) was trapped in their huddle and it was like a pinball machine, the way he was getting bounced back and forth. You just can't let something like that happen."

Miller played every minute of the first three quarters. When he came off the floor at halftime, he told a television interviewer, "I'll rest when I'm dead. ... I don't want to come out. Run me till I'm ragged."

That's exactly what happened, although Miller came out for two minutes in the fourth quarter.

"I thought he wore down a little bit," Bird said. "I probably should have taken him out a couple of minutes and brought him back in. You could tell on the defensive end he didn't have the energy he had earlier.

Reggie Miller celebrates draining another shot from the field in the third quarter -- something he didn't do in the fourth.(AP)

"But I thought at that point we could go into Jalen (Rose) a few times, and he would score for us. But Reggie came through. You know, I think he scored like 30 points, and we need that effort out of him again the next game."

Miller had one field goal attempt in the fourth quarter, a missed 3-pointer.

"Tonight a lot of the offense was funneled my way, and guys got looks and I went to the free throw line," Miller said. "They played me differently in the fourth quarter. Guys are going to get wide open looks if they funnel the ball my way."

Eventually, Kobe Bryant will return from an injury that kept him out Sunday. And pretty soon, Miller will have to start scoring from the floor in the fourth quarter if the Pacers are going to win another game.

He has, at least, begun to deflect the criticism for his performance in the series.

"He had one bad game, and you guys made it like this is the end of the world," Lakers forward Robert Horry said.

Until Sunday, it was looking like the end of the Pacers.