Here are your 10 additional things to take away from the Lakers 109-94 win over the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday ...
1
When the Lakers lost to the Pacers almost three weeks ago -- Kobe Bryant's potential game-tying 3 going awry at the buzzer -- Indiana didn't perform proper "act like you've been there before" etiquette and they paid the price for their celebration the second time around.
"They had a real issue about it," Lakers head coach Phil Jackson said. "I think the Pacers came out and kind of celebrated in the hallways at Staples [Center] and these guys remembered that. They came back with that, ‘Let’s get after it.’"
Matt Barnes couldn't remember which player brought it up in a huddle Tuesday, but said everybody remembered the Pacers' self-congratulating cheering once it was brought up.
"Someone said, ‘Do you remember them celebrating?’ and that’s something that sticks on your mind," Barnes said. "We watched the film and they made sure to show [Roy] Hibbert jumping around and Danny Granger chest bumping and all that stuff and we just kind of thought it was a little premature."
The Pacers loss was the second of four in a row at the time -- the low point of the Lakers season that's approaching the 1/3 mark with the Lakers having played 26 out of 82 regular season games.
Pau Gasol was out to seek some personal revenge on Hibbert as well. The last time the two met, Hibbert had 24 points on 9-of-13 shooting, 12 boards and six assists to Gasol's 13 on 5-of-15, 12 and three.
Wednesday Gasol had 28, eight and four to Hibbert's 12, six and two.
2
Bryant finished with a game-high 31 points on 11-of-18 shooting and turned the second half into his own personal "Can I top myself?" display as he hit four 3s, each of them launched seemingly further away from the hoop than the last.
But in the first half, when the team sprinted out to a 22-point lead as the second-quarter buzzer sounded, he was a different guy.
Six points and six assists in the first half. Twenty-five points and zero assists in the second half.
Jackson liked it that way.
"That’s the way that we like to see Kobe play a lot of games where he really makes his presence felt but everybody else is involved in the game because he’s making passes and plays facilitating the offense," Jackson said. "He’s going to find a point in the ballgame where he has his offense running for him and he did that."
Said Bryant: "Defensively they changed some things. They realized that in the first half they were really collapsing in on me and I hit guys [with passes] and the second half they saw me as more of a facilitator so they gave me the shots and I took that. It depends on the game ... you got to keep the defense off beat."
3
Ron Artest was night and day on offense too. He scored 13 points on 6-of-8 shooting in front of a handful of friends and family in the stands at Conseco Fieldhouse. He's now averaging 11.5 points on 62.5 percent shooting in his last two games after averaging just four points on 25.6 percent shooting in his previous six games.
"He’s a little focused about his shooting right now," said Jackson who intervened when Artest was talking to a pack of Indiana reporters pregame and encouraged him to go out and shoot. "We’re working a little bit on his shot. He had a lack of focus on his shooting … incorrect feet, [instead of] straddled legs sometimes he’s got a narrow base. So we’ve just been working with him to make sure he has a good base on his shots."
4
Speaking of Artest, he's at it again. This time he's commenting on young players across the league in hopes of firing them up to play better. His first victims have been Michael Beasley, DeAndre Jordan and JaVale McGee. Find out who he said has the low basketball IQ, who plays too much Atari and who eats too many burgers here.
5
Seen in the locker room: Jackson scribbled three overlapping circles on the white board in such a way that the drawing looked like a cowboy hat. Next to it he wrote, "Kobe's Sombrero." What did it signify? A player told me that when Bryant went 0-for-3 from the foul line when fouled on a 3-point attempt in Washington on Tuesday, Jackson mockingly referred to it as Bryant's "Hat Trick." According to the SportsCenter broadcast I watched Wednesday morning, it was the first time in Bryant's career that he's come up 0-fer at the line when fouled on a 3. The chiding continued in Indy, apparently.
6
Andrew Bynum's encore performance wasn't great -- three points on 1-of-4 shooting, five rebounds and two assists in 17 minutes -- and he tired out so much that Jackson put Gasol back into the final minutes of the fourth quarter of a blowout to give Bynum rest. But it is about what Jackson expected of his center at this point.
"He gets tired," Jackson said. "Some of his activity is still limited. He missed a couple shots I thought he could have blocked defensively. Yet, he’s a big target in there and he got a basket finally after we prevailed with trying to get him a few open opportunities. He tired and that’s going to happen, but we’re happy he made it through this game and we can move forward."
Jackson reiterated before the game that the eventual plan is for Bynum to rejoin the starting lineup, but that won't happen until he's ready to play a full rotation (eight or nine minutes at a time) rather than the four or five he's able to play before getting tuckered out now.
7
"Celebrity" sighting: Terrell Owens was at the game and was booed relentlessly by the fans when they flashed his dark-rimmed glasses-wearing face on the video board. He hung out with Kobe and several other players in the training room after the game. I have seen him at at least 10 Lakers games in the two years I've been living in L.A. and recently noticed that he was on the floor when the Lakers beat the Portland Trail Blazers in Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals.
8
PJax shared some memories of Sasha Vujacic and looked ahead at the impending arrival of Joe Smith. Read Jackson's thoughts and find out which two players on the roster that the trade will have the biggest impact on by clicking here.
9
Quote of the night: "[Pau] Gasol is a great player and he certainly wasn’t happy about what happened in L.A. He had 14 points in the blink of an eye."-- Pacers head coach Jim O'Brien on where it went wrong. Gasol had 14 of his 28 points in the first quarter, going 6-of-7 from the field in the process.
10
Stats of the night: The Lakers outrebounded the Pacers 51-29, leading to a 15-2 advantage on second-chance points ... The 29 boards were the lowest total for Indiana all season ... Lamar Odom tied a season high with 17 rebounds ... L.A. never trailed and led by as many as 26 at one point ... Artest had two steals in the first three minutes and the Lakers did not have another one all game, setting a season low of two.
Dave McMenamin covers the Lakers for ESPNLosAngeles.com. Follow him on Twitter.