Pacers win, take home-court edge from Heat

MIAMI: David West scored 16 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, George Hill added 15 points and the Indiana Pacers took home-court advantage away from Miami by beating the Heat 78-75 in Game 2 of the teams’ Eastern Conference semifinal series Tuesday night.
LeBron James scored 28 points for Miami and Dwyane Wade finished with 24, but both missed big chances for the Heat late. James missed two free throws with 54.3 seconds left and Miami down one, and Wade was short on a layup that would have tied the game with 16 seconds remaining.
Mario Chalmers’ 3-pointer to tie the game bounced away on the final play, and the series was tied 1-1. Game 3 is Thursday.
Danny Granger scored 11 points and Paul George added 10 for Indiana, which took advantage of Heat forward Chris Bosh’s absence and outrebounded Miami 50-40.
Spurs 108 Clippers 92: In San Antonio, Tim Duncan had 26 points and 10 rebounds and San Antonio, recharged after a weeklong layoff, wore down busy Los Angeles to win Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinals series.
Playing for the sixth time in 11 days, Los Angeles gave San Antonio its toughest first half of the playoffs before fading fast. And unlike their stunning Game 1 comeback at Memphis in the first round, the Clippers didn’t have the wind this time.
Manu Ginobili added 22 points for the Spurs, who’ve won 15 in a row. It’s the longest winning streak sustained in the NBA playoffs since the 2004 Spurs won 17 straight.
Eric Bledsoe led the Clippers with 23 points.
Kobe: I don’t
take charges
In Oklahoma City, Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant says he doesn’t take charges, and he’s got a reason for it.
Based on his own analysis of NBA greats from Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, Bryant believes there’s too much of a health risk to get run over by an opponent and go crashing to the floor repeatedly.
“I learned from my predecessors, man,” Bryant said on Tuesday. “Pippen had a (messed) up back taking charges. Bird had a (messed) up back taking charges.
“I said, ‘I’m not taking charges.’ I figured that (stuff) out at an early age.” The five-time NBA champion says no one ever presented the theory to him that he could prolong his career if he didn’t try to draw offensive fouls against his opponents. It was just his own observations.
“I’ve seen them take charges and lay there with a messed-up back. I’ve seen Michael not take one ... charge and he’s healthy his whole career, and the same thing with Magic,” Bryant said.
“I might not be the smartest guy in the room but I can figure that (stuff) out.” The topic came up after the Lakers forced only four Oklahoma City Thunder turnovers in a 119-90 blowout loss in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals. The NBA record for fewest turnovers in a game is three.
Oklahoma City had averaged a league-worst 16.4 turnovers in the regular season, but Los Angeles had the fewest steals and forced the least turnovers.
Bryant rejected the idea that the Lakers should try to extend their defense and disrupt Oklahoma City’s passes and said: “We’re not a passing-lanes kind of team. We’re a pack-it-in type of team.” Yet he also doesn’t think the Lakers are willing to stand in the way when opponents come charging in.
“We’ve got a couple guys that take charges but for the most part the one guy that took charges (Derek Fisher) is now playing in Oklahoma,” Bryant said.
“I don’t take charges, Metta (World Peace) doesn’t take charges. Steve (Blake) will take a charge every now and then, but most everybody else just stands up and plays.” Bryant said that drawing charges is “definitely a skill,” pointing out that coach Mike Krzyzewski does drills to teach it at Duke University. He singled out Miami’s Shane Battier, a former Duke star, for being among the best at it in today’s game but said he has no interest in learning.
Bryant’s coach, Mike Brown, has the opposing viewpoint.
“I’m a big charge guy. I’m more a charge guy than a shot-blocking guy,” he said, noting that even 7-foot-3 (2.21-meter) center Zydrunas Ilgauskas would drop to the floor to take charges for him in Cleveland.
While some NBA teams keep track of how many charges their players draw, Bryant certainly isn’t keeping up with his own.
“I probably took one last year. By accident probably,” he joked. “I couldn’t get out of the way.”