Sunday night’s best game starts after the football is over and has the surprising Indiana Pacers visiting the Los Angeles Lakers, who are in a favorable stretch of their schedule and have an opportunity to fix some of their issues on offense.
The first issue is scoring. Despite having the NBA’s leading scorer in Kobe Bryant, the Lakers are just 21st in offense at 92.1 points and dead last in the NBA in 3-point percentage at 25.7 percent.
Derek Fisher is 7-of-29, Matt Barnes is 5-of-22 and Metta World Peace is an atrocious 4-of-33. Even Bryant is just 20-of-75. Were it not for Fisher’s late 3-pointer vs. Dallas, LA would be riding a four-game slide right now.
The second issue is scoring distribution. Yes, the Lakers miss the traded Lamar Odom and the injured Steve Blake as facilitators who also can put the ball in the basket. But they have just three players averaging double figures, with everyone else picking up scraps.
Bryant’s 30.4 points nearly matches the combined total of Pau Gasol (16.3) and Andrew Bynum (15.8), a pair of 7-footers who should be making the Lakers much more potent than they have shown. LA hasn’t scored 100 points since Jan. 3 vs. Houston and is averaging just 80 points in its last three games.
Upon returning from Friday’s abysmal 92-80 loss in Orlando, the Lakers began a stretch of six days in 
their own beds with just two games – tonight’s meeting with the Pacers and Wednesday’s game vs. the Clippers. It is the best stretch of the season for coach Mike Brown to fine-tune the offense with quality practices.
The Pacers match up pretty well with the Lakers. They have a legitimate rim protector in 7-2 Roy Hibbert, a power forward with a mid-range game in David West and a handful of defenders to rotate on Bryant, including Danny Granger, Paul George and defensive specialist Dahntay Jones.
This is the last of a three-game trek through California for Indiana, which gave away the first game and was given a gift in the second. The Pacers had an awful eight-point fourth quarter in Wednesday’s 92-88 loss at Sacramento, then stole a 94-91 win Friday at Golden State when George Hill had a steal and three-point play in the final seconds.
On Saturday, the NBA admitted that Hill’s steal – which first bounced off his extended foot – should have been a kicked-ball violation.
In hindsight, Lakers knew they were gonna blow up the roster to go away from triangle personnel to more traditional personnel to be more in line with Mike Brown-style O and D. Unfortunately, their big move was squashed and a mental Lamar Odom wouldn’t report, leaving them not only with mismatched personnel for the system, but a worse roster to boot.
Worse, they got a shortened camp, so they look LOST on offense. Bynum’s had a history of getting dejected as things don’t go his way, so as they don’t go to him later in games, he gets worse. Gasol has resorted to being a jump shooter in this league. Somehow, the Lakers added two 40% three point shooters, and they’re actually WORSE shooting 3s this season.
NEITHER Laker bigs make quick moves in the post. This means when Kobe, Gasol, or Bynum get the ball, the offense gets stagnant. Both post players need to make quicker moves on the block. Just that would help a lot.