Opponents Are Put on Defensive Now

The Lakers’ offensive surge in the last week was so breathtaking no one had any air left to talk about their defense.

There’s not much else other than defense to discuss following their 99-77 pounding of the Indiana Pacers on Sunday night.

For entertainment value, this game ranked just above an infomercial. But if anyone out there thinks offense alone is enough to get to the NBA Finals, I have some Dallas Mavericks stock to sell you, sucker.

The Laker offense is always going to score. Even on the Lakers’ worst nights they’ll put up points. Against Memphis, Washington and San Antonio the offense went from good to great, but in that same span their defense has gone from abysmal to playoff-worthy. Despite the extended garbage time in the three blowouts last week, they did not yield 100 points in any of them. By comparison, opponents hit triple digits four times in the first seven games.

The Pacers aren’t a high-powered scoring team. But Jermaine O’Neal is one of the top low-post threats in the league, you never know if Reggie Miler will pop for 31 points the way he did in New York, and then there’s Ron Artest. This season The Artest Formerly Known as Out of Control is much more likely to sink a three-point shot than commit a flagrant foul, and he’s a top-25 scorer at 19 points per game.

They were all suppressed like too-talkative schoolchildren Sunday.

O’Neal had 14 points, and he was the only Pacer starter to score in double figures. Miller airballed as many three-pointers as he made (one), and Artest settled for six points -- and no technical fouls.

The Pacers shot 39.1%. The Lakers forced 23 turnovers from the team that came in as the second-best in the league at protecting the ball. (The Pacers average 14 turnovers per game; they had that many at halftime.)

It was enough to draw this response from Shaquille O’Neal: “I’m sort of impressed.”

Karl Malone kept saying throughout the preseason that he thought the Lakers had the potential to be great on defense, and the Lakers are finally providing evidence that he wasn’t hallucinating.

“I think we’re starting to show signs, and we’re just going to get better,” Malone said. “You’re never going to stop people. You don’t go into a game saying, ‘I’m shutting this guy down, I’m not going to let him score,’ because there’s too many great scorers in this league. When you have an effort starting with yourself and your teammates help you out and pick you up, you can do a good job of containing guys. A guy beats you on the dribble, and you might get some help.”

The help defense has been much better, and that’s where Shaquille O’Neal and backup Horace Grant come in. O’Neal blocked four Pacer shots, and Grant blocked two. O’Neal had expected to concentrate on his offense Sunday, as the Lakers planned to exploit the Pacers’ middle. But after three quick fouls forced him to the bench for the entire second quarter, O’Neal took out his anger at the officials on the Pacers.

The Laker perimeter defense is shoring up, with Gary Payton looking much more like a sturdy Glove than a dainty mitten these days. He got into Kenny Anderson and backup Anthony Johnson, knocking down passes and sometimes just snatching the ball away, gangster-style, to get four steals.

“We’ve got to make it hard for them to get the ball [inside],” Payton said. “When they see it’s going to be hard for them to get in, Shaq and them start to pick up their defense. That makes them want to play defense. They say our point guard’s playing hard, we’ve got to play hard.

“That’s why they brought me in here. I get Kobe going and then Shaq going and Karl going, it’s all good.”

Bryant tried to out-Artest Artest at the defensive end, holding down the Pacer shooting guards.

Al Harrington was the only Pacer to shake himself loose from the Lakers, tossing in 18 points, sometimes scoring at will.

The Pacers had the NBA’s best record (14-2, including 7-0 on the road), but people wanted to know how that would hold up when they came out West.

They brought a little bit of the East with them, the old lock-you-down defensive mentality of the old East, of the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons and the three-peat Chicago Bulls.

That makes for the type of game that should be settled in an alley, not on a stage, but the Lakers were ready to go around the corner if the Pacers wanted to play defense -- and Indiana certainly presented a stronger front than anyone of the most recent visitors to Staples Center.

So here’s what the Pacers got: 17 points in the first quarter, 20 in the second and a scant 14 in the third.

Even Staples Center fans had to give it up for the Laker defensive effort in the third quarter, when the Pacers scored only eight points in the first 8 1/2 minutes.

They appreciated Malone’s hard work on the boards as well, giving him a standing ovation when he left for good with 15 rebounds to his name with 1:23 left in the third quarter. He had 14 rebounds on the defensive end, but his lone offensive rebound was his most impressive -- going over the more athletic Jermaine O’Neal to grab it.

That’s the type of effort that wins games on the defensive end.

“The more you play together, the more you understand each other, the better you get,” Bryant said.

Most of all, the Lakers are starting to understand that defense is what will get them where they want to go.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.