As the losses kept piling up, Russell Westbrook kept saying the Los Angeles Lakers needed to figure things out in order to right the ship. The hope was the Lakers would eventually figure it out and straighten out a disjointed 2021-22 season. Well, any hopes of competing for an 18th championship banner have evaporated.

After 79 games and 39 changes to the starting lineup, the Lakers simply couldn’t figure it out.

The Lakers were officially eliminated from the playoffs on April 5 as the NBA-leading Phoenix Suns put them out of their misery with a thorough beatdown that dropped L.A. to 11th place in the Western Conference and out of the play-in tournament. The Lakers have all spring and summer to figure out how to clean up the mess they’ve created. General manager Rob Pelinka said it was championship or bust. Well, the season was a complete bust and you can bet on a major shakeup this offseason.

“Extremely disappointed,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said after the game. “Disappointed for our fan base. Disappointed for the Buss family.”

Vogel’s job is on the line. There were reports circulating online hours before the Lakers-Suns game that Doc Rivers and Quin Snyder could be the Lakers head coach. Vogel hasn’t even been fired yet and the vultures were already flying over his head.

“This was a season where we just didn’t get it done,” Carmelo Anthony said. Carmelo was one of four Lakers — along with Anthony Davis, LeBron James, and Westbrook — who were named to the NBA’s diamond anniversary team. It’s a distinction reserved for the best and brightest players who shaped basketball in the last 75 years. You would think that having four players on the league’s all-time team would be able to figure things out. Apparently not.

“Our goal was to win a championship,” Davis said in his postgame news conference after putting up 21 points and 13 rebounds in the loss against the Suns.

“Feel like we had the pieces, but injuries got in the way of that,” he continued. “And that was the difference in the season. I think even though we lost games where all of us was on the floor — me, Bron, Russ — I think we’re three great players, but we would have figured it out if we logged more minutes together. But we weren’t able to do that, which makes it tough to be able to compete for a championship when your three best players haven’t logged enough minutes together.”

As much as we’d like to agree with Davis that a healthy Lakers squad would have altered the season, he’s delusional. Davis, James, and Westbrook were on the court together for only 21 games. In those 21 games, the Lakers went 11-10. Let’s extrapolate that for an entire season and it only puts the Lakers right around the .500 mark in terms of wins and losses. So, Davis’ argument that all the Lakers needed was a healthy squad and everything would have been fine misses the mark.

The truth of the matter is, the Lakers were just not that good. The roster was flawed and the team’s most decorated All-Stars simply didn’t get the job done. You can blame the front office, you can blame the coaching staff. But ultimately, it was AD, LeBron, Russ, and Melo who had their fingerprints on what Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke called the most disappointing season in Lakers history. Plaschke said the season was so disappointing, it was comical.

We could revisit the litany of things that went wrong during the season, but instead of listing all of them here a Lakers fan compiled a “One Shining Moment” video on Twitter that summed up the entire season.

The expectations were too unrealistic for a team built around a brittle center who has never proven he can stay healthy for an entire season, an aging all-time great superstar who is finally showing a decline in his overall game after 19 seasons, and a former MVP point guard — who was used to having the ball in his hands — who had trouble fitting in.

Pinning the makeup of a disastrous roster on Lakers management and LeBron’s sports agency, Klutch Sports, would be fair. With the full backing of Klutch Sports, the Lakers’ top brass traded young standouts Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart, and multiple unprotected first-round picks to acquire Anthony Davis in 2019. Two years later, the Lakers OK’d another costly blockbuster deal that brought Westbrook in the fold. The Lakers sacrificed the future to maximize LeBron’s prime years, and they got one championship (2020) out of it. Now, the future looks extremely bleak.

The easiest target in the blame game is Lakers coach Vogel. His inability to find the right rotation will ultimately cost him his job. Vogel kept tinkering with the roster all the way up to game No. 79. He played big lineups, small lineups, old lineups, and young lineups. None of them worked.

Vogel tried to implement the system that worked during the Lakers’ championship inside the Disney World bubble, but the problem was he didn’t have the proper personnel to run it. Vogel kept searching for the right combination, but he never found it.

Vogel certainly couldn’t find the correct formula for LeBron and Westbrook. Both players struggled coexisting and Vogel wasn’t able to help either one out. Vogel also yo-yoed with Dwight Howard’s role. For some odd reason, Vogel never fully bought into having a set role for Howard. Even at 36, Howard showed flashes that he can still be an effective center. Howard appeared in only 58 games, started in 25 of them, and averaged a career-low 16 minutes per game. A lot of the Lakers’ deficiencies were on the defensive end, and not getting Howard more involved — especially in the fourth quarter when the Lakers need stops — was mind-boggling. Vogel kept rolling out a small-ball lineup that saw LeBron at center and Carmelo at the big forward. Teams went to town against Bron and Melo like a weekend brunch at a Las Vegas buffet. Everyone feasted against the Lakers.

Firing Vogel could be the first domino to fall this offseason, but a new head coach won’t fix the three biggest problems on the team: Davis, LeBron, and Westbrook. The Lakers’ supposedly three best players and three highest-paid employees are also the franchise’s three heaviest anchors that will keep the team stuck in the port through next season.

Westbrook has one year remaining on his massive contract, and he will most likely opt-in on $47 million. LeBron will be 38 years old next year and entering his 20th NBA season. He has missed a big chunk of the 2021-22 season due to various injuries, and that won’t change as he puts another year on his aging body. And then there’s Davis. Bill Belichick famously said availability is better than ability. In the last two seasons, Davis has missed close to 80 games. That’s equivalent to a full NBA season. And when he tries to play through an injury, Davis looks like a guy held together with duct tape.

Davis likes to play at his own pace and prefers to work in an open space. When he’s forced to be more aggressive, he ends up hurting himself.

When rapper Snoop Dogg, a longtime Lakers fan, poked fun at Davis saying he was hurt more often than Mary J. Blige, Davis shot back and vowed to prove all his critics wrong by working himself into the best shape of his life. Instead of proving his critics wrong, Davis proved his critics right as he once again played half the season (40 games) and had his worst shooting percentage (18%) from 3-point range.

Fixing the Lakers won’t be easy. It’s not like they can hit one button to restart everything. The roster definitely needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. They need to get younger. LeBron and Westbrook are most likely sticking around. LeBron’s business empire is firmly entrenched in Los Angeles, and his son Bronny won’t be draft-eligible yet. Westbrook’s contract will be nearly impossible to move, so the team will have to eat his $47 million player option once he opts in. As for Davis, the Lakers front office needs to seriously consider trading him while he still has value.

The Lakers are going to have to put aside their hopes of raising an 18th championship banner because this rebuilding process will take a good amount of time to be completed.

A surreal moment occurred at the end of the Lakers-Bucks game at Crypto.com Arena. Russell Westbrook was seen giving words of encouragement to teammates Anthony Davis and LeBron James, who were both seated and looking dejected.

During his postgame news conference on Spectrum SportsNet, Westbrook said he told Davis and James to shake off the tough night and wished he could have helped them. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the game to be able to help them,” said the 33-year-old NBA veteran and 2017 MVP.

“That’s why I came here. To help them out,” he added. “So unfortunately I haven’t been able to do that for them, but that’s not my call. I can be there as a leader and as a voice and whatever is needed for the team and that’s what I’ll do until, you know, my number or whatever is called during that time.”

It was a strange scene because if anyone should be sitting on the bench looking dejected, it would be Westbrook. He was benched late in the game for a second consecutive game after another dismal performance. Westbrook shot 3-for-11 from the field in only 26 minutes of court time. He was lifted in favor of Talen Horton-Tucker and sat the entire fourth quarter.

Lakers head coach Frank Vogel explained to Lakers Nation that sitting Westbrook was a decision based on team needs and that the team always comes first: “Russ has accomplished a lot in this league and he’s had some great games and sequences for us here,” Vogel said. “But my job is to win games and when you get in those situations, you have a script of who you believe is gonna be in there and the game will tell you otherwise if a change is needed. We have to be willing to do whatever it takes to get the Lakers a win. Sometimes he’s gonna be in there for that, sometimes he’s not.”

To say that Westbrook’s much-hyped Los Angeles homecoming hasn’t gone according to plan would be an incredible understatement. It has gotten so bad that every Westbrook missed shot or turnover draws boos from Lakers fans. Westbrook has done an admirable job of dismissing the boos, even calling it “a sign of respect.”

“My mindset and how I think about this game and what I’m able to do for this game is not predicated on boos,” said the Hawthorne, Calif., native. He attended Leuzinger High School and was a member of two Final Four teams at UCLA.

“I have a platform that I’m able to use to do other things that God has blessed me to be able to do, and I will continue to do those things, regardless of if people boo for me, cheer for me, cuss me out, call me names. It doesn’t really matter.”

Westbrook’s struggles encapsulate what is happening with the 2021-22 Lakers squad, and head coach Frank Vogel is having a hell of a time finding answers. Vogel can’t seem to settle on a starting lineup or regular rotation, juggling the starting lineup at least 28 times. The inconsistency has put a dense fog in front of the team — especially Westbrook.

“You never know when you’re coming in, you never know when you’re coming out. You never know when you’re playing, you never know… a bunch of things. And I’m speaking for me personally, so it’s a difficult process to be able to figure out and create some rhythm and some consistency where we can actually see what we’re able to do as a team, but those decisions are made by him and his coaching staff, and you’ve got to live with it and move on,” Westbrook said.

Brodie firmly believes he doesn’t need to prove his worthiness by hitting benchmarks during a game in order to play in the closing moments of a game.

“I put a lot of work in. I got a lot of respect in this game. I earned the right to be in closing lineups,” he said. “Numbers would say, I don’t have to explain that. Like I said, once again, it ain’t my decision … Unfortunately, just gotta go with it and figure it out the best I can and be there for my teammates as much as I can and make sure I come into work and do my job.”

Has Westbrook earned the right to finish games? Here’s what the numbers say.

Westbrook is averaging 18.3 points per for the Lakers, which is third-best on the team behind only James (29) and Davis (24). Westbrook is second on the team in rebounds (7.8), first in assists (7.6), fourth in steals (1.1). Critics will point to missed assignments on defense and his abysmal shooting from the 3-point line (29%) and the free-throw line (66%) as major anchors to his game, which are legit reasons. But his 43.5% shooting percentage from the field is nearly the same as teammate Carmelo Anthony (43.7%), and Anthony is beloved by the home fans and almost begs him to shoot each time he touches the ball. Steph Curry – widely regarded as the greatest long-range shooter in basketball – is shooting 42% from the field.

How about the turnovers? OK, Westbrook is among the league leaders in turnovers per game (4.1) but so are other All-Stars who handle the ball a ton: James Harden (4.8), Luka Doncic (4.3), Trae Young (4.1). If there’s a major blocker in Westbrook getting crunch-time minutes, it’s his penchant for being loose with the ball. A point guard’s top priority is ball security.

In terms of team offense and defense, the Lakers are among the league leaders in points per game (110), so the offense is not the biggest problem. The big problem lies on the defensive end, where the Lakers rank near the bottom (112). Only three teams are giving up more points per game in the entire NBA: Charlotte, Sacramento, Houston.

Even though Westbrook is publicly saying he’s “comfortable” being booed by L.A. fans, he is human. It has to be eating him up. As a lifelong Lakers fan who attended the championship parades in the early 2000s and idolized Kobe Bryant, this season has been one giant downer for Brodie. And the fan outrage is having a negative impact on him.

Lakers fans have unfairly put much of the blame on the team’s disappointing season on Westbrook. It’s easy to point a finger at Westbrook because his miscues are highlighted and magnified in the media. The memes are relentless and the trolling are downright vicious.

But Westbrook isn’t the only reason why the Lakers are closer to being a lottery team. LeBron and Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka bear a lot of the responsibility, too. The roster was poorly constructed from the beginning, mixing and matching old veterans with a bunch of journeyman JAGs. There are only four forwards on the roster (LeBron, Stanley Johnson, Trevor Ariza, Carmelo Anthony) and too many average guards. The mere fact that Stanley Johnson – who signed three 10-day contracts before earning a full deal – is part of the regular rotation speaks volumes on how thin the Lakers are on the wings.

“The most important part is that I continue to use my gift to play basketball, and use that platform to help people around the world. That’s all I can do. That’s it,” Westbrook said.

He continued: “As it pertains to the team, the team is not getting booed. So you’re asking about me. That’s all I can respond about is myself, and what I’m able to do to be able to mentally stay in the right place and enjoy being at home, enjoy having the opportunity to be able to see my kids, take them to school every morning. See my family, my mom, my dad, and my close friends every day, and I don’t take that part for granted. Basketball is a short time of your life. I enjoy it, have fun, and want to compete at the highest level, but it’s not the end-all-be-all. There’s something bigger than basketball that we can do as people, and I understand that, so that’s why I’m comfortable with whatever comes. Cheers, boos, it doesn’t really matter.”

Russell Westbrook, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis are tired of hearing the same old question that keeps coming up after every Laker loss. When is this team going to finally find its groove?

Westbrook warned everyone who was listening at the beginning of the season that this version of the Purple and Gold is going to take some time to develop. LeBron essentially said the same thing. Davis keeps preaching patience, that this team can’t be graded until it is fully healthy and have its full complement of players.

But as the NBA’s 2021-22 season crosses its first-quarter mark, the same old issues keep surfacing: lack of effort and commitment on the defensive end, too many turnovers, stagnant offense.

We could point to the well-known fact that this is the oldest roster in the league, with five players over the age of 35 (LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Trevor Ariza, Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo). But the Lakers’ problems extend beyond having an aging roster. The team’s biggest problems start and end with their highest-paid guys: LeBron, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook. These are the three guys the franchise was supposed to lean on. Instead, they are the main reason why the Lakers are struggling. Here are four reasons why the Lakers are in serious trouble.

LeBron’s game slowly declining

Father Time is undefeated. Unless your name is Tom Brady, Father Time will eventually catch up to you. Father Time has caught up to LeBron. The once undisputed king of basketball is starting to show some decline. Injuries have kept him out of games, and when he does play he appears to struggle as the game wears on. LeBron is indeed human. He turns 37 in December. He no longer possesses the same speed and power that made him one of the 75 greatest players to ever play the sport.

LeBron is relying on jumpers more and more. He’s attempting more 3-pointers (nearly eight per game) and he’s making more 3-pointers (over two per game) than he’s ever had in his career. It’s an obvious sign that he can’t turn the corner and consistently get to the rim, and he can’t overpower guys like he used to.

Dallas Cowboys great Michael Irvin perfectly described how a sports legend fades away as he grows old. He said the flame doesn’t completely go out. You get flickers of flame. That’s what we’re seeing with LeBron. You might get flickers here and there, but the fire is no longer consistently burning. He hasn’t been able to stay healthy these last two seasons, and his best games usually occur when he has a week of rest. His offensive game has become predictable and his defense is nowhere near All-Star level. LeBron remains one of the game’s best players, and might still be good enough to make an All-Star team. But his days as the undisputed king of the NBA are gone.

Anthony Davis is not a center

When the Lakers acquired AD from New Orleans in 2019 as part of a blockbuster trade that sent young studs Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, and Josh Hart to the Pelicans, the idea was the 6-foot-10 All-Star was going to be the centerpiece of the post-LeBron Lakers era. AD was supposed to be next in line to join the Lakers’ great history of centers. But there’s one problem. Davis prefers to play power forward.

“I like playing the four. I don’t really like playing the five,” he said back in 2019. We should have listened to him.

Prior to the start of the 2021-22 season, Lakers head coach Frank Vogel spoke to Davis about playing more 5 (center). LeBron and Westbrook essentially said the same thing to him. So, Davis relented and agreed to play more five. Through the first 20 games, Davis has been ineffective playing exclusively at the center spot. He’s shooting 16 percent from 3-point range, the worst in the league. He’s also shooting just 37 percent in the mid-range, which is supposed to be his money shot.

Defense is Davis’ calling card, but if he has a weakness it’s his inability to secure consistently secure defensive rebounds especially in crunch time. Because AD likes to challenge shots, he often finds himself out of position to secure boards, which allows teams to get extra possessions off offensive boards.

There is no doubt Davis is a phenomenal talent and ranks as one of the top-five big men in the game. But if the Lakers are going to win another title, AD has to be big in big moments and play at an MVP level. So far, he has fallen short.

Westbrook-LeBron conundrum

Russell Westbrook stays true to himself. He never wavers. He plays one way. But one thing he is not is he’s not a point guard. He’s a shooting guard. We’ve known this since his days at UCLA when he played alongside Darren Collison. Westbrook is an athletic 2-guard. He’s a gifted athlete, who can play point but not a true point. When he was drafted in 2008, Oklahoma City converted him into a point guard because that’s what the franchise needed. It worked at OKC because Kevin Durant took the pressure off Westbrook, and James Harden played point to close out games. The Thunder was never able to replace Harden when he left OKC, leaving Westbrook as the main playmaker and taking on more responsibility than he should have.

When the Lakers acquired Westbrook in a multiplayer deal with the Washington Wizards, the idea was to have Westbrook play off the ball and defer to LeBron, who will run the point. That plan immediately went out the door when both guys couldn’t quite get in sync during the preseason. Lakers coach Frank Vogel offered up a solution. Let’s stagger their minutes.

OK, Frank. How’s that working out?

Instead of giving James and Westbrook more time to figure out how to play together, Vogel and the Lakers coaching staff are playing them together even less.

It’s obvious that Westbrook is more comfortable and free when LeBron is not in the game. His best games as a Laker have come in games James missed. The Lakers also play at a much faster pace when Westbrook has the ball in his hands. The problem with having the ball in Westbrook’s hands is he will turn it over a ton. He is among the league leaders in turnovers.

Westbrook, LeBron, and AD have all said it’ll take time for this Laker team to gel, using the excuse of this being a new group. But the Wizards, the Lakers’ trading partner in the Westbrook deal, have just as many new pieces they’re trying to fit in and they don’t seem to be as discombobulated.

Imbalanced roster

The most glaring issue the Lakers are dealing with is the roster imbalance. It is guard-heavy.

L.A. has two centers (Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan) and four forwards (LeBron, Davis, Carmelo Anthony, Trevor Ariza). The rest of the roster is full of small guards. Talen Horton-Tucker and rookie Austin Reaves were big guards in college. But on the Lakers, they are forced to play on the wing. Vogel has struggled the find the right combination, inserting and reinserting guys in the starting lineup and dropping guys in the rotation. He’s tried a big lineup. He’s tried a small lineup. He even tried putting LeBron at the five. None have worked. It’s difficult to find balance when you have a gluttony of guards and not enough forwards.

Vogel believes in his system. It worked before in 2020 when the Lakers won a championship inside the Disney World bubble. But the 2020 Laker squad was a big team. That championship unit had long, athletic centers (Howard, JaVale McGee), versatile forwards (LeBron, AD, Kyle Kuzma, Markief Morris), and big defensive-minded guards who can switch to a wing position if needed (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Danny Green, Alex Caruso, THT).

Part of the reason the Lakers have lost their defensive identity under Vogel is due to the simple fact that they were unable to replace the big guards who protected their perimeter defense. KCP, Green, and Caruso are elite defenders and did things on the defensive end that usually went unnoticed. A year ago, the Lakers had one of the best defensive ratings in the NBA. This season, they are closer to the bottom.

Vogel can change the starting lineup or juggle the rotation as many times as he wants. The answers are not in this current group.

Paul George and Lance Stephenson are in a dogfight with the Hawks. (GETTY IMAGES)

The Indiana Pacers were in a fighting mood the day before the 2014 NBA playoffs started. Unfortunately, they were fighting themselves.

Lance Stephenson and Evan Turner got into a scuffle during practice, according to Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, and had to separated by teammates David West and Luis Scola. Turner walked away from practice with a cut.

The fistfight is symbolic of how the last three months have gone for the Pacers.

They have gone from being title contenders to punchlines on social media, and the hits just keeps on coming. The Pacers, the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, are in a dogfight with the eighth-seeded Atlanta Hawks, who finished with a sub-.500 record during the regular season.

On paper, this first-round series should be an easy one to predict. The big, bad Pacers against the undersized Hawks. But somehow, the paper got wet as the Hawks are looking like the contenders and the Pacers are acting like a bunch of pretenders.

Pacers All-Star Paul George summed it up best after his team lost Game 3 to fall behind 2-1 in the series. He said, “Our toughness is questionable right now.”

That’s a bold statement coming from the team’s best player.

Toughness was supposed to be the Pacers’ calling card. It was the foundation of their vaunted defense. George and Co. had the second-best defense in the NBA this past season, and they have a roster loaded with Ruff Ryders.

But sometimes having physical toughness doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have mental toughness. That’s where the problem lies with the Pacers. Between the ears.

Confidence is a fragile thing, and it’s hard to get it back once you lose it.

Right now, the Pacers have lost their swagger. Instead of walking around with their heads held high, they’re looking around for excuses when things go wrong. And the guy on their team that has lost his mojo is 7-2 center Roy Hibbert.

When Indiana coach Frank Vogel was asked if Hibbert will start Game 4 against the Hawks, Vogel said: “We’ll see.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

“He’s our anchor,” Vogel said. “We won 56 games with him as a starter. We’ll see. Probably.”

You can understand Vogel’s hesitation when the subject of benching his “anchor” came up. It’s a tough call. Benching Hibbert could have a domino effect. He could lose Hibbert mentally for the rest of the playoffs. He could alienate the rest of the team. He could also save the Pacers from elimination.

The Hawks and their perimeter-oriented offense is a bad matchup for Hibbert. His forte is protecting the rim, but if the Hawks are staying away from the rim then there’s no need to have rim protector. Hibbert looks like a fish out of water guarding Hawks center Pero Antic, who prefers to drift outside the 3-point line. It’s a terrible matchup for him.

One solution is to start Hibbert but pull him after 3-4 minutes, and insert Luis Scola at center to team up with West. Scola has been much more effective than Hibbert in the Hawks series and arguably the Pacers’ second-best player at the moment.

But Hibbert is just one part of the multiple issues the Pacers need to address.

The starters look gassed and Vogel may need to reach out to his bench to stay afloat.

Indiana also has too many ball-stoppers on the floor and not enough shooters. Spreading the floor could open up lanes for George to drive and kick.

But mainly, the Pacers need to address their locker room. They are a fractured group. They have two guys in Stephenson and Turner looking for the their next contracts. That’s likely why they were fighting. They’re both after the same thing and they will go through each other to get it.

Money is the root of all evil.

Joel Huerto is the editor and publisher of OneManFastBreak.net. Follow him on Twitter @onemanfastbreak.

Paul George has been one of the breakout star of the 2013 NBA playoffs. (GETTY IMAGES)

You know you’ve arrived as a legitimate superstar in the NBA when LeBron James gives you a dap in the heat of battle.

Paul George followed his 27-point performance in Game 1 with an even better all-around effort in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals against defending champion Miami. His loudest play came with under 10 seconds left in the third quarter when the Indiana Pacers’ super swingman took the ball at the top of the circle, drove left past LeBron, and posterized Chris “Birdman” Andersen at the rim with a monster slam …. and one!

Not to be outdone by a visiting player in his own building, James came right back with a 3-pointer before the third-quarter buzzer sounded right in George’s face. Moments later, LeBron turned to George and gave him some love by slapping his hand. Not many guys can go head-to-head with the four-time NBA MVP and gain the upperhand.

“He’s really good. He’s gonna be a great one,” LeBron said of the Pacers’ 23-year-old All-Star. “His maturity and his game has definitely risen because of the opportunity [Indiana coach] Frank Vogel has given him. His teammates have a lot of confidence in him and he has confidence in himself.

“I love competition and I’m gonna be up for the challenge and try to be there for my team as well.”

The 2013 NBA playoffs has turned into a coming-out-party of sorts for George, who in the previous round gave Knicks star Carmelo Anthony fits with his stifling defense. Melo is probably still seeing No. 24 in his sleep for the way George got in his jersey during the East semifinals.

“I just can’t believe how much that kid keeps growing, and growing, and growing,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said of George, who was named Most Improved Player of the Year.

“He’s a third-year player, his third year in the NBA, and going against the best player in the world in LeBron,” Vogel said. “He’s guarding him the entire night and carrying an offensive scoring, and just making confidence-building plays on the offensive end.

“He makes the extra pass, always, finishes at the rim, and he has given us a huge, huge lift.”

George and Roy Hibbert were huge in the Pacers’ 97-93 win over the Heat in Game 2. Hibbert had a game-high 29 points, while George had 22 points on 9-for-16 from the field and six assists in 38 minutes.

But George has done much more than just score in the first two games of the series. He has played point guard when George Hill and D.J. Augustin struggle with ball pressure, and he has taken on the monster task of defending LeBron for the majority of the game.

When TNT’s David Aldridge asked LeBron what’s the next step is for George to become an elite player, James said: “I know the answer to that but I’m not gonna say it right now while I’m competing against the guy. He might use it during our matchup right now. I’ll answer that after the series.”