REPORT: KOBE AIMING FOR AN OPENING DAY RETURN, WILL RECRUIT DWIGHT HOWARD

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – While the Miami Heat, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs occupy the minds of most NBA fans right now as the conference finals end and we get ready for The Finals, Kobe Bryant is quietly plotting his comeback in Los Angeles.

The Lakers’ superstar is deep into the rehabilitation process from season-ending Achilles surgery and has set his sights on an earlier than expected return to action, telling Dave McMenamin of theESPNLosAngeles.com in an exclusive Monday interview that he’s hoping to return for the Lakers’ 2013-14 season opener:

“I hope so,” Bryant said . “That’s the challenge. With the tendon, there’s really only but so much you can do. There’s a certain amount of time that they deem necessary for the tendon to heal where you don’t overstretch it and now you never get that spring back.

“So, you just have to be patient, let the tendon heal and then when that moment comes when they say, ‘OK, we can take off the regulator so to speak and now it’s on you to train as hard as you can to get back to where you want to be,’ that’s going to be a good day.”

In addition to plotting his own return, Bryant plans on being an active recruiter for the Lakers’ biggest free agent target, center Dwight Howard, who will be entertaining suitors from coast to coast July 1 when free agency kicks off. Bryant and Howard got off to a rocky start as teammates this season but appear to have grown closer throughout the tumultuous ride.

Bryant said he’ll step in when needed and make sure to impress upon Howard the importance of the big man being a part of the master plan in Los Angeles:

“For me, you kind of let him do his due diligence and then move in and talk to him and figure out if this is a place he wants to be,” Bryant said. “We all want him here. But then that’s when the selling begins [after Howard is courted by other teams]. You don’t start the selling process right before he goes and does all this stuff. You want to get the last word. You want to have the final word and the closing argument.

“I’ll give him a little opening statement, but then I have to make sure I have the final word.”

That has to be music to the ears of Lakers fans. Having the man who has served as the face of the franchise for much of the past decade and a half work this hard to make sure Howard serves as his eventual successor with the franchise speaks volumes about where Bryant is in his own career.

With the Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, Atlanta Hawks, Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers are  all reportedly preparing recruiting pitches for Howard (who along with Chris Paul and Josh Smith will serve as the headliners of this summer’s free agent class), the Lakers have to be prepared with a pitch of their own. The more input and influence from Bryant it seems, the better.

Only time will tell if it works out for Bryant on both fronts. We’d be foolish to doubt his resolve as he attempts to come back earlier than expected from his injury. In fact, convincing Howard to stick with the Lakers might be the more difficult of the two tasks.

Howard has managed to avoid doing any interviews since the Lakers were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Spurs, so anyone assuming what he might do is going off of sourced information and little else.

HEAT TURN UP THE D TO GET BACK TO THE FINALS

MIAMI – The Miami Heat didn’t let Game 7 come down to shot-making. And it’s a good thing, because they shot 39 percent.

The No. 1 defensive team in the league was the No. 2 defensive team on the floor on Monday, because the Heat found another level. And with a 99-76 victory over the Indiana Pacers, they’re moving on to The Finals for the third straight year. This game was about energy, on defense and on the glass. The Heat brought it from the start, reminding us how disruptive they can be when they enhance their speed and athleticism with relentless effort.

The Heat just haven’t been the defensive force that they were last year. Maybe it was a championship hangover or maybe their improved and top-ranked offense just didn’t need as much help to win games. They’ve been able to turn it on defensively — a couple of games or a couple of quarters at a time — but the consistency just wasn’t there.

In Game 7, it was there for 48 minutes. The Heat attacked the Pacers’ Achilles’ heel — their inability to hold on to the ball under pressure — and made it impossible for the visitors to find any kind of an offensive rhythm. Only once before garbage time set in did the Pacers score on three straight possessions, something that they did 10 times in Game 6.

“We wanted to really impose our energy defensively,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, “and really get to our identity of pressuring them, hopefully making them make mistakes.”

The Heat’s defense was a swarm, attacking the Pacers’ pick-and-roll ball handler, and then recovering to attack the poor soul who got the ball next. At times, you had to count the white jerseys on the floor to make sure there weren’t six or seven of them.

“They were a lot more aggressive on their back side,” David West, accountable for six of Indiana’s 21 turnovers, said. “They were there on the catch. They didn’t allow — particularly to Roy [Hibbert] — a lot of space.”

Hibbert scored 18 points on an efficient 7-for-11 shooting, because he was effective as a roll man. But he was surrounded on his post catches and when he tried to crash the offensive glass. For the second time in three games, he tallied only two offensive boards. More damaging were the turnovers. Indiana had nine in the first quarter and 15 by the half. They scored just 37 points 46 first-half possessions, making it almost inconsequential what the Heat were doing offensively.

LeBron James scored 32 points, of course, but it was Dwyane Wade who typified the Heat’s night. The guy who struggled through the first six games, drawing criticism – and Larry Hughes comparisons – from all angles, was the guy who really got his team over the hump in what will be remembered as a fantastic series, despite the Game 7 margin.

After shooting 11-for-34 in Games 4-6, Wade was a solid 7-for-16 on Monday, though he still struggled with his jumper. He was 2-for-9 from outside of five feet.

But he got 17 points in the restricted area or at the free-throw line. They were energy points. Wade attacked the paint and attacked the glass. Five of the 17 came from his own offensive rebounds, of which he had six, three more than any other player on the floor. Those six boards produced nine second-chance points total.

With the season on the line, Wade answered the call. This wasn’t his best game, but he not because of a lack of effort.

“That’s probably the hardest he’s played,” West said. “We knew he, at times, was in and out of the series, just in terms of his impact.

“I thought he beat us in the effort department and he physically played harder tonight than we had seen in the previous six games.”

The effort didn’t come without a big assist from James, who took on the Paul George assignment defensively and who looked to get his teammate involved early. James knew he needed some help to get through this game, and he didn’t want to run out ahead of his teammates and wonder if they were going to join him.

“I called a couple of sets for him early in the game,” James said of Wade, “just to get a feel for it. And it showed throughout the whole game that he was in the rhythm.”

That was more than enough for the Heat, who beat the Pacers at what they do best, grabbing 15 offensive boards and getting to the line 38 times, while holding Indiana (eight offensive boards, 20 free throw attempts) in check in both categories. Really, that was more important. The game was Indiana’s end of the floor, where the Heat out-defended the best defense in the league.

“They taught us a lesson,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. “They’ve won it all, and they know how to ratchet up their defense at a level that just imposes their will on a basketball game.”

If the Pacers can learn a lesson from Game 7, maybe the Heat can too. When they play that level of defense, it doesn’t matter much if the shots don’t go in.

MIAMI VS PACERS

HEAT TURN UP THE D TO GET BACK TO THE FINALS

MIAMI – Paul George‘s season ended before the Indiana Pacers’ did, which was pretty ironic, considering how much shorter it would have been without him in his new and Most-Improved incarnation from November to June.

But George picked up his sixth personal foul with 7:43 left in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals against Miami. The young All-Star got slammed, in competitive terms, by the defending champions: 2-for-9 shooting, seven points, hounded almost start to finish by LeBron James in attack mode. And so did the Pacers, who had stayed within five points of the Heat through the series’ first six games, only to get separated Monday by a disappointing 23 from the goal they barely dared to dream.

Of all the players on the floor, though, from the Finals-worthy Heat to the summer-bound Pacers, none has a brighter future than George — the 23-year-old Pippen-play-alike whose reach has yet to exceed his grasp.

And if you think about it, of all the teams in the league, given where they’re at in their life cycles, none has a brighter future than Indiana. George’s breakout season and breakout series sparked the Pacers to pretty much the same thing. They pushed a team built around Hall of Famers, an opponent that strung together victories at a historical rate, to the max – or within 36 minutes of it, their bottom dropping out in the second quarter at AmericanAirlines Arena.

From Feb. 1 through the East finale, Miami went 42-2 against the rest of the NBA and 5-5 against Indiana. The Pacers are not going away.

“I’m proud of what we had this year,” George said in the tight visitors’ dressing room. “I don’t know, I just think what we had this year and going through what we did, gave us the experience. So us being in this situation this year and being young, I think this was what we really needed. … I don’t know what moves we need or what moves we’ll make, but we needed this to take that next step.”

Indiana has followed one of the NBA’s most time-tested and hallowed blueprints, taking steps in each of the last three postseasons in building itself into a title contender. Two years ago, it pestered Chicago in a feisty first-round series. Last year, Miami put the Pacers out in six games. This time, it took the Heat seven, its veteran players summoning all the desperation and will they could muster.

But they’d be kidding themselves if they thought that time and a good thumping one round later than a year ago would transform them. Indiana does have a future brighter than just about any other team – if it can address some flaws that ultimately proved fatal in this best-of-seven.

Here are some areas for all of them – from basketball boss Donnie Walsh and GM Kevin Pritchard to coach Frank Vogel and the players – to address:

• Maybe it will take stickum, Velcro, duct tape or staples but the Pacers must find ways to take better care of the basketball. They had 15 turnovers in the first half – Vogel had hoped they might stay below that number for the entire game – and committed 121 in the series to Miami’s 83. That’s 46 percent more giveaways in what most agreed would be a possessions series.
  Just as legendary coach Pete Newell ran an offseason camp for the game’s most dedicated big men, you almost wish someone would open up an immersion program for ball handlers and entry passing. They could make a fortune off the Pacers’ tuition alone, considering how much that otherwise disciplined team struggles with those fundamentals.
  Granted, any team would have struggled against the blowtorch defense applied by the Heat Monday. “They pressured the ball real well,” George said. “They double-teamed constantly and made it tough for us to see the weak side. We know that’s how you beat this team. They just did a good job of making it hard to see the weak side and we just didn’t adjust to it.”
  Didn’t adjust from series’ start to finish, pretty much.

• Danny Granger will be back from the knee injury that wiped out 2012-13. Many view the veteran small forward as a tradeable asset but the truth is, Granger would be as valuable to the Pacers as any other single piece. He was their leading scorer for years before George blossomed in his absence and the threat of someone with his shooting range and accuracy over on the weak side was exactly what Indiana lacked this round. He failed attempt to return after the All-Star break lasted just five games, leaving a huge what-if in the Pacers’ rewarding-but-not-quite-complete season. Said George: “Adding Danny brings experience. It also brings another closer. So who knows where we would have been?”

• Granger would be just one piece, however. The Pacers need to go deeper than that if they’re going to have a bench worth of their starting lineup. Vogel took heat after Game 7 for trusting a largely untrustworthy group with pivotal minutes in the horrendous second quarter. But what was the alternative, playing five guys 48 minutes each (refs’ whistles permitting)?
  That probably would have been a better way to go, when you absorb this stat: When the Pacers’ starting five was on the floor together in the series, they were a plus-46 points on the scoreboard. When even one Indiana reserve broke up that group, they were a minus-74. Guys like Sam Young, Tyler Hansbrough, D.J. Augustin and Ian Mahinmi show up looking like Pacers, then check into the game as Bobcats. Walsh and Pritchard need to make some surgical additions to fix that.

• Better bring back David West, too. The old-school power forward is the rock of Indiana’s locker room, with a man’s game that should lose too much to age (he’ll turn 33 in August). There will be a market for him in free agency, but parties on all sides – West, Vogel, teammates – talked late Monday about how vital he is to the tone and tenor of their system.
  As for West, he didn’t seem worried about hurting his bargaining position when he said: This group … gives me as an individual the best chance to accomplish the goals that I have left and that’s competing at this stage of the game every single year from here on out.”

• Work on that pick-and-roll game. Neither member of the backcourt, George Hill nor Lance Stephenson, thrives or sometimes even recognizes the advantages available to them with that basic offensive tactic.

• The league’s Most Improved Player needs to match or top the strides he took this season. George talked again after Monday’s elimination about not fully preparing last summer for everything that got thrown at him this season – the scoring load in Granger’s absence, the heavy minutes, the leadership duties. George said that, whenever he heads to California after some brief stop back in Indianapolis, he’ll be in the gym one day after that, working on his conditioning, his strength and his shooting, boosting the confidence that he’ll need to continue as Indiana’s primary scorer.

• Gotta get an edge. Look, it’s laudable that the Pacers take their status as role models, particularly for young fans and especially in America’s heartland, so seriously. They don’t need Hansbrough getting all tattooed-and-Mohawked up. But Miami came out mean Monday night, aggressive physically and mentally in ways that made the Pacers shrink from their very important task. West is built Ford tough, but he doesn’t initiate things with the ball and works in a small area of the floor. Granger at least showed a knack for getting chippy in past seasons.

“Last year, Miami was in our way,” Granger said. “This year, Miami’s still in our way. So we’ve really got to get over the hump.

“Paul will have another year under his belt. [Hibbert] will have another year under his belt. Lance will continue to show improvement. Y’know, experience in this league wins. Just look at Miami. A lot of quote-unquote old guys, but they know how to play the game.

“We’re compiling our big moments. And once you get accustomed to them, you control your adrenaline a little more and you play a lot better. I think we’ll be there.”

Sooner rather than later, as long as they play the offseason better than they played Game 7.

CARMELO ANTHONY

ANDRAE IGUDHALA

KOBE BRYANT

DWIGHT HOWARD