thing like that. But with the technology these days

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Pacers are making old-school basketball trendy, winning with defence, balanced scoring and strong second halves. On Tuesday, they did it again. Roy Hibbert scored 22 points and Lance Stephenson fell just short of his fourth triple double this season, helping the Pacers hold off Torontos late charge for an 86-79 victory that allowed them to keep the NBAs best record. "We didnt let them get physical with us," Stephenson said, referring to the stark contrast to Indianas loss last week north of the border. "That was a point of emphasis." The Pacers (28-6) have won three straight since that loss at Toronto and have a two-game lead over two-time defending champion Miami in the Eastern Conference. This was no typical night in Indiana. Some Pacers fans stayed home because of the poor road conditions in and around the city, and both teams started sluggishly -- perhaps a result of their own weather-related travel delays. Because of the snowstorm that swept through the Midwest on Sunday and the frigid temperatures that delivered a second big blow to Indianapolis on Monday and Tuesday, the Raptors (16-17) were forced to stay in Miami two days longer than planned and didnt arrive in town until about five hours before tip-off. Things didnt go much smoother for the Pacers, who endured a seemingly endless round of delays as they tried to return home following Sunday nights game at Cleveland. So when All-Star Paul George picked up his second foul less than five minutes into the game, the Pacers knew they would have to revert to their traditional style. "Our guys buckled down and had a great defensive performance," coach Frank Vogel said. Hibbert led the charge. He helped the Pacers dominate the middle with a 53-36 rebounding edge and a 40-26 scoring advantage in the paint. The 7-foot-2 centre was 5 of 12 from the field and 12 of 13 from the free throw line with eight rebounds and three blocks. Stephenson, the league leader with three triple doubles, did his thing, too. He finished with 13 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists. Danny Granger, the former All-Star who is working his way back into game shape, came off the bench to match his season high with 13 points, and George Hill and Paul George each added 11 for Indiana. And defensively, the Pacers were stifling. They held the Raptors (16-17) to a season-low point total by limiting them to just 37.0 per cent shooting from the field -- their third-worst performance of the season. Coach Dwane Casey didnt blame the poor shooting effort on the abrupt change of plans but rather his teams inability to effectively counterpunch against the Pacers inside. "Shooters legs, sea legs, whatever you want to call it, it was there," Casey said. "We can have all the excuses, but again, in a game like this, youve got to man up and bring it." DeMar DeRozan led Toronto with 28 points, while Patrick Patterson added 20 and Kyle Lowry had 16. Nobody else reached double figures for the Raptors, who have played their best basketball of the season over the last month though theyve lost back-to-back road games -- at Miami and Indiana -- following a four-game winning streak. Toronto fought hard most of the night, jumping to an 11-4 lead and cutting an eight-point second quarter deficit to 32-31 with a 7-0 spurt. But the Pacers seized control by closing out the first half on a 12-5 run that made it 44-36, then used an 8-0 third-quarter run to break it open. Indiana led 71-54 in the final minute of the quarter before Toronto made one last rally. The Raptors closed to 77-70 on Lowrys layup with 4:14 to go, made it 81-75 when Patterson hit a 3 with 2:51 to play and got it to six two more times. Twice, they had chances to get even closer, but they missed 3s both times in the final minute and the Pacers held on. "We remembered these guys from a couple of games ago. We let that one get away," said David West, who finished with 12 rebounds and four points. "Tonight we made a point of protecting our home court." NOTES: Indiana improved to 17-1 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. ... Toronto hosts Detroit on Wednesday after completing a three-game road trip. ... The Pacers have a 2-1 lead in the season series and wont face Toronto again until April 4. ... Raptors forward Tyler Hansbrough, an ex-Pacer, did not play because of a sprained left ankle. 22:51ET 07-01-14 Wholesale Air Max From China . Sharper briefly appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court, where his arraignment was postponed until Feb. 20 at the request of his lawyers. They issued a statement saying he would be exonerated. Prosecutors then filed a motion to increase Sharpers bail to $10 million and outlined details of investigations involving him in Las Vegas, Tempe, Ariz. Cheap Air Max Shoes . The 29-year-old from Port Colborne, Ont., who trains out of San Diego, will fight bantamweight champion (Rowdy) Ronda Rousey on July 5 in the co-main event of UFC 175 in Las Vegas. http://www.cheapairmaxstore.com/. Thats how the Ravens won when Ryan was their defensive co-ordinator from 2005-08, and that is precisely the formula Baltimore used to beat Ryans New York Jets on Sunday. Cheap Air Max For Sale .com) - The Columbus Blue Jackets rewarded starting goaltender and pending restricted free agent Sergei Bobrovsky with a four-year contract extension on Friday. Cheap Nike Shoes From China .J. -- The New York Jets have promoted Tony Sparano Jr.To figure out two things NHL general managers will be discussing at their annual March meeting, look no further than the controversial game the Los Angeles Kings and Detroit Red Wings played in mid-January. First, the Red Wings scored the tying goal after officials missed the puck hitting the protective netting, then the Kings wound up losing in a shootout. That could affect playoff positioning in the Eastern and Western Conferences, and thats a concern for everyone. No different than many fans, GMs hate to see a game end on an incorrect call and generally dont like to see one end in a shootout. So its only natural that altering or extending overtime and expanding video review will be hot topics on the agenda for meetings Monday through Wednesday in Boca Raton, Fla. When it comes to overtime, the hope is to have fewer games even reach the shootout, which was instituted after the 2004-05 lockout as a way of eliminating ties. Since then, 13.3 per cent of all regular-season games have gone to one, and thats seen as too much. "I would prefer for our game to be decided by playing hockey instead of the skill part of the game, which is the shootout," Jim Nill of the Dallas Stars said. "Its really tough. You can play a great game, play a great overtime and then you go to a shootout and just because you lose a shootout it feels like youve lost the game -- and you have, and it hurts because you played such a good game. I would rather lose a game by playing the game." Through Saturday, 121 of 962 games this season have gone to a shootout (12.57 per cent). Each team has participated in at least four, while the Washington Capitals lead the league with 15 of them through 64 games. A handful of general managers said in recent weeks that there was an appetite to reduce the number of shootouts by making some changes to overtime. Detroit GM Ken Holland has long sought adding time or a three-on-three element to overtime, and it has come time that Don Maloney of the Phoenix Coyotes figures more members of the group are "open-minded to reviewing it and discussing it." "In the past, it was generally touched on but deferred," Maloney said. "And I think as you go on with the parity of the league, I think we all have to take a harder look." Jim Rutherford of the Carolina Hurricanes usually sits near Holland at these meetings and is in favour of his proposals to change overtime. After plenty of talk over the years, perhaps more will get on board. "I think were heading that way," Rutherford said. "Its been talked about a long time, this is not something new. I dont know how many minutes itll end up being -- the total minutes in overtime. Thats really where the big discussion will come. But I think the fact that this has been discussed for a few years now, I think its gaining some momentum going into this meeting." What that momentum will turn into remains to be seen. Rutherford and Holland would like five minutes of the already-established four-on-four followed by five minutes of three-on-three, while Doug Armstrong of the St. Louis Blues voiced support for simply making four-on-four overtime longer. But, as Doug Wilson of the San Jose Sharks knows, change in the NHL tends to go in "phases." So its possible that the first change to overtime is a very subtle one: teams changing ends like they do in the second period so that theres a longer way to go for players to get off the ice for line changes. "I would be a hundred per cent in support," Maloney said. "If you look at the second period and the (long) line changes how often mistakes are made, and bad line changes lead to rushes. All of a sudden you do that in overtime with four people and the tiredness of the game, I think thats a natural evolution, myself. I think thats the first step." Red Wings coach Mike Babcock brought that up in Sochi after seeing overtime in the womens gold-medal game between Canada and the United States. Mistakes led to three penalties and then a power-play goal 8:10 into overtime. "The NHL looks at that right there, we want overtime to be over in a hurry, all you do is flip ends, make it as hard as you can," Babcock said while at the Olympics. "Its harder on the long change." Another subject that will get plenty of discussion is video review, which is currently limited to the situation room in Toronto determining if a goal was good or not.ddddddddddddEven though it was just one instance, that Jan. 18 game between the Red Wings and Kings is example A for expanding review. "You can count on one hand how many times they miss a puck hitting the net, but that specific case and it ended up as a goal, yeah, it probably shouldve been (reviewed) -- maybe if the video department had that authority, it wouldve been used," Maloney said. "And I think we all agree that in that case that was just wrong, and we need to correct that." Several general managers cautioned that too much replay can be a bad thing. Just as its being debated in baseball and football, the biggest pitfall to more video reviews is the time they can take. "Our game is part of momentum and keeping the game going," Rutherford said. "But at the same time, the league has always said that they want to get goals right. We saw an example (in Detroit) where it had nothing to do with the guidelines of how the league proceeds, but we didnt get one right. "So thats something that well discuss, Im sure. But theres a fine line there: How many times can you review things in a game without slowing it down to change the time of a game another 15 minutes." In that same vein, Nill would like to see "tweaks" to video review in important cases but doesnt want the NHL to become a "robotic" game with frequent calls to the situation room. Still, theres a ground swell to at least add replay in isolated cases, like on plays goals are scored on. That may not mean instituting a challenge system for coaches right away but perhaps something more simple. "It would be nice to just have a monitor in the penalty box for the official to gather as much information to make the right call because theyre closest to the action like they have in other leagues," Wilson said, pointing to the model used in the NFL and NBA. Some things, like goaltender interference, would require a stricter interpretation to be subject to video review. Penalties, like players putting the puck over the glass or getting a double-minor called for high-sticking, would fall into another category to be considered. "I think everything thats critical to the outcome of the game, if its conveniently available, we should review," Columbus GM Jarkko Kekalainen said. "Not to disturb the flow of the game and the time of each game as a whole -- we dont want games to last four hours or anything like that. But with the technology these days I think that there should be some kind of a system where all the critical plays can be reviewed so that we dont see the (wrong) outcomes." With three days of meetings scheduled on Floridas east coast, general managers are expected to delve into a host of other topics, including the regulation -- or elimination -- of goaltender fights and the impact of the falling Canadian dollar on next years salary cap. At Decembers board of governors meeting, the 2014-15 cap was estimated at just above US$71 million, rising from the $64.3 million ceiling for this season. Kings GM Dean Lombardi told the Los Angeles Times that he and his colleagues were advised it could be as low as $US68 million as the Canadian dollar continues to fall. As of Saturday, the loonie was worth roughly 90 cents U.S., after being above 95 cents midway through 2013. Goalie fighting is expected to at least be touched on after it was broached at Novembers meeting in Toronto that followed the infamous incident between Ray Emery of the Philadelphia Flyers and Braden Holtby of the Capitals. Rutherford and Maloney indicated they believed the issue was a bit overblown at the time. "Really theyre so rare, arent they? That was an isolated (incident)," Maloney said. "If we start to see goalie fights every other game, yeah, OK, maybe theres a problem. I dont see it being a problem. That was a one-time incident that nobody liked, but I think our officials and the people that review the games, they do a pretty good job of cleaning up anything thats outside the rules. So I dont see a real mandate to start over-regulating the game in that area." ' ' '