Sidelines

Alex Smith may not have lost his job as the San Francisco 49ers' starting quarterback. But he may have had it taken from him. Smith was cleared for contact Sunday morning after missing the previous week's game with a concussion. But instead of joining his teammates on the field against the New Orleans Saints that afternoon, Smith stood on the sideline, ready to go with helmet on, only to watch popular backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick lead the 49ers to victory for the second week in a row. Do you think the Pittsburgh Steelers would have left starting quarterback Ben Roethlisberger on the sidelines Sunday had he been cleared to play?

When: 7:30. Where: Staples Center. On the air: TV: TWC SportsNet, TWC Deportes; Radio: 710, 1330. Records: Lakers 7-7; Pacers 6-8. Record vs. Pacers (2011-12): 0-1. Update: The Pacers have struggled without high-scoring forward Danny Granger, sidelined indefinitely because of knee soreness. They are 2-6 on the road this season. Former Lakers assistant coach and player Brian Shaw is the Pacers' associate head coach, the right-hand man to Coach Frank Vogel.

Before Mike D'Antoni made his Lakers bench debut Tuesday night, he said that whatever happened against the Brooklyn Nets, he would have to take it sitting down because he was still in pain following recent knee-replacement surgery. By the third quarter of the Lakers' 95-90 victory at Staples Center, D'Antoni was up and barking at the officials several times. Apparently, what he was seeing on the court was more painful than what he was feeling in his knee. In the end, after Deron Williams missed a potential game-tying three-point shot and Kobe Bryant hit a pair of free throws with two-tenths of a second left, D'Antoni and the crowd were on their feet and smiling to celebrate the Lakers' ninth straight victory over the Nets (6-3)

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The hostilities in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas have raised sympathy among many Palestinians for the Islamist militant group and elevated its status at the expense of the rival Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, observers say. Abbas, who views himself as the leader of all Palestinians, has been sidelined as Hamas has taken center stage in the struggle against Israel and received a string of...

We hear about players playing hurt, but as Mike D'Antoni walks down the hallway for his first pregame media briefing as Lakers head coach, I'm telling him he looks like a wreck. And he's not disagreeing, pulling a coat around himself because, as he says, "I'm just so cold. " The new Lakers coach looks just awful, and not for the reasons we were detailing a week ago. No one needs a medical degree to see he should be home in bed, D'Antoni letting it slip that's where he's been spending 12 hours at a time.

SEATTLE - For seven months A.J. DeLaGarza was the rock in the middle of an injury-riddled Galaxy defense, starting 30 of the team's first 31 games and going the full 90 minutes in all but one of them. For the last seven weeks, however, DeLaGarza has been all but forgotten, a knee injury keeping him on the sidelines during the team's improbable run through the Major League Soccer playoffs. And that's left him with two wounds to heal - the obvious one to his left knee and another to his spirit, which has grown melancholic with each game he's missed.

There was Steve Nash news buried underneath the Mike Brown firing and the Lakers' choices for hiring a coach. Nash will be sidelined another week because of a small fracture in his left leg, the Lakers said Friday. Nash consulted with Lakers doctors earlier in the day and the decision was made to continue holding him out. Nash has missed four games because of the fracture in the head of his left fibula. He will miss another three games if he doesn't return within a week: Sacramento, San Antonio and Phoenix.

It used to be that the nation's most populous state found itself on the sidelines when Republicans and Democrats squared off in congressional elections. California's carefully engineered districts were so safe for incumbents that only one of the 53 seats changed party hands during the last decade. Then last year, a voter-authorized citizens commission took over the job of drawing district maps and shook up the political landscape. Now, the two parties and their allies are fighting it out in at least 10 newly competitive seats around the state.

Kobe Bryant used his time wisely while recovering from his foot injury, making a padded training table on the sideline a hotbed of shouts and hisses during Lakers practices. He did his best to chastise, er, coach the Lakers' underachieving reserves. "For me, it was just about challenging our second unit," he said Tuesday. "When I'm practicing, I'm normally just trying to beat the crap out of them. When I was on the sideline … I had a chance to have a little chit-chat with them and give them some words of encouragement, kind of get them riled up a little bit. " It worked to some extent in the Lakers' season opener Tuesday, which they lost to the Dallas Mavericks, 99-91.

Ben Bolch picks the East (in predicted order of finish) PLAYOFF-BOUND 1. Miami 2011-12 finish: 46-20, No. 2 in the East Coming: Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis. Going: Eddy Curry, Juwan Howard, Ronny Turiaf. LeBron James has won an NBA title and an MVP award in his two seasons with the Heat. Something he hasn't done is lead Miami to the top seeding in the East, which seems almost a given with Chicago's Derrick Rose sidelined until next year with a torn knee ligament.