updated 10:55 a.m. ET Jan. 25, 2006

CLEVELAND - The Indiana Pacers may have bigger problems than just finding a new team for Ron Artest.

With a proposed trade sending Artest to Sacramento apparently on hold, the Pacers scored just 28 points in the second half, lost Jermaine O’Neal to another injury and were drubbed 96-66 by the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday night.

“We sure have had enough bad luck for a year,” said O’Neal, who may have torn a groin muscle in the fourth quarter. “I’m really, really concerned. I heard it pop. Hopefully, I won’t need surgery.”

O’Neal, who said he has felt tightness in the groin for weeks, also hurt his right shoulder and was playing on a tender left ankle. He limped to the locker room with 9:30 remaining, but by then the Cavaliers were ahead by 20.

LeBron James met with Oscar Robertson before the game and then flirted with a triple-double in front of the man who patented them.

Wearing white tights under his shorts, a look likely to be copied by kids everywhere, James scored 23 points with eight assists and seven rebounds for the Cavaliers, just back from a 1-5 trip to the West Coast.

“I’m 2-0 with them,” James said of the leggings. “I’m wearing them to keep warm so when I go to the bench it (his sore left knee) doesn’t stiffen up.”

Before the game, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle and CEO Donnie Walsh said that no trade involving the volatile Artest was imminent.

“There is no trade right now and there may not be a trade,” Carlisle said. “There’s nothing to talk about because there is no trade.”

The Pacers could have used Artest, a defensive stopper who held James to 19 points on 6-of-20 shooting earlier this season. But they couldn’t do much to slow Cleveland’s All-Star in the third when he scored 12 points — one less than the Pacers — and the Cavs outscored Indiana 27-13.

Indiana shot just 11-for-38 in the second half and lost its fourth in a row.

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“We’re not a very good basketball team right now,” said Carlisle. “This was very disappointing. We couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle. The ball not going in in the third was key.”

O’Neal, who has been outspoken about Artest’s uncertain future, refused to use it as an excuse.

“I don’t care about distractions or trades,” O’Neal said. “We are missing one player. Anybody who says that bothers them, they have to be a better pro. This is the hand we’ve been dealt, and we go play it.”

Zydrunas Ilgauskas added 18 points, Sasha Pavlovic a season-high 16 and Drew Gooden 14 with 10 rebounds for the Cavaliers, who had little trouble with one of their Central Division rivals.

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