Life at the Top Looks Good for Lakers . . .

Over a border, and through the snow, to Vince Carter’s house they went.

Their coach knew the way and they carried the day. . .

Yes, the Lakers’ holiday drive kept going and going Sunday, as they gritted out another road test, tightening up the defense, making the open shots, and beating back the Toronto Raptors, 94-88, before 19,800 at Air Canada Centre.

It was their sixth consecutive victory and gave the Lakers a measure of revenge after Carter scored 34 points and the Raptors overwhelmed them last month at Staples Center.

On Sunday, Carter scored 29 points, but missed 17 of his 28 shots, and the Raptors shot only 39.3% from the field.

“I mean, you don’t try to lose to a team two times,” Laker guard Ron Harper said. “No, that ain’t how Phil [Jackson] sees things. That ain’t how I see things, either.”

Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 26 points, Shaquille O’Neal added 24 points, 15 rebounds and five blocked shots and Glen Rice had 22 points and four assists.

But before the holiday celebrations can begin, the Lakers have one more stop on this extended trip, at Boston tonight, with the possibility of a gleaming 4-0 sweep dangling before them.

After that, they won’t play until Christmas night against San Antonio.

“We’re very pleased,” Jackson said. “We’ll have a great trip if we finish it off [today] in Boston.

“I think we’ve got the notion. We’ve kind of got the idea of playing well together on the road, feel confident in what we’re doing.

“It’s just right now we’re playing a little bit in fits and spurts and we’ve got to get it a little more smooth in the overall game.”

Said Bryant: “I think it was more of our statement to ourselves to come up here in Toronto and beat them, to play the way we’re supposed to, play with a lot of confidence.”

Jackson noted that his team seemed to hit the wall in the fourth quarter when its 17-point third-quarter lead melted to four.

But after some fitful one-on-one moments that turned into fastbreak Raptor points, Bryant made a steal and scored five of the Lakers’ eight points in the final 2:20.

“We’re OK,” O’Neal said. “We came out, we were aggressive, we played pretty good defense. We kind of let up in the fourth quarter, but we’re still OK. . .

“I don’t think anybody wore down, we were just taking ill-advised shots.”

It was the second consecutive game in which the Lakers almost frittered a large halftime lead on the road, and it was the second consecutive time that Bryant’s teammates suggested that he might be trying to do too much on his own at times.

“We tend to have large leads and ease up,” said Harper, who had 12 points and six rebounds. “What we need to learn is how to put teams down and just hold them down. After we learn those things, I think we’re going to be fine . . .

“A couple players got carried away out there. They start doing their own things, they get out there, dribble the ball between their legs and their own thing.

“There’s a time for that. What we’ve got to learn, we’ve got to sit down and play basketball, get teams down and hold them down.”

Jackson attributed the fourth-quarter fade more to the miles recently traveled than anything else.

“I just thought we took our foot off the accelerator and kind of coasted into the finish,” Jackson said, “and it almost caught up with us.”

Bryant, for his part, acknowledged that at times it was difficult for him not to run up and down against the up-and-down young Raptors, especially Carter, last season’s rookie of the year, against whom Bryant had never played. Bryant was out with a broken hand in the first matchup and last season the lockout wiped out the teams’ scheduled games.

Though Rice started out defending Carter, Bryant was matched against him for most of the game (“I think Kobe kind of gravitated to him,” Jackson said, wryly), and the two staged some high-wire acrobatic duels.

Simultaneously, they kept up a smiling, jabbering conversation.

“It was pure competition, that’s all,” Bryant said. “I wanted to see what he’s got, I’m sure he wanted to see what I’ve got.

“I was just playing him, denying him the basketball, making him do something else. It was just fun. I mean, we’re going to be in this league for a long, long time.

“What does he have? He’s got some game . . . I’ve got a lot of game.”

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