Bryant Takes It in His Hands

It was a jarring Jeopardy moment, the Lakers’ most desperate answer delivered in the form of a question:

Kobe Bryant, can anybody guard you?

On a sluggish night that highlighted Shaquille O’Neal’s pleas for a thuggish forward, the game, the drama, the whole mood of this basketball team, came down to Bryant with the ball, and nobody nearly good enough to stop him.

Will there ever be?

The result was a 103-98 victory over the winless, but far more active Denver Nuggets on Wednesday before 13,210 at McNichols Sports Arena.

It was a victory that saw O’Neal struggle through the second half after “tweaking” his groin--he said he thinks he’ll be fine for tonight’s game in Minnesota--and one maybe that the Lakers did not wholly deserve, excepting for a 20-year-old millionaire with flair in mid-air.

The Nuggets outhustled and outplayed the Lakers. The Lakers out-Kobed Denver, though.

Just give him the ball.

“Oh, I’ll take it,” said Bryant, who scored nine of the Lakers’ final 14 points in the last 4:27, and finished with 21 points, 10 rebounds (his fourth consecutive double-digit rebounding effort) and five assists.

“I’ve got no problem if they want me to take it every time.”

First, with Denver within a point, 89-88, Bryant answered Raef LaFrentz’s three-point shot with a three-point bomb of his own.

Then, with the score tied, 92-92, and 1:35 left, Bryant got the ball on the right wing, saw that Bryant Stith had no help, bolted past him and threw down a dunk, drawing a foul for a three-point play.

“What’s-his-name couldn’t guard him,” said guard Eddie Jones, who also had 21 points and was praised by Laker Coach Del Harris for his across-the-board statistical line--six steals, four blocked shots, three of four from three-point distance.

Finally, the back-breaker: Ahead again by only one, Bryant flew past Stith again, thought about trying to slam it over LaFrentz but instead flipped it in, drawing another foul and converting another three-point play.

Nick Van Exel used to be the one taking shots for Lakers in crisis time, but he’s a Nugget now.

“I don’t think I’ll be answering any more questions about do we have anybody to take the shot at the end of the game--I’ve been asked that about a thousand times,” Harris said.

“You know, I gave him the last shot when he was a rookie. So I haven’t much changed my opinion about whether he can finish a game off. . . .

“Just turned him loose.”

Van Exel rolled his eyes at Bryant’s performance and suggested that a scary day is about to dawn on the NBA. The Kobe Era.

O’Neal was dominant before his injury Wednesday, scoring 29 points in the game. But at the end, Van Exel was yelling for Nugget Coach Mike D’Antoni to do something, anything, to stop Bryant.

“It’s definitely Kobe,” said Van Exel, who struggled through a three-for-19 shooting performance, and had his friend Jones swipe the ball away at least twice, in his first game against his former teammates.

“I knew it was coming. Del knows it’s coming, but he maybe he won’t say it. It’s Kobe. He’s that type of player.”

Said Bryant: “I’m just glad they had the confidence in me to give me the shots. I had the ball in my hands, and I was able to capitalize.”

The Bryant heroics masked a game in which the Lakers, one of the top rebounding teams through the first week of play, were outrebounded, 53-34, by a Nugget team not known for muscle.

Antonio McDyess scored 21 points and had 19 rebounds (six offensive) and rookie LaFrentz had 24 points and 12 rebounds (also six offensive).

Part of that might have been O’Neal’s limited movement after the injury, but most of it was the Nuggets bolting to the ball and the Lakers forgetting to block them out.

“I told [O’Neal] right before the second half that we’re going to need him more tomorrow night against Minnesota, because they’re going to bang us and be physical with us,” Bryant said.

“But he said he was going to play, and I said OK. I’m not going to argue with a guy that’s 7-3, 400 pounds. But I said, ‘If you get hurt, I’m going to kill you.”’

It also overshadowed Van Exel’s night, highly anticipated but disappointing for Van Exel.

“I was probably too up tonight--if I make half of those shots, we may win it,” Van Exel said. “[Jones] got me a couple times, and I’m always the one telling other players what he’s going to do them on defense.

“I’ll have to get him next time.”

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Clippers

Grizzlies 105, Clippers 99

Abdur-Rahim and Bibby have big games for Vancover. Page 3