Grant Provides Relief

When it became very frantic in the basketball town where the smell of victory has always made people hysterical, Horace Grant pumped Walter McCarty into the air.

When McCarty began his way down, Grant, the veteran, pushed up and made the baseline jumper that would beat the Boston Celtics.

Even in their most ridiculous losses, the Lakers have not lacked for perspective, even the forced kind. And so after their 100-96 victory Friday night at the FleetCenter, the Lakers held their grins like good champions and hid their relief at a 26-point lead nearly blown but not, not quite.

They unclenched their jaws, relaxed their shoulders and said they had it all along. Never mind the 38 four-quarter points they allowed, the 10 fourth-quarter turnovers they committed, and the Celtics’ full-court press that made little wrinkles form between their eyebrows, they said.

“A win is a win,” said Grant, whose 16-footer with eight seconds left and as the shot clock fired gave the Lakers a 99-96 lead. “To get one here is pretty big. But, to squander a 21-point lead, I don’t know. Excuse me, 24. Twenty-six? Oh, 30, whatever. Uh, we can’t go into Minnesota and into the playoffs playing defense like that.”

Officially, the lead was 26. And, officially, the Lakers never lost it. From 26 in the second quarter and 24 in the fourth quarter, it went to one, twice, with less than a minute left, before Grant’s shot and Derek Fisher’s steal five seconds later allowed the Lakers to exhale.

Shaquille O’Neal scored 39 points and took 14 rebounds. Four other Lakers, including Rick Fox and Mike Penberthy, scored in double figures, most of the points coming when the offense flowed over the first three quarters. Brian Shaw had 10 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists in 37 minutes.

“We knew we were going to win,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “We had confidence all the way down the line, even when Horace took the shot.”

While the Celtics’ bid to become the eighth and last Eastern Conference playoff qualifier took a hit--Indiana won and holds a 1 1/2-game advantage--the Lakers won their third consecutive game and remained in third place in the Western Conference. They played for the eighth time in nine games without Kobe Bryant, who has tendinitis in his left ankle and might not play Sunday in Minneapolis, either.

That leaves a lot of shots for the likes of Grant, who gathered a low pass from Fox with the offense askew and the game in the balance. As Celtic reserves danced behind him and as the crowd screamed for its plucky little team to defend him, Grant flipped the ball in the air.

“I just threw it up, actually,” said Grant, whose midrange jumpers have become reasonably dependable. “I didn’t know where the basket was, until I just turned.”

He chuckled. “Actually, I had it all planned out. I told Rick to throw it to me down by my feet, so I could be the hero. It was a blessed shot for this team.”

He laughed. He could. They all could.

“That was a prayer,” Shaw said. “That’s why Horace keeps his bible with him all the time.”

Asked if he’d ever seen Grant handle that shot before, Shaw said, “I’ve seen him in that situation in the championship series throw it back out to [John] Paxson and let him take the shot.”

In the second of back-to-back games separated by 850 miles and only 21 hours, the Lakers nearly ran the Celtics off their beloved parquet floor, leading 56-35 at halftime, having shot 59% from the floor and having 18 assists on their 23 field goals. At the end of the third quarter, however, with the score 79-58, the Laker legs died, the Celtic shots fell and the Boston crowd rose up.

In the fourth quarter, when Fox had four turnovers, Paul Pierce scored 17 points. Antoine Walker scored eight in the last quarter, and McCarty scored nine. The Celtics made seven of 11 three-pointers in the quarter.

It was a frenetic way to end an otherwise serene day. Hours before, Jackson had measured his feng shui for a moment, gauged the mood of his soul patch and found that, yes, everything’s going pretty well.

Jackson said he’s happy to be here, and pleased with a club that has a tendency to get stagnant on him.

“We’re still, I think, the team to beat,” Jackson said with the playoffs a couple of weeks off. “I still feel very confident about that. We have some dominant players that, when they play, are very good. They can do a lot of things. So we feel really good about our chances in the playoffs.”