Bryant Reigns for Night at Palace

By TIM BROWN

March 16, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. —

An hour later, Kobe Bryant still appeared possessed by this overtime victory, this shouldn’t-have-been-there-in-the-first-place victory, where he rolled out of his sick bed and re-injured both ankles and then scored 24 points in the final 17 minutes against the slack-jawed Detroit Pistons.

Having played at somewhere between exasperation with Bryant and adoration for him, the rest of the Lakers filed out of the Palace of Auburn Hills bemused with him and their tumultuous season, having witnessed yet another turn Thursday night in a 125-119 victory.

Back from a viral infection that sidelined him for two games, Bryant scored 39 points, 16 in the fourth quarter, eight more in overtime. He made 10 of his last 15 shots, frantically working to make up an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter, a gap created in part because Bryant and a handful of other Lakers were scorched by Jerry Stackhouse for 46 points, matching Stackhouse’s career high.

Asked where all of this came from, Bryant stared ahead and said, “Just winning. Just that. When you’re put in a situations where the fans come here to watch you play, come to see a basketball game, where they haven’t drawn all year, they come here and see us get our butts kicked. It’s embarrassing, you know what I mean? It hurts your pride. If we wouldn’t have come back and won this game, or at least shown a better effort, then we don’t deserve to be champions. It was testing our pride.”

Everybody else was here to play a basketball game. Not Bryant. The fans on the floor rode him for 53 minutes, and so Bryant followed his late heroics--a seven-foot jumper with 2.3 seconds to play in regulation that tied the score, 111-111, three jumpers and two late free throws in overtime--with clenched fists, or with a fist to his heart.

Near the end, while teammate Robert Horry shot a free throw, Bryant autographed a jersey for a woman standing among his doubters. His ankles hurt. He was weary from four days in bed.

“You know why?” Bryant said. “The reason I did that, the fan all game long was saying, ‘Kobe don’t worry about it. Don’t think about it. Just play straight through it. Play through it. Please play through it.’ You know what I mean? Everyone around her was booing and saying, ‘Aw, Kobe’s not showing up.’ She said, ‘Push through it. Just get the win. We believe in you.’ That’s the kind of support . . . “

Pushed by a Piston team that lost the night before at Washington and has little chance to make the playoffs in the weak Eastern Conference, the Lakers scored the final seven points of overtime. Bryant scored four. Stackhouse had made a three-point shot from the left wing with 46 seconds left to give the Pistons a 119-118 lead.

Then Bryant hit a 15-foot pull-up jumper that rattled in. Stackhouse missed and Bryant made two free throws. Billy Owens missed and Horry made a free throw. Then Brian Shaw made two free throws after a steal.

Bryant banged his chest. He hugged Rick Fox for a long time. The Lakers shook their heads.

“Luckily he got hot,” Shaquille O’Neal said. “Because nobody else was hitting shots.”

Bryant, whose early jumpers were flat and lifeless, had pulled the Lakers out of it. They looked done at 90-79, Pistons, to begin the fourth quarter. They weren’t pulling down rebounds and they weren’t stopping Stackhouse, and O’Neal was buried in double-teams in the low post. O’Neal finished with 26 points, two after the third quarter.

“That was a difficult game for any coach to have to sit out there and watch,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “I don’t think we played a smart game down the stretch. We rallied and got it back and Kobe is part of that energy that got us back in the game.”

Bryant also finished with four turnovers, one late in the fourth quarter that looked for a long time like it would cost the Lakers the game. He took his requisite four or five ill-advised shots, a couple late that did not fall, and many of his early jump shots were short and flat.

Derek Fisher, in his second game back from a stress fracture in his foot, scored 15 points. His three-point basket from the right corner early in the overtime game gave the Lakers a 118-113 lead, which they eventually lost.

In a strange, emotional game for Bryant, it was Fisher who most often shared his backcourt.

“It was difficult,” Fisher said. “It was really difficult. Kobe is a player who plays with a lot of energy, and at times he can be unpredictable. There’s a rhythm and a flow to his game. But then, he could break away from that and do things the rest of us can’t do. So, it was definitely difficult. Fortunately, we’ve been playing together for five years, so it won’t take long.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

LAKERS

The Lakers began a five-game trip against the Eastern Conference.

A look at the Lakers against the East:

RECORD

17-5

AVG. PTS.

103.6

OPP. PTS

99.3

FG PCT.

.467