It’s a Box and Won for Lakers

Kobe Bryant was in his favorite spot Friday night, ball in his hands, a defender in his face, game on the line and only a few seconds on the clock at the Charlotte Coliseum.

Bryant drove right, pump-faked Charlotte Hornet defender George Lynch once, took a step to his left and, with eight-tenths of a second remaining in the game, let go of a jumper from 18 feet that fell through the net as time expired.

Lakers 96, Hornets 94.

The sellout crowd of 23,799 was stunned. Bryant’s teammates swarmed around him.

And the first one off the bench to join in the celebration was Samaki Walker, a big smile on his face.

Forgotten was an incident 24 hours earlier on the team bus when, on the way to a shoot-around in Cleveland, Bryant and Walker engaged in a discussion that grew heated and culminated with Bryant throwing a punch that landed under Walker’s right eye.

Before Walker could respond, bodyguards stepped in.

“He’s a teammate,” Walker, who is on the injured list, said Friday after congratulating Bryant on his last-second heroics. “This is the time of the year when frustrations flare. It was good to see the intensity.”

Bryant downplayed the bus incident. “There was nothing to it,” he said. “We’re fine. It was not a season-turner.”

Neither was Friday night’s victory. Teams that are 37-16, as the Lakers are, are perfectly happy with the direction the season is going.

But the dramatic win may have snapped the Lakers out of a low period in a long regular season, a period that included the first three-game losing streak in Phil Jackson’s reign as Laker coach, followed by a lethargic Thursday night victory against the Cleveland Cavaliers.It appeared the Lakers had shaken all the lethargy out of their sneakers in the first quarter Friday, running up a 10-point lead, threatening to run the Hornets out of the Coliseum and all the way to New Orleans, where they might move next season.

But then the Hornets, 27-27 and looking for a season-making victory, put the brakes on the Lakers and took off with a 19-4 run sparked by Jamaal Magloire. The 6-foot-11, 259-pound second-year man, refusing to be intimidated by Shaquille O’Neal in the middle, accounted for eight of those 19 points with four dunks.

O’Neal also made his presence felt before the game was over, leading the Lakers with 31 points and making 12 of 18 shots. But he had only five points in the fourth quarter.

It was the opposite for Bryant, who scored 11 of his 21 points in the final 12 minutes.

The Lakers needed all the offense they could muster to keep pace with guard Baron Davis. The former UCLA Bruin was all over the court, making shots from inside and out, connecting on 13 of 21 tries for 37 points, one shy of his career high.

He was four for seven from three-point range. He was also unstoppable at times on drives to the basket. On one drive, he blew past Rick Fox, found O’Neal blocking his path but smoothly sailed past, going under O’Neal’s outstretched left arm to lay the ball in.

“We lost,” Davis said. “That’s it. There’s no time for moral victories.”

The Hornets were victorious on the boards, outrebounding the Lakers, 48-39. The Lakers have been outrebounded in each of their last two games, and O’Neal has struggled in both. After getting 17 rebounds in his first game off the injured list, he had four against Cleveland and seven against Charlotte.

Ultimately it came down to Bryant, and the Lakers will gladly settle for that most games.

O’Neal’s three-point play had given the Lakers a 94-92 lead with 39 seconds to play. Charlotte’s P.J. Brown made a 16-foot jump shot to tie the score with 9.7 seconds left.

“Nine seconds is a long time,” Bryant said.

Especially with the ball in his hands.

Fox passed the ball in to O’Neal who passed it back to Fox. With four seconds to play, Fox delivered it to Bryant.

As he sat on the court after the shot, staring up at the clock, which read 0:00, Bryant relished the moment.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling to hit a buzzer-beater on the road,” Bryant said.

“The opponents can’t do nothing. It’s over.”

Bryant’s smile was ear to ear.

So was Walker’s.

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