Sewing Up Another Victory

First Shaquille O’Neal bled on the floor and then Kobe Bryant was carried off it. Afterward, when they had returned one by one, Derek Fisher said, “Fortunately for us, our monster is two-headed.”

The Lakers have won four of four playoff games while playing just well enough to keep a league moderately convinced of their superiority, which will do for now.

They’re not functioning particularly Laker-like, a corner they play themselves into and out of a couple times a week, though often enough now to sweep the Portland Trail Blazers and to take a first-strike lead on the San Antonio Spurs.

They did it all again Sunday afternoon at Staples Center, this time with the added variables of injuries to O’Neal and Bryant and routine second-half deficits. They beat the Spurs, 86-80, in the first game of the best-of-seven Western Conference semifinals, despite all that happened to them, and because of late and brilliant plays made by O’Neal and Bryant.

“It wasn’t a great day,” O’Neal admitted on his way home.

O’Neal had 23 points, 13 in a fourth quarter when the Lakers scored 29, and 17 rebounds. Bryant scored 20 points. Samaki Walker, who played 25 minutes, most of them against Tim Duncan, had 12 points and took nine rebounds. Duncan, who had 26 points and 21 rebounds, missed his first 10 shots.

It was good enough, but just so, because little went as planned, other than the final quarter, and then only once they had all of their players on the floor.

“We’ve been waiting all year to get to this point,” Bryant said. “If you can walk, you belong out there.”

The Lakers sent their two best players to their cars stitched and limping, one unable to feel his right hand and the other all too able to feel his knee.

Trainer Gary Vitti, who has done this for 18 years, said he didn’t believe O’Neal would play after tearing open the forefinger on his shooting hand in the third quarter. Doctors numbed it and put three stitches in it, and then O’Neal--his left forearm already sliced and stitched after a morning accident suffered, he said, while pretending to be Spider-Man in his home--was on the receiving end of a Robert Horry alley-oop in what became the game-winning points. O’Neal said he thought he had been cut on the rim early in the third quarter, but wasn’t sure. By then, he didn’t much care.

“We’ve been through every situation imaginable in basketball,” O’Neal said. “We know what it takes to win games. It was one of those days for us, and we still mustered up enough energy to win the game.”

Later, he said, “It felt like I had four fingers.”

And Vitti didn’t believe Bryant would return after a “tennis ball-sized lump”--the trainer’s description--rose up on Bryant’s right knee in the fourth quarter. Vitti said he’d never seen anything like the thing on Bryant’s knee, a pooling of blood so large and angry and limiting. Vitti iced it and bullied the swelling out, then watched Bryant slide off the table, return to the floor and make the biggest shot of the game, a seven-foot, stop-spin-and-watch-Bruce-Bowen-fly-by baby floater that gave the Lakers an 83-78 lead.

“I’m exhausted,” Vitti said and smiled.

Bryant’s injury is considered more serious. He left with several rolls of tape in his hand, a gait that favored his right side and a promise to know more today, when the warmth of the game and the cool of the ice are gone. Bryant was kicked inadvertently by Bowen early in the fourth quarter, came out as a freshly bandaged O’Neal came in, and returned with 4:36 left.

“I was listening,” Brian Shaw said of his concern for O’Neal, “for the Superman music to come on.”

Bryant’s shot, four minutes later, all but finished the Spurs, who were forced to foul after that. On the shot, Bryant screeched to a stop on his right leg. When the shot fell, he punched the air and shouted, then fell into a chair on the bench and grimaced.

“I didn’t have any choice,” he said. “It was such a big play in the game. I wanted to flip the ball to Robert [Horry], but they closed the lane off. So, I didn’t have any choice. It was going to be that or turn the ball over.”

Though all else was frantic and borderline poor basketball--the Spurs, anchored by Duncan’s nine for 30, shot 31.8% from the floor, and the Lakers shot 39%--the Lakers clung to O’Neal and hugged Bryant. So they have won 20 of their last 21 postseason games, and five of five against the Spurs, including last year’s sweep in the conference finals. They have won 18 consecutive games at Staples Center.

“Outside of them,” the Spurs’ Antonio Daniels said of O’Neal and Bryant, “we let an opportunity get away.”

Just them, was all.

“We never felt out of control of the game,” Fisher said. “We never felt like we couldn’t win.”

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Bad Start for Lakers

*--* The Lakers had another poor first quarter Sunday, continuing their string of poor first quarters in the playoffs. A look at Sunday’s game, and their numbers in the playoffs: SUNDAY FG FG pct Pts Pts. opp First quarter 5-19 26.3% 13 17 Rest of game 27-63 42.9% 73 63 PLAYOFFS FG FG pct Pts Pts. opp First quarter 31-85 36.5% 78 77 Rest of game 99-230 43.0% 298 277

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