Lakers’ Streak Is the Key

Kobe Bryant’s scoring streak ended Tuesday night near the half-court line, behind a smile that grew as the final seconds fell from a 109-98 victory against the Clippers, all of Staples Center begging for him to shoot one more time, and Bryant choosing not to.

He scored 32 points.

So, he left behind the pursuit of Wilt Chamberlain, the scoring mark that at times chased him harder than he chased it.

Bryant failed to score 40 points for the first time in 10 games, a run of nightly, aggressive, Phil Jackson-ordered offense that took him to Michael Jordan but not past him and to within five games of Chamberlain. He also had scored 35 points in 13 consecutive games. Only Chamberlain had been better.

“The streak is a streak,” he said afterward. “It’s not going to win us any championships.”

It rekindled memories of Wilt four decades later and it revived comparisons of Bryant to Jordan. It grew over four weeks of basketball, taking the Lakers from out of the playoffs to in them, from underachievers to contenders, from three-peat flops to scary again. Starting with the night in Phoenix on Jan. 29, when Bryant dropped 40 points on the Suns, the Lakers have won 12 of 14 games, five in a row.

He said he was almost glad his scoring streak was over, “because it started to take the focus away from how we were playing as a team.”

Jackson missed the game, the first of his coaching career, after the removal of a kidney stone.

While Shaquille O’Neal once chided him about “coaching through the pain,” he stopped short of suggesting Jackson had contracted “Gentry-itis.” Assistant Jim Cleamons ran the game for Jackson.

The Lakers are in seventh place in the Western Conference, 1 1/2 games ahead of Houston and Phoenix and two games behind the Utah Jazz. They beat the Clippers with Bryant’s 32, but also with Shaquille O’Neal’s 33 and Rick Fox’s 12 and a little more defense than they managed in the first half. Corey Maggette, charged with defending Bryant and helping to hold him to 11-for-26 shooting, also scored 22 points, and Elton Brand had 21.

While the Clippers held a lead as late as midway through the third quarter, they were behind by the end of the quarter, and were never closer than four in the fourth. They lost for the eighth time in 10 games, leaving Maggette unhappy with the whole affair.

“I don’t care about that,” he said. “I want to win the game. I’m not going to let him get 40. If he does, he’ll have to take 40 shots.

“Regardless of his streak, he won.”

At the end the end of it, Bryant stood with the basketball, dribbling at the top, the game gone. The Lakers are 31-25, six games above .500 for the first time since last season. And, besides, there was plenty of Bryant for those who arrived hoping to see him climb toward Chamberlain.

There was the breakaway windmill dunk in the final minutes. There were nine fourth-quarter points. There was the victory, critical now, with O’Neal drawing closer perhaps to his true game.

It would at times be O’Neal’s game and, to his credit, Bryant was among the first to see it. The Clippers went another game without Michael Olowokandi, which left Sean Rooks in the middle against O’Neal. Rooks was game enough, but, again, not quite thick enough, and then he committed his fourth foul with three minutes left in the third quarter. O’Neal made 13 of 21 shots, then deferred to Bryant one more time.

“I do not think he really worried about the streak,” O’Neal said. “I think he is a great player coming into his own.... It is all about winning. Some nights he’ll do it, some nights I’ll do it, some nights the whole team will do it.”

For weeks reporters came to Bryant with questions about the streak, about taking shots and scoring points, and Bryant talked about winning games. They asked about Jordan and Chamberlain, and he blushed, and grinned, and sometimes talked about finding Fox and Derek Fisher.

“It was a pleasure to be a part of something that special,” Fox said. “We knew it was eventually going to come to an end. We were hoping it wouldn’t, because we were winning games.”

Asked, finally, what was the most important thing about the streak, Bryant said, “That we won all those games. My focus was to come out, get the ball in the hole, win games.”

And everybody learned something along the way.

“Wilt,” he said, “was a monster.”

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The West

*--* Top eight qualify for Western Conference playoffs. Division winners seeded 1, 2: W-L GB 1. Dallas 44-13 -- 2. Sacramento 40-18 4 1/2 3. San Antonio 39-17 4 1/2 4. Portland 36-20 7 1/2 5. Minnesota 37-21 7 1/2 6. Utah 33-23 10 1/2 7. Lakers 31-25 12 1/2 8. Phoenix 30-27 14 8. Houston 30-27 14 10. Golden St 27-30 3

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