Rising to the Moment / Bryant’s clutch three-pointer sends game into OT, where Lakers get even

Kobe Bryant took his right fist and pounded at his heart, still beating, all of them still alive in the NBA Finals.

His shot, a three-pointer from 28 feet with 2.1 seconds left in regulation, gave the Lakers a tie and five more minutes to win, which they did, these moments starting to stack up in a season that breathes still.

The Lakers scored the first six points in overtime and defeated the Detroit Pistons, 99-91, and tied the best-of-seven Finals at a game apiece Tuesday night at Staples Center. The next three games are in Detroit, starting Thursday night.

Bryant was otherwise imprecise, but the Lakers went to him because he is him, always untouched by the play before.

So, when they played back from an 87-82 deficit in the final 69 seconds of regulation, when they held to the life brought by Luke Walton and the concern that Karl Malone was again on a damaged knee, and found themselves behind by three points with 10.9 seconds left, they found Bryant.

From out of bounds, Malone, who limped through the final three quarters, passed to Shaquille O’Neal, who passed to Walton, who handed the ball to Bryant. They all stood away, at the end of a rally pushed along by O’Neal’s rebound and three-point play a half-minute before, the series in danger of running off without them.

Bryant dribbled, pushed Richard Hamilton to his heels with a feint forward and then rose up to take the shot he later would call, “the biggest shot I would ever hit.”

For reasons unclear, the Pistons were not ordered to foul any of the Lakers who handled the basketball before Bryant, and then allowed Bryant to dribble into the final seconds of a three-point deficit.

“We defended it,” Piston Coach Larry Brown said. “We switched. A great player made a great shot.... We don’t foul in a situation like that. He’s going to go up and shoot it anyway.”

And so he did, from a giant step behind the arc just left of center, Hamilton’s left hand in his face but not near the ball, and the time came at 2.1 seconds, when the ball fell through the net. It was then when Bryant thumped his chest, and the Pistons fumbled the ball away in their final possession of regulation, and were sleepy in the early moments of overtime.

In fact, the Pistons would score only two points in the overtime, where the Lakers suddenly had energy and legs. O’Neal, who had 29 points in an erratic shooting game, had six in the overtime. Bryant, who scored 33 points, had four.

“Well, we always believe that Kobe can make miracle shots even when things are not going well for him,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said.

The Lakers scored the first six points of overtime, which they clinched when O’Neal scored on a dunk off a Walton alley-oop pass. They led, 99-91, and rookie Walton got two pats on the backside from Jackson as he passed by.

Walton played eight minutes in the Western Conference finals. He played 13 minutes in the conference semifinals.

In the first half Tuesday night, he played 12. And where the Lakers had been lethargic, he was energetic. Where the Lakers had handed the ball to O’Neal or Bryant and stepped back, he moved and kept his head up and found O’Neal near the rim, in stride.

In nine minutes of the second quarter, in which the Lakers went from lifeless to eight points ahead, Walton had five points, four assists and two rebounds. He returned two minutes into the fourth quarter and finished it out, ending with seven points, eight assists, five rebounds and the respect of teammates floundering against another strong effort by the Pistons.

“You can talk about my shot all night long,” Bryant said, “but without Luke in the ballgame playing as well as he did, we would not be in that position.”

After a 12-point loss in Game 1 in which the Pistons did all of the difficult things, the Lakers had asked some tough questions of themselves, particularly in regard to their defensive effort.

Gary Payton did not play in the fourth quarter or overtime, time spent with a towel around his shoulders, having been replaced by a Derek Fisher-Kareem Rush backcourt.

“Well, it’s not a good feeling for me,” he said. “There are a lot of things going on right now.”

Payton scored two points and now has two baskets in the series, but he defended Chauncey Billups with some rigor.

“It’s just frustration,” he said. “It is frustrating that I can’t find a way to get out of this situation because of the way we play. It is just something that is happening and I have to be a grown man and get through it. We are winning basketball games in the Finals, so I can’t complain about anything. If we lost a basketball game and you are not in the Finals, you can complain.”