Like the Kobe of old, not just an old Kobe

As Kobe Bryant walked off the floor Thursday at Staples Center, a season-best 52 points in his pocket and the Lakers well on their way to a 132-102 rout of the Utah Jazz, Phil Jackson offered him a high-five and a warm embrace.

Did Jackson feel the good karma of his tempestuous guard’s magnificent performance? Did he feel the love?

How did he feel?

“Sweaty,” Jackson said, eliciting a laugh from reporters.

Bryant felt a quiet satisfaction after his 12th career 50-point game, a performance in which he tied his own franchise record for points in a quarter by scoring 30 in the third.

He was pleased not because he had proved to anyone -- or himself -- that his surgically repaired knee had finally bounced back to what it had been before, but because he had wanted this game for his team. And for himself.

The Lakers’ 109-105 loss to Milwaukee on Tuesday grated on his nerves, and he wanted to make amends. He had left the locker room quietly that night, unusual for him. He returned on Thursday with a fierce determination, and like the Kobe of old, the Kobe who looked so familiar to a crowd that chanted “MVP!” as it collectively realized it was witnessing a performance to remember, he delivered.

Falling to the Bucks, he said, “motivated me. You have a tough loss like that and an opponent like the Utah Jazz, I tried to get myself mentally prepared.

“In the NBA, you have games where you just get in a groove. The team had a tough loss and we had to step up and we just did.”

Bryant didn’t merely step up. He soared.

“He had a couple of dunks tonight that were just monstrous,” Luke Walton said. “He starts making plays like that, we all just start feeding off him and rolling with him.

“Then he started getting the three-point ball. We rode his hot hand until we got a big enough lead.”

For Bryant, it was simple.

“I felt strong enough, healthy enough,” he said. “I knew I had to just go for it.”

He hit 11 consecutive field goals during one stretch, a feat he could not remember ever having approached on the court.

Maybe he’d done it, “in video games, man,” he said, smiling. “PlayStation was the last time. In the NBA it’s so tough to do that. Guys are on top of you and you get your arms hit once in a while. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

“I was really, really hot tonight. I didn’t miss.”

Jackson, who said he saw signs of Bryant’s old explosiveness in spurts, said the team didn’t change many plays to cater to Bryant’s hot hand.

“There’s probably about a handful. Maybe six, seven,” Jackson said. “Most of the stuff we just ran our system and he found his way through.”

Bryant and the Lakers have found their way to a 10-5 start, better than might have been anticipated following their first-round playoff exit last spring and a succession of injuries in training camp that had decimated them. The Jazz had been 13-3, including a victory over the Lakers last Friday at Salt Lake City, but the Lakers on Thursday had no cause to look back.

Yes, they’ve built much of their success off a soft early schedule that has kept them at home for 11 games. But they’ve won most of those games, with Jackson juggling bodies at center and in the backcourt to compensate for injuries and ineffectiveness.

Bryant has been an X-factor many nights, too. His knee had lacked spring and oomph, and his shooting had been erratic; his 19-for-26 shooting from the floor Thursday was all the more remarkable because he had gone 15 for 47 in his previous two games.

“The last two games he wasn’t happy with the outcome at least from his own personal standpoint,” Jackson said, adding that Bryant had contributed 10 assists Sunday against New Jersey.

Bryant said he didn’t want to stay in the game and try for 60 or more because he didn’t want to “make a circus out of the situation.”

He didn’t.

“I just want to go out there and play, and just do my job,” he said.

He did his job superbly. This Lakers team, despite its flaws, has displayed enough strengths to suggest it may cause some ripples in the playoffs this spring. Defeating the Jazz only reinforced that in Walton’s mind.

“When we’re playing at a high level with enough energy we’re one of the best teams in the league,” Walton said. “We feel, ‘Why can’t we be in the Finals this year?’ ”

helene.elliott@latimes.com