Bryant cleans up with 65

By Mark Heisler

March 17, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

In a performance that was memorable even for him, Kobe Bryant scored 65 points Friday night, leading the Lakers to a 116-111 overtime victory over the Portland Trail Blazers at Staples Center.

It was the second-highest total of Bryant’s career, behind only last season’s 81, and No. 4 in Lakers history.

He made 23 of 39 shots, including eight of 12 three-point tries. Four of those three-pointers came in the last 3:32 of regulation, as the Lakers ended a seven-game losing streak.

“Another amazing performance,” teammate Lamar Odom said. “Another story to tell my kids and my family.”

If it’s always darkest before the dawn, the sun should be coming up in Lakerdom any minute now.

Ending Thursday on the perfect note after the Lakers’ 27-point loss in Denver, their chartered plane turned back 15 minutes out ... amid a loud whooshing noise in the cabin... to be replaced by another plane, which took off at 4:30 a.m., Denver time.

“They said it was the vents,” Luke Walton said. “It didn’t sound like a vent to me.”

This was in the middle of a back-to-back ... and they learned just before tipoff that Walton, who had just returned after six weeks, couldn’t go when his ankle turned up sore again.

And then the Trail Blazers led them by seven points in the last 1:40 of regulation ... before Bryant scored his team’s last nine points to tie it, then got seven more in overtime.

Bryant scored 56 of the Lakers’ 98 points in regulation and, with 24 in the fourth quarter, almost all the important ones.

With 1:40 left in regulation and the Lakers trailing 96-89, he made a three-pointer to cut it to 96-92.

With 49 seconds left, he made another to make it 96-95.

With Portland leading, 98-95, and two Trail Blazers chasing him wherever he went, Bryant then drilled another three-pointer with 17 seconds left to tie it.

The Lakers then took five two-point leads in overtime. Portland tied it up each time ... until Bryant made his eighth three-pointer of the night with 44 seconds left, a seemingly impossible shot, putting the Lakers ahead to stay.

“Kobe had probably one of the best games of his career,” Portland Coach Nate McMillan said. “What can you do? A guy’s fading away with two defenders on him, three feet behind the three-point line, with a hand in his face.”

Thus ended the longest losing streak in Phil Jackson’s coaching career.

Not that Jackson was discouraged.

“I was optimistic about [the loss to Denver] actually, as bad as it was the second half,” he said before Friday’s game. “I thought that we played well and we started looking like the team I know.”

Nor was a little thing like sitting around all night in the terminal going to keep Jackson down.

“Everybody had to sit around together.... Even though it was [from] 1-4 in the morning, their time, it was kind of a positive thing for them.”

Positives came where you find them, obviously.

“That plane ride was awesome,” Bryant said. “We didn’t have shoot-around. I slept in.”

Of course, what they gained in bonding, they may have lost in other ways, so even Jackson conceded, there was a question:

“Do we have the energy to play a game like this?”

The answer seemed to be “no” when they took an early 10-4 lead, then saw the Trail Blazers go on a 17-2 run to take a 21-12 lead, with Zach Randolph scoring nine of those points.

Portland led, 24-16, after one quarter and 29-21 when the Lakers went back to their old offense, otherwise known as the Kobe Show, starting when Bryant knocked in back-to-back three-pointers, en route to a 23-point first half.

Not that he was hot, but after stealing the ball from Portland’s Brandon Roy, he threw the ball at the basket at the other end as Roy intentionally fouled him ... and banked in a 55-foot shot.

The shot came just after the grab and was ruled no good. Instead, Bryant had to settle for two free throws on a clear-path foul and made both.

If that seemed remarkable, he was only warming up, although in this life this stuff happens.

“My daughter’s waiting up for me and I’m sure she doesn’t give a damn,” Bryant said. “She just wants to watch ‘Care Bears.’ ”

mark.heisler@latimes.com

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The 60 club

Kobe Bryant moved up the list of players with multiple 60-point games in the NBA:

WILT CHAMBERLAIN: 1959-74 32

High game: 100

MICHAEL JORDAN: 1984-2003 4

High game: 69

KOBE BRYANT: 1996- 3