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LOS ANGELES - To reach the second round of the NBA playoffs is never-promised land, something the Lakers know well from the previous three seasons and Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom know better from careers with minimal postseason success. Gasol and Odom - picked third and fourth, respectively, in their draft classes - have therefore been stamped as unable to carry teams to real glory, tags Gasol and Odom can now put behind them while standing behind Kobe Bryant.
In between picking up team-dinners and offering triangle-offense tutorials, Bryant started the second round by leading the Lakers to a 109-98 Game 1 victory over the Utah Jazz on Sunday at Staples Center. Bryant had 38 points - more than twice what any teammate had - and seven assists in a workmanlike outing that featured 21-of-23 shooting from the free-throw line.
Utah coach Jerry Sloan called his team's defense on Bryant "very, very poor at best." The Jazz has no one who can consistently stay in front of Bryant - Ronnie Brewer, Andrei Kirilenko and Kyle Korver all tried Sunday - and Utah's help defense was inconsistent, too.
"This team had time to prepare for us a little more," said Sloan, whose Jazz had two days between rounds compared to the Lakers' six.
The Jazz could take solace in that, but the Lakers also emerged feeling underwhelmed because neither Gasol nor Odom was sharp early or often. Luke Walton, fighting an upper respiratory infection, spent most of the game coughing into a towel, and Jordan Farmar looked like a limp ragdoll against Utah's physicality.
"We didn't play our best game, so it's encouraging for us," Gasol said.
Bryant scored 24 of the Lakers' 54 first-half points to build their 13-point lead. After Odom's two free throws followed Gasol's layup, the Lakers' lead topped out at 19 points early in the third quarter.
Bryant said his teammates' potency made Utah's defense easier for him to navigate, though.
"Our team has a lot of shooters and guys who can make plays, so I think in the first half they (Utah's players) were very concerned with that," he said. "They gave me open lanes to the basket."
Lakers backup center Ronny Turiaf had a quick answer when asked what he thought Utah might do next: "Try to double Kobe a little bit more."
Yet Bryant's 21 free throws - breaking a Lakers playoff record shared by Magic Johnson and Jerry West - made some sense considering Utah led the league in fouls and Bryant is cagey in drawing them. He was a sly veteran fox to get all three of the 23-year-old Brewer's early fouls, and Bryant shrewdly drove into Carlos Boozer under the basket to foul Boozer out with 3:28 left.
About Utah's hands-on style, Bryant said: "It's nice, it's nice. You get a chance to bang."
If the whistles don't come, though, Bryant won't be so sweet about it. Coach Phil Jackson speculated that Bryant's 23 free-throw attempts - "our biggest scoring threat of the game right there," Jackson said - will be cut at least in half by Game 2 because of the way those things tend to even out.
