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Lakers about to head to Alamo

Yao Ming, right, of the Rockets shoots over Shaquille O'Neal of the Lakers during the first quarter of their Western Conference playoff series in Los Angeles, Wednesday. PHOTO: AP

The third installment of Kobe Bryant's singularly sublime transition game played out for a national television audience Wednesday night, the Los Angeles Lakers clinging to his unparalleled focus, the Houston Rockets recoiling from it, a playoff series pulled taut between them.

With a 97-78 victory at Staples Center, the Lakers finished off the Rockets, four games to one.

After spending three consecutive days in an Eagle, Colorado, courtroom for pretrial hearings in his sexual assault case, Bryant was anything but distracted.

Bryant scored 31 points and dished out 10 assists, leaving the the floor as he arrived -- to a standing ovation, with the Lakers leading 23 points and 6:16 left to play. He got a hug from Rick Fox and then Karl Malone, then settled in to enjoy the final minutes of the first round.

So it's on to San Antonio, where the Lakers open the conference semifinals Sunday -- a day earlier than officials had been led to believe. Tipoff is 12:30pm.

The Lakers took three of four games from the Spurs in the regular season, though the three victories all came by Dec. 3.

Kobe Bryant of the Lakers smiles during the Lakers' 97-78 win over the Rockets in Los Angeles, Wednesday. PHOTO: REUTERS

Malone scored 18 points and grabbed nine rebounds. Shaquille O'Neal and Slava Medvedenko scored 12 points each.

O'Neal will be undoubtedly be happy to trade Yao Ming and Kelvin Cato for Rasho Nesterovic and Tim Duncan.

O'Neal again had difficulty establishing position, and when he did, he often waited for a pass that never came. He was called for a pair of 3-second violations and reached the 28th minute of play with just six points.

But O'Neal didn't let Yao do much either, and in the third quarter, he channeled his energy into a defensive assault. O'Neal blocked Yao twice and Steve Francis once in a two-minute span, sparking the Lakers' best run of the night, a 15-1 surge that gave them a 64-53 lead and doubled the decibel level in the building.

The Rockets converted just two field goals on 16 attempts in the period.

And Bryant kept coming. A driving layup amid four defenders, a 3-pointer from the left side, a dish to Devean George for another 3-pointer, and the Lakers took a 72-57 lead into the fourth quarter.

And a couple time zones away, they started polishing up the Alamo.

The Rockets, young as a playoff team and fully cognizant of the Lakers' championship drive, had no illusions about their predicament. Teams rarely come back after going down three games to one, and the Lakers were 25-0 all-time in series they led 3-1.

"It's been done before," Maurice Taylor had told the Houston Chronicle. "It's not impossible. You can understand what people are saying. If I was a betting man, I would go to Vegas and put my money on the Lakers, too. But we're not really worried about what everybody else is saying or looking in the papers and they're already saying the Lakers are playing San Antonio. We just worry about the game we have to play."

That game never surfaced. Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley, who cut up the Lakers' interior defense often through the first four games, had little success with their season suddenly on the line.

Mobley dropped 14 points in the first quarter, then went scoreless in the next 23 minutes of play. Francis was 0 for 5 in the third quarter.

The Lakers' offense, thoroughly disjointed in all but one game of the series, fell into perfect rhythm. They collected 22 assists on 27 field goals in the first three quarters.

After watching Bryant turn erratic for the past four weeks -- a blur of forced shots, poor decision-making and horrid field-goal percentages -- the Lakers were thrilled to have the Bryant of early March back among them.

His shooting was brilliant, his playmaking inspired. He recorded his first double-digit assist game since March 10 and converted at least half of his shots (12 for 21) for the first time in 11 games.

The day's court proceedings concluded in the late afternoon in the Mountain Time Zone, but Bryant was in Staples Center by 6:55pm, 26 minutes before tipoff.
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