Utah Jazz: Pau, right in the kisser

All the talk afterward will be about how the Los Angeles Lakers are back atop, leading the best-of-seven NBA Western Conference semifinal playoff series 3-2 following their 111-104 victory late Wednesday night at Staples Center.

They did it with total team effort, as an ailing Bryant took care of his fair share — scoring a team-high 26 points and dishing seven assists, but taking just 10 shots (with six makes) from the field — and left the rest to the likes of Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom.

"It's tough," Jazz All-Star Carlos Boozer said of those two, "because sometimes you're helping so much on Kobe.

"We have to do a better job of keeping Kobe in front, so we don't have to help as much," he added. "But that's a tall task. He's a very good player, whether he has a bad back or not."

Thirteen of Bryant's points came from 17 free-throw attempts.

"Any time you start the ball game off with a great player knowing he'll have 17, 18 free throws," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said, "that's a very difficult thing for any team to play against.

"But that's who he is," Sloan added. "I'm not taking anything away. He's a great player — but we have to do better than giving him those situations, and that's easier said than done."

Gasol delivered the dagger, first using a lay-in floater to make it 105-102 after Utah had cut the Laker lead to one with Mehmet Okur's follow of a Deron Williams miss, then dunking home the rebound of a Sasha Vujacic trey try from the left corner.

Gasol rose above Jazz big men Okur and Boozer as Vujacic's long-distance shot rimmed out, and with that Lakers were up by five with 20.5 seconds to go.

"I thought it was a push-off," Boozer said. "I've been called for that a couple times this series. I know it's down the stretch of a big game, winning time, but sometimes you want the referees to let players play.

"I think that was a situation tonight, they wanted us to just let the players win the game," he added. "And even though I thought he (Gasol) did push off Memo (Okur), put Memo under the hoop, easy dunk. But sometimes that's how physical it's gonna be."

Williams missed a trey try coming out of a timeout after Gasol's dunk, and Bryant polished things off, hitting 3-of-4 freebies in the final 10.7 seconds

Odom finished with a 22-point, 11-rebound double-double and Gasol added 21 points as the West's No. 1-seeded Lakers, heading into Friday night's Game 6 at EnergySolutions Arena, moved to within one victory of the Western Conference finals.

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