The Los Angeles Lakers moved a victory away from the N.B.A. finals when Artest put back Bryant’s miss at the buzzer for a heart-stopping 103-101 victory over the Phoenix Suns.The Lakers hold a 3-2 lead in the Western Conference finals, with a chance to close it out Saturday night at Phoenix. Game 7, if necessary, would be here on Monday.
Artest had done little all night and missed two shots moments before his game winner. The layup was his second field goal of the game.
With the score tied at 101-101, Bryant took an inbounds pass and immediately pivoted and hurled a 3-point air ball. It landed safely in Artest’s large hands, and he put it up just as time expired.
“He has an uncanny knack of doing this, and sometimes it just works out,” Lakers Coach Phil Jackson said.
Bryant finished with 30 points, 11 rebounds and 9 assists, a total that did not include his unintentional feed to Artest.
The trends now favor the Lakers. In the history of 2-2 ties, the team that wins Game 5 has gone on to win the series 83 percent of the time.
“We’re disappointed,” Suns Coach Alvin Gentry said. “We’re not going to get discouraged, though. We’re not a team to get discouraged.”
Steve Nash frustrated the Lakers’ defense all night with his slippery moves and smooth shooting, and nearly delivered a comeback victory. He finished with 29 points and 11 assists. He was at his best down the stretch, scoring on a 3-point play, feeding Amar’e Stoudemire for a layup and hitting two long jumpers over Pau Gasol.
The Suns tied the score on a desperation 3-pointer by Jason Richardson, who banked a 27-foot shot off the backboard with 3.5 seconds left.
Derek Fisher had 22 points, his most productive game of the postseason. Gasol started to reassert himself in the paint, finishing with 21 points and 9 rebounds.
Nash’s 17-footer with 1 minute 21 seconds left cut the Lakers’ lead to 101-98. Artest missed from 20 feet, with the crowd groaning the moment he shot it. Gasol got the rebound and passed back to Artest for a 3-point attempt, which missed with 51.5 seconds left. More groans.
There was a timeout after Artest’s two misses, and a chance to send in someone else. Jackson did not.
“I don’t know why I left him in the game,” Jackson said. “I actually questioned it myself,” he said, chuckling.
Channing Frye, Nash and Richardson all missed 3-pointers before Richardson finally hit his bank shot.
The Suns made this a series with strong bench play at home. The Lakers reassured themselves with the reliable axiom that bench players tend to wilt on the road, which initially seemed to be the case here Thursday. Jared Dudley was the only Suns reserve to score in the first 30 minutes of play.
It was not until the Suns fell behind by 18 points in the third that the bench came alive. Frye hit a pair of 3-pointers and Dudley — fouled by Gasol at the arc — converted a 4-point play as Phoenix knocked the deficit down to 78-72 heading into the fourth quarter. Frye and Goran Dragic hit two more 3-pointers early in the fourth quarter to keep the game close.
The Lakers got a stout 17 points and 13 rebounds from Lamar Odom, but he was the only reserve to make much noise, or play substantial minutes. Jackson leaned heavily on his starters all night, apparently taking no chances in such a pivotal game.
It was a night of hard fouls and hard feelings. Dragic and Sasha Vujacic were assessed a double-technical foul for a brief shoving match early in the fourth quarter. Bryant got a technical 20 seconds later for complaining about a call.
On the Suns’ bench, they were just hoping to keep their coach upright as they fell behind by 17 points in the first half. Gentry became ill early in the game and vomited in a trash can. It was not intended as a symbolic gesture.
Gentry’s disposition worsened in the second quarter when he earned a technical foul for barking at the referee Bennett Salvatore. But the Suns provided some relief, closing the half on a 17-8 run and cutting the deficit to 8 points. Gentry reportedly took intravenous fluids at halftime.
Amid the usual talk of must-wins and momentum, Gentry tried to keep the hyperbole to a minimum. No, he said, winning Game 5 was not a must. But he added, “Somewhere along the line we’ve got to win a game here.”
The Suns went 0-2 at Staples Center in the regular season, then lost the first two road games of this series. Winning a Game 7 here seems improbable.
“Lets not forget what Orlando did last year,” Gentry said, pointing to the Magic’s Game 7 victory at Boston in the Eastern Conference finals.
In a sloppy first quarter, both teams emerged with foul problems. Bryant, Stoudemire and Robin Lopez each committed two. The Suns, flustering the Lakers with a zone defense, jumped to an early 7-point lead.
Without Bryant, the Lakers got a boost from an unlikely source. Fisher, who is known for big playoff shots but not big scoring bursts, scored all of the Lakers’ points in a 9-2 run and got his team back on track.
Bryant took over from there, hitting three straight 3-pointers in the second quarter to fuel a 21-4 run that included 13 unanswered points. Then Odom got rolling and the Lakers surged to a 45-28 lead.
Phoenix kept leaning on its zone defense, a tactic that the Suns contend helped them win Games 3 and 4, but which the Lakers scoffed at, at least rhetorically, after shooting 49.5 percent in a loss in Game 4. Their response Thursday was to attack the zone with dribble penetration. They had some success, but still struggled to score, shooting 41.8 percent for the game — by far their lowest rate in any game this series.
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