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Boston 98, LA Lakers 95 (OT)
Boston's Three Party Ends in OT Win

BOSTON, Nov. 7 (Ticker) -- Kobe Bryant made the most baskets. Paul Pierce made the most important one.

Pierce snapped a tie with a 3-pointer late in overtime and Bryant missed a tying shot from the arc as the Boston Celtics edged the Los Angeles Lakers, 98-95, in a game with playoff intensity.
With the game tied, 93-93, Pierce nailed a 3-pointer with 1:54 remaining in the extra session to put the Celtics ahead for good. NBA TV highlights from
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After Bryant made it 96-95 with a jumper with 58 seconds left, Tony Delk sank a pair of free throws with 9.3 seconds to play. But after a timeout by the Lakers, Bryant rimmed out a 3-pointer and Boston came away with the win.

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Paul Pierce only scored three points in overtime, but they were huge for Boston.
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"I told Paul it was just like the old days ... Larry (Bird) and Magic (Johnson)," Bryant said. "It was just one of those battles. We were down 17, fought back, game went into overtime. It was a game of peaks and valleys, and it felt good to be a part of that. That leprechaun is still walking around those rafters, I guess."

Bryant made just 17-of-47 shots, missing all eight of his 3-point attempts, but scored 18 of his 41 points in the third quarter. He helped the Lakers erase a 15-point halftime deficit and take a 71-67 lead into the final 12 minutes.

"You got to make it tough on him," said Pierce, who largely guarded Bryant. "You can't let him go out and get an easy 41. He got 41 tonight, but I thought it was a tough 41. I mean, he took 47 shots."

It was the third-most shots attempted by a Laker and the most since Elgin Baylor's franchise-record 55 against Philadelphia on December 2, 1961.

"Tonight it was really out of necessity," Bryant said. "We were down 15 points. I think a lot of my teammates were discouraged and looking for direction to put the ball in the hole because we weren't really shooting the ball well. It was my job to come out and instill confidence in everybody else that we can come back and we can make shots and we can win the game."

"That's a lot of shots," Delk said. "I'm trying to go back to my career in high school when I averaged 40 points and I don't think I ever took that many shots. That's a lot of attempts."

With the game tied, 89-89, Bryant hit the side of the backboard with a jumper while falling out of bounds with 18 seconds left in regulation. Robert Horry blocked a fadeaway by Pierce with less than a second remaining, but the ball went out of bounds, giving Boston another chance.

Antoine Walker also hit the side of the backboard with a jumper at the buzzer.

Pierce had 28 points and Delk 26 for Boston, which joined lowly Chicago as the only teams to sweep the NBA champion Lakers last season.

Boston shot 43 percent (37-of-86) but made 41 percent of its 3-point attempts (13-of-32). Los Angeles clicked at 39 percent overall (37-of-95) but was an abysmal 14 percent from the arc (3-of-22).

"Sweet battle, great game," Celtics coach Jim O'Brien said. "I thought we played absolutely exceptional defense. I thought Paul did a great job on (Bryant), an absolutely fantastic job even with five fouls. Made him work for every shot. Some of the shots he was taking were just brilliant shots, great shots with Paul draped all over him."

Bryant was just 1-of-8 and scored three points in the first quarter as the Celtics jumped out to a 26-15 advantage. They took their biggest lead, 46-29, on a 3-pointer by Pierce with 26 seconds to play before halftime.

But Boston could not contain Bryant in the third quarter, when he made 8-of-13 shots, the Lakers sank 73 percent of their attempts (16-of-22) and limited the Celtics to 32 percent (8-of-25) to take a four-point lead.

"Somebody had to step in there and do something," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. "Brian Shaw was the only other person on the team who was aggressive offensively. Kobe shot poorly the first half and then he came back and found a way to keep us competitive.

"We played some good defense and changed the game around. We probably should have won."

The Lakers again were without Shaquille O'Neal (toe surgery) and Rick Fox, who served the final contest of a six-game suspension for fighting Sacramento's Doug Christie in the preseason.

Los Angeles was coming off Tuesday's 89-70 loss at Cleveland in which it was held to its fewest points since the advent of the shot clock in 1954.