LOS ANGELES — “Always be closing!”
Alec Baldwin’s voice boomed in the Los Angeles Lakers’ locker room.
“It’s (win) or walk. You close or you hit the bricks!”
Before Thursday’s Game 5 of the Western Conference finals, Lakers coach Phil Jackson showed his team the intense speech from “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
“We got the message,” Kobe Bryant said.
In the Lakers’ 100-92 series-winner against the San Antonio Spurs, Bryant scored 17 points in the fourth quarter, closing out a tight final period with a flurry of emphatic and symbolic shots, notably two, when he breezed by Tim Duncan, the face of the now-former champs.
“I think we’ve learned from the other series how to close teams,” said Bryant, whose team previously defeated the Nuggets and the Utah Jazz. “We tried to turn up our intensity to close out the game.”
The Lakers, who began the season in flux, are headed to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2004, thanks to a 39-point effort by Bryant, the series MVP.
Ever since Los Angeles traded Shaquille O’Neal after the 2004 NBA Finals, Bryant felt he never had the proper supporting cast to return to the grandest stage. But after disparaging remarks in the recent past about a trade, he played his finest regular season, and with the addition of center Pau Gasol, who had 19 rebounds Thursday, the Lakers became the champions of the talented Western Conference. They will play the winner of the Detroit-Boston series, which the Celtics lead 3-2. Of course, if Boston wins, it sets up a dream matchup for the NBA, with the two winningest franchises head-to-head in the Finals, where so many of their classic matchups have played out.
“I can remember when I was 6 years old, watching the Finals, watching Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) and Magic (Johnson),” said Lakers forward Lamar Odom, who is headed to his first Finals. “To have this opportunity is great. . . . My heart’s still pumping.”
The Spurs loss means San Antonio will not defend its title with another, the fourth time that has happened in the Duncan era.
“Obviously, we’ll have to add some pieces to our team and make a couple tweaks here and there,” said Duncan, a 32-year-old post player.
The Lakers’ accomplishments in the series have been astonishing, considering they won Game 1 after trailing by 20 points, Game 4 on the road and Thursday’s Game 5 after trailing by 17.
In Thursday’s first half, it looked like the series was headed back to San Antonio. The Lakers scored just 15 points in the first quarter and trailed by as many as 17 points in the second before a late Los Angeles surge cut the Spurs’ lead to six, 48-42, at the half.
Los Angeles entered the fourth quarter up by one point, and that’s when they called in the closer.
When it was over, former Lakers star Jerry West, who as general manager acquired Bryant out of high school, handed Bryant the Western Conference title trophy.
Bryant said he has always remembered something “Mr. Clutch” told him.
“He said when the game is on the line, he feels like the shots are actually easier to make,” Bryant said. “It was interesting to hear that, try to understand how he views clutch situations — and how I can learn from that and try to be that way.”
Benjamin Hochman: 303-954-1294 or bhochman@denverpost.com
