LOS ANGELES — Already carrying his team offensively, he picked up the heaviest Nugget of them all on defense and still had enough strength at the end to lift an entire building.

Successful basketball requires five men — and all the Lakers on the court contributed mightily when it mattered most Tuesday — but the direction of a victory still can be dictated by one.
As long as Kobe Bryant is that one, the Lakers always will have a chance. And often, it’ll be the best chance.
On a night when they very easily could have lost, the Lakers instead won because Bryant scored a bunch, defended even more and led most of all.
“Once I sensed we didn’t have the energy,” he said afterward, after he and his teammates survived Denver and Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, 105-103, “I had to take it on myself to lead by example.”
He played all 24 minutes of the second half. He scored 18 points in the fourth quarter. He was 6 of 6 from the free-throw line in the final 30.5 seconds.
And he demanded Carmelo Anthony in the fourth quarter, choosing to take on the hottest Nugget of the night.
Anthony finished with 39 points, but he was scoreless in the final 3:25. In other words, when the game was being won, Anthony suddenly was turned silent.
“`Melo got hot, Trevor (Ariza) got in foul trouble,” Bryant explained. “I had to go down there and wrestle with a bear.”
He pinned him and all the rest of the Nuggets in the process. Please note: Anthony has 2 inches and 25 pounds on Bryant.
“Kobe is one of the best one-on-one defenders in the game,” teammate Lamar Odom said. “And of course, he was up for the challenge.”
All this came a day after Bryant himself was somewhat pinned and by one of the all-time Lakers, the very all-time Laker who brought him to Los Angeles in the first place.
Former team executive and star guard Jerry West, in an interview with the Reuters news service, was quoted as saying Cleveland’s LeBron James had unseated Bryant as the NBA’s top player.
“Even though it’s hard for me to be objective, because I brought Kobe to Los Angeles,” West reportedly said, “I do think LeBron has surpassed Kobe as a player.”
Now, even if that assessment is accurate — and we’d agree with West — the words, considering the source and the timing, certainly could have ignited a few things, not at least of which was Bryant himself.
Instead, Bryant claimed he didn’t even read West’s comments. Well, if that’s true, it’s also true that someone read the comments to him. He clearly was familiar with what West said.
“That’s not my goal, that’s not my mission,” he said of being recognized as the NBA’s No. 1 player.
“If I wanted to go out there and put up 35 points a game I could do that. That’s not my mission. My mission is to win a championship.”
Then he said, “I love Jerry West to death, obviously everybody knows that.”
Bryant also can do a pretty good impersonation of the man best known for his clutch play. Against the Nuggets, he dragged along the rest of the Lakers by scoring 40 points on a night when no one else had more than 13.
He scored his team’s final six points — all on those free throws — on a night when the Lakers’ final field goal came at the 2:30 mark of the fourth quarter.
“It’s crazy that you start to get used to it,” Odom said. “You get used to greatness. He was amazing.
There were a couple times where the ball stalled a little bit and it hurt us. But Kobe is always going to help you or bail you out more than he hurts you.”
This was one of those times when the Lakers needed bailing. They won despite shooting only 41 percent and trailing much of the way. They won on a night when they were down by 13 points. They won with tremendous effort but with execution far from it.
They won largely because Bryant willed them to victory or, as Coach Phil Jackson said, “he muscled his way through the game.” Those 40 points didn’t hurt, either.
“A night like tonight, it’s something we needed,” Bryant said of his offensive production. “But that’s not the norm. That’s not the norm at all. If I do it, it’s an added bonus.”
And if his Lakers need a similar bonus again in this series?
“Hopefully not,” Bryant said. “But if there’s something that’s needed, then that’s something that I have to be prepared to do.”
No matter what that something is — scoring, defending or proving he’s not going to allow LeBron James to pass him without a fight.