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Lakers fight to stay alive in Game 4 vs. Mavs

May 8, 2011 - 2:34 PM (Sports Network) - Only fairy tales have happy endings.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson was supposed to walk away after this season once he piloted his team to yet another championship. Problem is, the Dallas Mavericks weren't clued in on that narrative.

Now, if the Los Angeles Lakers plan to capture their third straight championship and Jackson's record 12th as a head coach, they'll have to climb the largest mountain in NBA history, a figurative Mount Everest, starting with tonight's Game 4 in Big D.

The Lakers are down 3-0 in the Western Conference semifinals after Dirk Nowitzki scored a game-high 32 points and put in the go-ahead basket with 83 seconds remaining on Friday, leading the way in a 98-92 victory that has the Mavs on the brink of the Western Conference finals and a date with either the Memphis Grizzlies or Oklahoma City Thunder.

Jason Terry scored 23 points, including four clutch free throws in the closing seconds of Game 3 for Dallas, which trailed by eight points early in the fourth quarter but ended the game on a 17-5 run.

Peja Stojakovic chipped in 15 points for the Mavs, who also got 11 points and nine assists from Jason Kidd.

"We hung in there and kept battling," Dallas head coach Rick Carlisle said. "Dirk Nowitzki made it happen. Just about everything that happened down the stretch was a direct result of him either scoring the ball or making a play."

Andrew Bynum led the Lakers with 21 points and 10 rebounds, while Kobe Bryant totaled 17 points and six assists for the two-time defending champions.

Lamar Odom, starting on place of the suspended Ron Artest, ended with 18 points in a game-high 42-plus minutes while Pau Gasol chipped in 12 points and eight rebounds in the loss. Artest, who will be back this afternoon, was being punished for his closeline of Mavs guard J.J. Barea late in Wednesday's Game 2 loss.

LA will try to avoid a sweep at American Airlines Center on Sunday, and Jackson will certainly need to address the team's fourth quarter woes in order to pull off a historic turnaround. No NBA team has ever escaped an 0-3 deficit. In fact, teams staring at that hole are 0-98.

In losing the first two games at home, the Lakers scored a combined 35 points in the final stanza, and on Friday they made 36 percent from the field over the final 12 minutes after hitting 52 percent over the first three quarters.

"They were better finishing the games out than we were, so that's a big disappointment to us. But we still believe we're going to win the next game, and we'll go from there," Jackson said.

Bryant did pass former teammate Shaquille O'Neal for third place on the NBA's all-time postseason scoring list and now has 5,263 in the playoffs, trailing only Michael Jordan (5,987) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (5,762). Jackson, of course, won six titles while mentoring Jordan, and three while with Shaq. He and Kobe have celebrated five different times together.

For what its worth Bryant believes a historic comeback is more than possible.

"I might be sick in the head or crazy or thrown off or something like that, but I still think we are going to win this series," Bryant said. "I might be nuts. Win on Sunday. Go back home and see if they can win in L.A."

Nowitzki understands that mentality.

"We're not good enough to coast or relax or anything," the Mavs All-Star said. "We've got to go for it on Sunday with the same hype from the crowd."

Jackson has only lost a total of nine series in his previous 20 postseasons as a coach and has never been down 0-3 before. Bryant, meanwhile, has only been swept out of the postseason twice in his career, the last time in 1999, the year before Jackson arrived in Hollywood.

The Mavs have been up 3-0 twice before in their history. In 2006, the Mavericks went on to sweep the Grizzlies but in 2003, Portland actually forced a seventh game before succumbing.

Dallas and LA finished with identical 57-25 records during the regular season, but the Lakers won the season series, 2-1.

The teams have met three times previously in the playoffs with the Lakers taking all three sets, a 4-1 series win back in 1983-84 West semifinals, a 4-2 triumph in the '85-86 West semis, and a seven-game triumph in the '87-88 West finals.

Game 5 of the best-of-seven set, if necessary, will be Tuesday back in Los Angeles.