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Lakers look to even series with Celtics

Jun 12, 2008 - 1:24 PM Boston at LA Lakers, 9:00 p.m. EDT

LOS ANGELES (Ticker) -- For the Los Angeles Lakers to have a fighting chance in the NBA Finals, they have to handle business on Thursday.

The Lakers will try to even the series at two games apiece when they host the Boston Celtics in Game Four at the Staple Center.

After returning to the West Coast down 2-0, Los Angeles got 36 points from Kobe Bryant and a surprising 20 from reserve Sasha Vujacic in Tuesday's 87-81 victory in Game Three.

"What I tried to do with my teammates is just stay calm," Bryant said. "It wasn't the end of the world. They did a great job of defending home court. We knew we had to come here and do the same. They feed off of my confidence and I have all the confidence in the world that we can come here and win."

Vujacic's career performance picked up the slack for teammates Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom - the duo combined for just 13 points on 5-of-18 shooting.

But the Lakers' big men weren't the only ones struggling, as Boston's Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce both had a tough night.

Garnett had 13 points but made just 6-of-21 shots Tuesday after pouring in 24 points in Game One and 17 in Game Two.

Pierce, a Los Angeles native who was playing in front of friends and family, scored just six points on 2-of-14 shooting after scoring 22 and 28, respectively, during the first two games of the series.

Despite a 2-8 road mark this postseason, Pierce is confident his team can break through here.

"Me and Kevin really didn't play well," Pierce said. "But then you've got to look at the Lakers' side, Odom and Gasol really didn't play well. So you've got to expect me and Kevin to play a lot better in Game Four as well as Gasol (and) Odom to play a lot better.

"But I was happy with our defense. I can take that away from Game Three with the way we defended the ball. We gave up some key offensive rebounds there late in the game. If we can clean those up, we'll be fine. But defensively we held them to 87 points, they shot 43 percent and we'll take that all night."