Kobe Bryant closes out well in Lakers’ loss to Phoenix

The crowd stood up on their feet, narrowing their focus on anything Kobe Bryant would do. So did Phoenix forward P.J. Tucker, who locked in on every move Bryant made. But as many can attest during Bryant’s 18-year NBA career, it’s one thing to anticipate and know what the Lakers’ star will do next. It’s an entirely different story on actually doing something to stop it.

So with nearly two minutes left in the game, Bryant fulfilled that job description yet again. Bryant cut from the left elbow to the wing and sank a 17-foot jumper. Nearly a minute later, Bryant posted up along the baseline before nailing a 20-foot turnaround. The same thing happened on within a 30-second span.

Three straight fallaway jumpers. Three straight buckets for Kobe Bean Bryant. Three huge signs that Bryant’s continuously shedding rust stemmed from his nearly year-long absence from two major injuries.

“When it’s money time, I just go to the bread and the butter,” Bryant said, “that’s always there.”

Incidentally, on the night that Bryant revealed past glimpses of closing out games, he didn’t actually have the chance to end this one. Bryant sat for the final 2:38 in the Lakers’ 114-108 overtime loss on Tuesday to the Phoenix Suns in Honda Center for a very obvious reason.

Even if every game has meant something for Bryant’s progression, every game has meant nothing in the bottom-line result. So in the Lakers’ season-long quest to maximize the health of Bryant’s 36-year-old body, his night ended with a 27-point effort on 10-of-20 shooting in 33 minutes.

How would Lakers coach Byron Scott have handled this situation in a regular-season game?

“I don’t know,” Scott said. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

For now, Bryant still plans to play in tonight’s exhibition against the Portland Trail Blazers in Ontario on likely fewer minutes. But that will not become official until the Lakers and Bryant sense how his body felt the night after taking a heavy workload.

“You got to play the long game in these situations and be smart,” Bryant said. “So we’ll make the right decisions.”

Bryant tried making plenty of right decisions in his sixth preseason appearance.

Though he started the first half shooting only 1-of-7 from the field, both Scott and Bryant noted he wanted to test out various moves to diversify his skillset. But soon enough, Bryant relied on his sharpest weapon.

He went to the post and nailed three consecutive fallaway jumpers that gave the Lakers a 90-88 lead with 1:24 left in the fourth quarter. Bryant also drew fouls by tricking defenders with his pump fakes, resulting in a 7-of-8 clip from the foul line.

“He dissects defenses and understands what they’re going to do against them and he’ll just take advantage of the situation,” Scott said. That’s the biggest sign in the fourth quarter when he can elevate and get his shot off the way he was able to do it. That tells me his legs are coming back.”

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Follow L.A. Daily News Lakers beat writer Mark Medina on Twitter and on Facebook. E-mail him at mark.medina@langnews.com