Kobe not counting out Lakers

DALLAS (AP):

Kobe Bryant knows the deal. His Los Angeles Lakers are down 0-3 to the Dallas Mavericks and none of the 98 NBA teams facing that deficit have ever come back to win a series.

Yet Bryant also knows his team has won the last two championships, and reached the finals three straight years. And that his soon-to-be-retired coach has won a record 11 championships and has never been swept in his 20 years on the sideline.

Bryant also realises how close his team is to leading this series 2-1. They blew a 16-point lead in the opener, losing only in the final seconds, and on Friday night they fell apart down the stretch again on the way to a 98-92 loss.

So, with all that in mind, he made this declaration following the Game 3 defeat: "I think we're still going to win the series."

Confidence, eh? Well, he also prefaced that line by laughing and saying, "I might be sick in the head or crazy."

The Lakers have mostly themselves to blame for being in this predicament. Leading by seven with 5:05 left, and having controlled the game throughout the second half, they got sloppy on defence. They gave Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and Peja Stojakovic wide open shots, and that turned things around in a hurry.

Could pull off sweep

A 20-7 closing run jump-started by 3s from Nowitzki and Stojakovic put the Mavericks on the verge of not only winning this series, but pulling off a sweep. Dallas can move to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2006 with a victory at home today.

"We're not good enough to relax or take the pedal off the metal," Nowitzki said. "You don't want to ever give a champion life, so hopefully we can have the same effort and the same crowd and a great game on Sunday."

The Mavericks scored 32 points in the fourth quarter, the most by either team in any period this series. Bryant said the Lakers helped by making "some of the dumbest defensive mistakes I've seen us make all year."

Nowitzki and the Mavericks want to get this over with as soon as possible.

This veteran-filled club would love to avoid another long round-trip flight and to start resting up for the next series. Dallas would be the home team in the conference finals, regardless of whether Oklahoma City or Memphis advances.

For a franchise that's perennially underachieved, and is still trying to overcome blowing a 2-0 lead in the 2006 NBA finals, ending this series today also would send a great message about their chances of winning their first title. It also would avoid any chance of yet another post-season disaster.