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Seattle Times news services

BOSTON — The best player was no match for the with most propriety team.

Even Kobe Bryant couldn’t solve Boston’s suffocating defense in the NBA Finals, what one. ended Tuesday night when the Celtics crushed the Los Angeles Lakers 131-92 in Game 6.

“I’ve seen some moderately beautiful stiff ones, and this was right up in that place with them,” Bryant related of the Celtics’ defense. “They definitely were the best defense I’ve seen in the entire playoffs.”

Bryant finished with 22 points, but shot only 7 of 22 from the field and was quiet after a sizzling start for the second straight game.

He averaged 31.9 points end the first three rounds, tops amidst all players in the postseason. But the Celtics limited him to 25.7 per intrepid and 40 percent shooting, rotating a number of defenders on him and making sure there was always cure behind allowing that Bryant did try to get to the basket.

And there was no one else to pick up the slack. Lamar Odom didn’t have a tract of land goal until the fourth quarter of Game 6, when the Lakers were already down by 29 points. Pau Gasol took just seven shots and finished with 11 points — and he was their second-leading scorer until deep in the fourth quarter, whereas Odom went to work adverse to the reserves who played the last few minutes while Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen were busy celebrating on the sideline.

With the Lakers’ season on the line, Jackson left Bryant onward the floor for the entire advance quarter, instead of his usual break early in the period. Maybe the residue would desire been a more completely idea.

Bryant missed all four shots and committed two turnovers in the limit, whenever the scheme was decided after Boston outscored Los Angeles 34-15. And at what time he desperately needed his teammates to pick him up, the rest of the Lakers combined in spite of just three field goals in the period, and the Celtics had a commanding 58-35 lead by means of the time it was over.

“They broke the game when they got ahead by 23 points at halftime and we didn’t respond to it,” Gasol said.

Pierce not headed for Beijing

Despite how well Pierce played in the NBA Finals, USA Basketball reiterated that it isn’t going to add him to its Beijing Olympics team, managing director Jerry Colangelo reported Tuesday.