A DAY-AND-NIGHT EXPERIENCE FOR BRYANT.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Kobe Bryant hurried back from that Colorado courtroom to that downtown L.A. basketball court again Tuesday night, with the stakes higher than ever in both venues, and proved three things once and for all:

He has an almost disconcerting ability to block out the real world and focus on a little orange circle. He has the energy of a man exactly his age. And he doesn't fly commercial.

You don't charge into an NBA playoff game and take it over the way Bryant did against the San Antonio Spurs on a bag of peanuts and a gingerale.

Mere hours after he told a judge he's not guilty of sexual-assault charges that could land him in prison for life, Bryant scored a game-high 42 points to breathe life into the Lakers, who trailed by 11 before beating San Antonio 98-90 to tie the series 2-2.

Has any athlete had a day quite like this?

By day, in Eagle, Colo., Bryant matched a gold tie with a white shirt and black suit and stood between attorneys Pamela Mackey and Hal Haddon to tell Judge Terry Ruckriegle ``not guilty.''

By night, at Staples Center, he put on his gold and purple basketball uniform and stood between Luke Walton and Bryon Russell for a pregame national anthem.

It might not have been the last such stark split-screen for Bryant - if the Lakers are still alive in the playoffs when he must appear in Eagle on May 27 for a hearing to set his trial date - but it was the ultimate clash of court dramas.

In the afternoon, he faced a judge's stern demands. In the evening, he faced a coach's high standards.

``We're going to need a very potent Kobe to win against this team,'' Phil Jackson had said the day before.

On Monday, the Lakers held a full-tilt practice without Bryant, something they've had to do maybe half a dozen times because of the guard's series of court appearances since his arrest on sexual-assault charges last summer. Preparing for the game of the season, they went 5 on 5 with Kareem Rush playing the role of Mr. Bryant. If it was a musical, you'd ask for your money back.

``I don't know if you get used to it,'' Rick Fox said of Bryant's absence, ``but you're experienced enough in it as a group to understand it can be a distraction if you let it. But we've done a good job, and so has he, of using it to our advantage by maybe putting the opponents on edge about whether he's going to make it or not. Then, when he does show up, it always seems to be a lift for us.''

That, uh, advantage vanished when Bryant's court hearing wrapped up quickly and he was able to make the less-than-two-hour private-jet trip to Los Angeles in time to arrive at Staples Center 2 1/2 hours before tip-off.

An hour after that, Jackson said they hadn't spoken, but the coach imagined Bryant felt relieved that the proceedings had reached the plea-entering stage.

Whatever his mental state at the moment, though, the Lakers expect Bryant to play well after these trans-time-zone treks.

He did it in December, when he entered a game against Denver in the second quarter, scored 13 points and sank the winning shot. He did it in March, when he made it back to play an entire game against Sacramento, and scored 36. And he did it most recently on April 29, when he made it back to play an entire playoff game against Houston, shook off a sluggish start and scored 31.

``He did it before,'' Devean George had said with a shrug at practice Monday, ``I don't see why he can't do it again.''

Just when you thought everybody was taking too much for granted, Bryant drew a foul on a baseline drive and scored the first Lakers point, skipped across the lane to double-team Tim Duncan into a poor shot, and sank a 3-pointer to push San Antonio into a timeout. And that was only the first 2 minutes 17 seconds of the game.

Bryant played all 12 minutes of the first quarter. When he returned from a short rest, he drove for a two-handed dunk, drove for a left-handed bank shot, and nailed a 20-footer on consecutive Lakers possessions. He fed Shaquille O'Neal for a dunk two trips later. And he dribbled behind his back to score and get fouled and bring out the first ``Kobe, Kobe, Kobe'' chant of the game.

Without Bryant's 18 points in the first half, the Lakers wouldn't have been close enough for Shaq's 14 in the third quarter to spark the comeback.

A day to remember, half of it, anyway.