FOR BRYANT, FINISH MIGHT BE GOOD START.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

The patient is feeling better.

Now it's the family that looks a little queasy.

After playing three quarters of the worst basketball game of his life Friday night at Staples Center, Kobe Bryant perked up and played one quarter of his best.

Scoring 16 points in one incredible 5 1/2-minute stretch, the young man who's still recovering from food poisoning brought the Lakers almost all the way back from a 27-point deficit.

The Lakers lost to the Sacramento Kings 103-90 to fall behind 2-1 in the best-of-seven-game series. If there's an excuse, it's that Bryant wasn't himself again. If there's hope, it's that Bryant was coming around at the end.

``I was happy my legs finally came around. I feel happy going into the next game,'' Bryant said from behind his designer shades long after the buzzer sounded.

We never had seen him so defeated.

For three quarters, Bryant could barely hit a shot, could barely hit the rim, was having the ball stripped away as he went up, was drawing more whistles and cheers with his defense, was reaching for the water bottle in an attempt to hold at bay the dehydration that resulted from his Sunday-night bought with a room-service cheeseburger.

Bryant wore a beaten look when Lakers coach Phil Jackson sat him down in the first half.

``I thought he was just out of rhythm in the ballgame,'' Jackson said later. ``He didn't have a lot of ball opportunities ... in the first three quarters. I thought he got himself in kind of a combative manner, and I wanted him to sit down and get some poise.''

Then, we had never seen him so transcendent.

Jackson came away from the fourth-quarter display with the same impression as everybody else.

``I think he'll find himself and come back stronger on Sunday,'' Jackson said.

You had kept looking for signs of full, vibrant health in Bryant, who'd had an off night, scoring 22 points, in Monday's loss at Sacramento.

The other Lakers, arrayed around Bryant's figurative sick bed, had kept looking for signs that their all-court threat would be himself again soon.

But as the fourth quarter wore on and the Lakers fell deeper into a hole against the Kings on Friday, Bryant found himself shooting 3 for 15 and one foul away from disqualification.

Then he scored on a drive, innocuously cutting the Kings' lead to 83-58. The two points seemed to bring him to life.

And, not coincidentally, Kobe coming to life seemed to have an effect on the Lakers, who got baskets from the unlikely Lindsey Hunter, Devean George and Brian Shaw and then pressured Sacramento into three consecutive backcourt turnovers.

Bryant nailed a 3-pointer from the top of the key, then another from slightly to the right, and the Lakers were on a 14-0 run and within 12 points.

There would be two more Bryant 3's before the comeback attempt petered out. He had scored 16 of their 29 points during the rally.

When he fouled out with two minutes left, he had 22 points on 8 for 24 shooting in a performance that was really two games in one.

Too bad for the Lakers that Bryant's bad game was three times as long as his good game.

``This is a tough kid,'' Lakers trained Gary Vitti had said before the game, describing Bryant's recent symptoms in terms you don't want me to repeat.

He proved that, as if it needed to be proven yet again, by summoning the shots at the Lakers' most desperate moment of this postseason, even if his attempt at out-of-sick-bay heroics came too late.

``My energy felt pretty good,'' Bryant would say later. ``My rhythm was obviously a little out as far as the shots and things like that.

``I totally agree with (Jackson). There were points in the game where I was fighting with myself, especially early in the game, trying to get my rhythm back. I knew what he was doing. ... It takes a while to get your legs back.''

Now that they're back, Bryant seemed to be saying, they're back for good.

Friday night, the brightest pair of stars in Staples Center wasn't Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, it was the adjacently seated Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler, Larry David and Garry Shandling, or Sidney Poitier and Dyan Cannon.

But this was Los Angeles, not Hollywood. And so the hero climbed out of the dust only to get shot down again.

It was Kobe at his worst. It was Kobe at his best.

The Lakers have to hope that fourth quarter was a hint of what's to come.