NEW YORK, January 23 – Kobe Bryant marked his return to Madison Square Garden by scoring 27 points to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to a 115-105 win over the New York Knicks on Friday.Bryant put up big numbers in the fourth quarter, scoring 13 points but it was far short of his last visit to the Garden when he scored an arena-record 61 points.
Pau Gasol added 20 points which translated into 20,000 dollars for the Haiti earthquake victims. Gasol said earlier he would contribute 1,000 dollars for each point he scored Friday.
"We had to fight through fatigue," Gasol said. "At the beginning we were allowing too many layups.
"We played much better in the second half. Once we started playing good defence in the fourth quarter it was a lot better."
Andrew Bynum finished with 19 points for Los Angeles, who lost to LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday.
The Lakers are just two games into an eight-game road swing.
"We take it one game at a time," said Lakers Ron Artest. "We played decent, we didn’t play great."
David Lee scored a season-high 31 points and grabbed 17 rebounds, Wilson Chandler added 28 points and Danilo Gallinari had 20 for the losing team.
