<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Frank Hamblen provided the option of staying together or fragmenting, and the Lakers answered definitively, in unison and fragment-free. The Lakers managed to win the first 48 minutes of a six-game trip, coming out a day after a two-hour clear-the-air meeting and aligning themselves in the right direction, at least for one game. They defeated the Dallas Mavericks, 100-95, in front of 20,411 Thursday at American Airlines Center, a win big enough that Kobe Bryant made reference to Ben Franklin afterward and Lamar Odom talked of confidence instead of cataclysm. Bryant had 36 points on 14-for-22 shooting, Odom had 15 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists, and the Lakers pulled into a tie with the Denver Nuggets for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. "Nobody standing in front of us thinks we were going to win on this trip," Bryant said. "Nobody, nobody. So there's no pressure on us. This is an opportunity for us to go out and do something big." One Philadelphian then paraphrased another. "We must all hang together or we will surely all hang separately," Bryant said.</div> Source
