"We can't stop him," Sloan added. "If we double him, they've got guys who can really make 3-point shots — and that puts a lot of pressure on you."

That's a reference to Odom and ex-Jazz guard Derek Fisher.

Fisher hit three treys as L.A. whittled away at Utah's lead, and Odom one — off a Bryant drive-and-kick — that tied the game at 106.

In the midst of all that, Okur was tagged with a technical for his fist-pumping reaction to being called for a foul on Pau Gasol.

But Williams — who admitted to cheating to help too much on one of Fisher's 3-pointers, and to getting caught by a backscreen on another — calmed the Jazz down.

"We just had to stick together," he said when asked what he told teammates. "Can't worry about the refs. You just can't. You just have to let things go how they go; if they call a foul, just keep playing. That's all we can do."

That's similar to the Jazz's second-quarter reaction after backup point guard Ronnie Price got clobbered by Lakers big man Ronny Turiaf and crashed to the floor, sustaining a four-stitch cut over his right eye.

They reacted but didn't overreact — and instead fed off the flagrant 2.

"When things like that happen, it gets guys going, it gets guys riled up, just because that's a tense moment in the game," Williams said. "And I think we used that to our advantage. Our crowd definitely got into it."

After Fisher hit a free throw stemming from the call on Okur — "I deserved it, by the way," the big Turk said — the Jazz got back to business.

"We did a good job after that of staying composed, keeping our poise, and doing the things we needed to do to win," Williams said.

Carlos Boozer hit two free throws with 33.7 seconds left in the fourth to break the tie, but Odom — not blocked out by Boozer — followed a Bryant miss to make it 108-108.

The Jazz had 4.6 seconds remaining to win in regulation, but Fisher blocked a 20-footer from Williams, who wished afterward that he had stepped to his right rather than his left to shoot.

And with that, overtime was on.

"Memo, he got hot for a second (after the tech), but he calmed himself back down and was able to come back and hit some big shots in the end," shooting guard Kyle Korver added. "He was flustered, but he wasn't upset."

With Game 5 on Wednesday in L.A. and Game 6 on Friday in Utah, though, the West's No. 1-seeded Lakers now are just two losses away from being just that.

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com