This was called a must-win, not because it really was, but because of the odds.

In the NBA, when teams get down in a series 3-0, the national anthem is replaced by taps. The fat lady is on her second verse. And don't look for Las Vegas to post odds on a comeback, because no one is dumb enough to place that bet.

You are more likely to find Kobe Bryant's MVP award on eBay than to dig your way out of a 3-0 hole.

It's not impossible, it's just never happened before.

Prior to this year's playoffs, NBA teams who got down 3-0 have had nearly a regular season of failure. It's happened 81 times and 81 times the results have been the same, like some sort of mathematical certainty.

So Friday night the Jazz approached the game as a do-or-cry game. They were emotionally vested.

For the most part the Jazz, played like their paychecks depended on a win and it was payday for Jazz fans as Utah held on for a 104-99 victory to cut the Lakers' series lead to 2-1 and give the Jazz life.

"You got a lot of guys in this locker room who don't be embarrassed," said Jazz forward Matt Harpring. "We don't want to be down 3-0. If you're down 3-0, it's a completely different series than if you're down 2-1. We got a series now and we're looking forward to Sunday's game."

Mehmet Okur scored 22 points and hit four 3-pointers. Deron Williams scored 18 points and handed out 12 assists. Harpring and Andrei Kirilenko each finished with 12 points, but best of all for Jazz fans was the re-emergence of Carlos Boozer, who had his best game of the series. The slumping forward had two sub-par games, scoring 15 points in Game 1 and just 10 points in Game 2 and was shooting 37 percent from the field.

But that changed on Friday. He scored 27 points and 20 rebounds. And when Utah watched its one-time 13-point lead shrink to just three with three minutes left in the game, Boozer hit a short jump hook that was the biggest shot of the game. He followed that up by hitting consecutive baskets to give Utah a 101-92 lead with two minutes to play. Utah need another 1:46 to finally finish off the Lakers. It wasn't until Ronnie Brewer made 1-of-2 free throws with 14 seconds to play that Jazz fans could exhale.

"Well, we just have to get ready to play. You look at it as if the season's over if you don't get ready to play again," Sloan said. "You've got to try to get yourselves ready to play and compete. That was the most important thing. I thought we competed very hard, a little bit more than what we had over there."

There were some encouraging signs for Utah. As a team, the Jazz have improved their shooting from 38 percent in Game 1, to 44 percent in Game 2, to an even 50 percent in Game 3.

Utah even held Bryant under his series average of 36 points per game. Bryant had just eight points in the first half on 1-of-5 shooting from the field. He did go crazy in the second half, throwing down a dunk over Andrei Kirilenko and then banking a shot off the glass to himself and throwing down a dunk like he was playing a game of HORSE. But the Jazz must take what small victories they can get. At least Bryant's 34 points was less than his series average and most of Bryant's points came when the team down by double digits.

"They haven't lost in the postseason until right now, so they have been playing confident. Hopefully they have the feeling that they can't just walk in here and get a win, that it's going to be tough," Harpring said. "We were up 12-14 points. We had some lapses again. We can't do that. We get ahead 14 points and we get a couple of stops, (and) it puts a dagger right in the back. Hopefully if we do get in that position on Sunday, we do finish them off."

Utah's win did nothing to shake L.A.'s confidence that the series has turned in Utah's favor. The Jazz simply stayed alive.

"We feel like we still have momentum, we're still up 2-1," said Laker forward Ronny Turiaf. "We knew they were going to have a great game with great energy. We knew it would be a tough matchup, we're just going to have to keep banging and keep going back to what's been successful."

Utah's win now makes Sunday's game just as critical. The hope is that the Jazz can play like they know that there have been just eight teams in playoff history have come back from 3-1 deficits. In other words, 94 percent of the time the team with a 3-1 team wins the series and in most cases those teams didn't have Kobe Bryant playing for them.

That makes Sunday's game another must-win.

• Neil Warner can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it