CLEVELAND — For once, Kobe Bryant wasn't the face of the Lakers.
He left the locker room half an hour after reporters cleared out, the blue hood of his sweat shirt pulled over his head as he walked gingerly, even unsteadily, down a hallway in the general direction of the team bus.
He was the only one not enjoying a 101-91 victory over Cleveland, an event that ended the Cavaliers' 23-game home winning streak and completed a trip that matched the most successful regular-season road swing in Lakers history.
Bryant experienced flu-like symptoms before, during and after Sunday's game at Quicken Loans Arena, but Lamar Odom came up with perhaps the healthiest game of his five-year Lakers career, posting season highs with 28 points and 17 rebounds as the Lakers finished a perfect six for six on their 11-day trip.
They stood tall against two of the league's best, going shove for shove with Boston on Thursday before gliding past Cleveland by winning the second half, 50-30.
Then they returned home after waiting for Bryant to emerge from a darkened trainer's room, where he received a second round of IV fluids, the first coming at halftime.
Whatever bug it was, it hit him hard, forcing him to miss a team meeting in the morning and making him physically ill right before the Lakers took the court for tipoff . . . and again at halftime . . . and again after scoring 19 points in 35 minutes, no shot bigger than the high-arching 13-foot turnaround over LeBron James with 2:49 left to play.
His only points in the fourth quarter gave the Lakers a 95-89 lead on the way to a season sweep of the Cavaliers, equaling the 2-0 mark they earned against the Celtics three days earlier. The Lakers hold the tiebreaker against both teams for home-court advantage in the NBA Finals, should they finish with identical regular-season records.
Bryant did not talk to reporters after the game, but others talked about him, and about Odom, the unquestioned star of the game.
The Lakers were listing in the first half, sputtering to a 61-51 deficit as their defense showed none of the toughness it had demonstrated in the Boston victory.
Then came the third quarter, and the start of the Odom hour.
He had 15 points and 10 rebounds in that quarter alone, pushing the Lakers quite single-handedly to an 82-77 lead.
