Kobe Bryant, right, scores on Jermaine O'Neal on Wednesday. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

Kobe Bryant was only half as good as he was the other night, but the effort was more than enough to repel the Toronto Raptors.

Bryant, who scored 61 points Monday night at New York, led all players with 36 points as the Los Angeles Lakers pulled out a 115-107 victory over the Raptors at the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday night.

Bryant also had nine rebounds, five assists and two steals, but he had to earn it because defender Joey Graham stuck to him like glue.

"Joey did a great job," Raptors interim head coach Jay Triano said. "It's tough to say that when a guy gets 36 points, but he was there, he was there all the time.

"There was nothing easy. He didn't have any really tough drives to the basket because we showed bodies.

"We forced him to take challenged shots. He's going to make some of them — and he did."

"Coach was just saying make Kobe work," Graham said. "That means on defence and on offence.

"I was just trying to run him as much as possible and get him tired. It didn't work, but I tried."

Pao Gasol impressed with 31 points and a game-best 15 rebounds for the Lakers (39-9), winners in three straight games and seven of eight.

Lamar Odom and Derek Fisher had 13 points and 12 points, respectively.

Graham scored a career-high 24 points for Toronto, which lost its fourth straight game — and all-star forward Chris Bosh with a sprained right knee.

Bosh had 12 points, eight rebounds and five assists in 28½ minutes before leaving early in the fourth quarter.

His status is uncertain.

Jermaine O'Neal was tremendous for the Raptors (19-32) as he poured in 22 points, pulled down nine rebounds and blocked nine shots.

Andrea Bargnani had 21 points and nine rebounds, while Anthony Parker had 18 points and a game-high nine assists.

Jose Calderon was scratched from the lineup with a tender right hamstring, the same problem that shelved him for 10 of 11 games in January.

That forced Parker to shift to point guard from shooting guard, where Graham was given the start.

"We usually have a tough game here," Lakers head coach Phil Jackson said. "We were prepared for this type of a game here."

'We played hard right through'

Toronto was coming off a 101-83 loss at Cleveland, where LeBron James led all scorers with 33 points and, at 24, became the youngest player in NBA history to reach the 12,000-point plateau.

Bryant was 25 years old by the time he reached 12,000 points.

"I just thought, tonight, we had better movement and we were aggressive," Triano said. "If we can put a stamp on that effort, we will win a lot of basketball games.

"We played hard tonight. We played hard right through."

Toronto put a bigger lineup on the court in a bid to capitalize on Los Angeles losing centre Andrew Bynum, who will miss eight to 12 weeks with a torn medial collateral ligament in his right knee.

Bynum was injured last Saturday when Bryant inadvertently landed on the seven-footer's leg in a 115-98 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies.

Bryant more than picked up the slack Monday with the 61-point performance, a record for Madison Square Garden, in a 126-117 triumph over the New York Knicks.

He also owns the record at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where he scored a career-high 81 points in a 122-104 victory over the Raptors on Jan. 22, 2006.

Bryant's output that night ranks second to the 100 points the late Wilt Chamberlain tallied for the Philadelphia Warriors in a 169-147 win over the Knicks on March 2, 1962.

'We got it going a little bit more'

Bryant scored 10 points in the fourth quarter Wednesday night and went for the jugular with 2½ minutes remaining, making a long jump shot from the wing to put Los Angeles ahead 106-100.

"We got it going a little bit more," he said. "We, obviously, picked up our energy a little bit.

"It felt like the first three quarters, we didn't have the pop we needed. In the fourth quarter, it seemed to be there for us."

Parker failed to draw a foul on a drive at the other end, only to have Gasol extend the Lakers' lead to seven points with a free throw.

The Raptors crept closer on Graham's finger roll with 42 seconds left, but he failed to complete the three-point play and Bryant hit a pullup jumper from the top of the key to make it 109-104.

Parker then missed on a floating jumper and was forced to fouled Bryant, who made two free throws to put Los Angeles up 111-104 with 18 seconds on the clock.

After the Raptors took a timeout, Parker bounced a three-point attempt off the rim and Gasol made good on two free throws with 11 seconds left.

Raptors rookie Roko Ukic trimmed the deficit to eight points on an uncontested layup, but Sasha Vujacic closed out the scoring with two free throws with five seconds remaining.

With files from the Canadian Press