The Phoenix Suns defeated the Los Angeles Lakers Sunday by the score of 95-87. Kobe Bryant scored 39 points in the game, but merely two points in the entire fourth quarter. In 34 minutes of action Suns guard Leonardo Barbosa scored 26 points, 19 of which he scored in the second half, carrying the Suns to a victory.

Bryant attempted 10 field goals in the fourth quarter and only made one, a shooting performance that would ultimately cost the Lakers. With a score of 77-71 in the fourth quarter, Barbosa led the Suns to a rally to come from behind and defeat the Lakers. Another driving factor for the Suns was Amare Stoudemire, who scored 23 points, nabbed 12 rebounds and had 2 blocks.  Steve Nash scored 20 points and had 20 assists, and Shawn Marion had 16 points and 16 rebounds.

The two teams will play Game Two of this series on Tuesday. The bottom line is that Kobe must step it up for the rest of this series. He has to score late in the game, and score often late in the game. He is the leader of this team, and has to have more than one assist for the team to prosper. If he doesn’t have his shot one game, he has to stop taking so many of them and focus on getting the ball around more to his teammates. He can’t win the game by himself. If the Suns counted solely upon Steve Nash or Shawn Marion they would not have won this game. Instead the unlikely hero Barbosa stepped up, and the Lakers didn’t have a player do the same.