The NBA, where dreadful Finals happen.

The Lakers won 87-81 at Staples tonight, but if that was supposed to make Lakers fans feel better — or even vaguely entertained — it didn’t quite do the trick.

Kobe Bryant scored 36 points in an effort that would have exhausted Sisyphus, and Sasha “The Machine” Vujacic came off the bench to bomb in 20.

The rest of the Lakers … well, oh, what’s the technical term? … sucked.

The Celtics were hardly better, and now this looks not so much like the NBA’s two best teams as its two greatest survivors, mud-wrestling game by game until somebody wins four. I keep hoping it will become a better-looking series, but it has gone from ugly to thoroughly repulsive as we have moved from Game 1 to Game 3. At the rate this is regressing, Game 4 may be decided on a sumo mat and Game 7 in the octagon.

But the Lakers won, Did I mention that?

Scary stats for the Lakers:

–Lamar Odom, channeling his inner wimp, scored four points with five fouls in 28 minutes.

–Pau Gasol almost made a person nostalgic for Kwame Brown’s interior bulk, getting pushed into invisibility by Kendrick “Who?” Perkins. He was limited to nine points and appeared to have no confidence to score anywhere against anybody.

–Vlad Radmanovic scored an early three and was never seen again, aside from those four fouls.

–Derek Fisher went 1-for-6.

The 80 percent of the starting lineup not named Kobe scored a grand total of 22 points, and all the Lakers not named Bryant or Vujacic shot 28.1 percent from the floor.

They won this game only because the Celtics were right there with them in incompetence, especially on the attack. Boston shot 34.9 percent, and that was with Ray Allen going 8-for-13.

Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce played exactly like a couple of guys who have Never Won Nothin’. KG was 6-for-21, and nearly all were open looks. Pierce was 2-for-14 and dominated down the stretch by Kobe. Where was that wheelchair when the Laurence Olivier of the hardwood really needed some props?

Bryant’s willingness to take the ball to the rim and absorb abuse — and actually get the officials to call fouls — set the tone. Doc Rivers suggested the Lakers were the more aggressive team, but Phil narrowed that down to Kobe Bean Bryant, and that about tells it.

Bryant shot nearly twice as many free throws (18) as the Lakers as a team got (10) in Game 2. He missed seven of them, and tongue-in-cheek chalked it up to his unfamiliarity with that odd stripe 15 feet from the basket.

“It felt like I was in a foreign territory because I haven’t been there in so long,” he said. “It’s like somebody took me and dropped me off in the middle of Shanghai with no translator, you know what I’m saying? And no dictionary. It was crazy.”

All that, and the best quote in the building, too.

Then there was The Machine, the Slovenian Nightmare, who was 7-for-10 with a pair of huge threes in the fourth quarter, one to open the final 12 minutes and then a cold-blooded dagger from the corner with 1:55 left after Odom fed him with a pass from Bryant, who was being mugged by Allen and Garnett near midcourt.

Vujacic refused to answer a direct question about the origin of his nickname, The Machine (he gave it to himself), and also was coy when informed that Phil Jackson said he also is known as Rock Head. Though Phil gave Rocky credit for his unshakable conviction that his next shot will go down, and the sooner he takes it, the better.

The Lakers still have a lot of work to do. The Celtics are now 2-8 on the road in the playoffs, so maybe the Lakers actually can win the next two here. Maybe. Even still, the Lakes would need to win once at Boston, where the Celtics are 12-1 in the postseason.

They Lakers won’t survive the two games here if Odom and Gasol don’t get it going. The two guys who were supposed to give the Lakers parity (if not superiority) up front against Garnett, Perkins and Pierce have been overwhelmed. Odom can’t stay out of foul trouble, and can’t do anything right when he’s actually in the game. Gasol, meanwhile, seems to be disappearing before our very eyes.

Luke Walton is a zero off the bench, Ronny Turiaf isn’t much better, and now you’re talking about trying to beat a Celtics team that went 66-16 … with Kobe and some combination of Vujacic, Fisher and Jordan Farmar.

It worked out tonight. Barely. But the Lakers won’t be able to make a habit of it. Even if the tenor of these games, ugly and getting uglier, looks as if it has been firmly established.