BOSTON (AP) – Banner No. 17 is halfway to the rafters. The Celtics are two wins from another NBA championship.

And maybe a little lucky to be there.

Paul Pierce, darting around the parquet floor with ease, scored 28 points, Boston’s defense mobbed Kobe Bryant long enough and unknown Leon Powe scored 21 points as the Celtics held off a remarkable Los Angeles rally for a 108-102 win over the Lakers on Sunday night. The Celtics have a 2-0 lead in these trip-down-memory-lane NBA finals.

The Celtics had to work every second to get the win.

The Lakers trailed by 24 with less than 8 minutes to go, but pulled to 104-102 on two free throws by Bryant with 38.4 seconds left. But Pierce made two free throws, then blocked a jumper by Sasha Vujacic, and James Posey made two free throws with 12.6 seconds left to ice it for Boston.

“I think we got kind of complacent with the lead,” Pierce said. “We weren’t staying aggressive. We let them pick up their pressure. We stopped guarding. We got to take a lesson from this fourth quarter to keep playing regardless of the score and finish the game.”

Pierce wasn’t slowed by a sprained right knee suffered in the series opener, when he was carried from the court and plopped into a wheelchair. The Boston captain paced the Celtics, who are back in the finals for the first since 1987, when Larry Bird was the main man and gasoline cost 91 cents per gallon.

As usual, Boston’s Big Three – Pierce, Ray Allen (17 points) and Kevin Garnett (17) – were the ringleaders but Powe, a second-year reserve had the game of his career, adding his 21 points in 15 minutes that may make him a Celtics fan-favorite for life.

Powe, who played a total of 68 seconds during one stretch of 13 games during the season, scored six points to close a 15-2 run ending the third quarter that gave the Celtics a 22-point lead, a burst had the Lakers California dreaming. At one point in the fourth quarter, Boston fans discarded the familiar chants of “Beat L.A.” for cries of “Le-on Powe!”

Rajon Rondo had 16 assists and Garnett added 14 rebounds for the Celtics, back in the finals for the first time since 1987.

Game 3 is Tuesday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where the Lakers are 8-0 in the postseason and have won 14 in a row at home since March 28. Bryant had better hope the rims there are a little kinder than the ones in TD Banknorth Garden.

“We knew we had to get this win this was a big win going out West,” Pierce said. “Our mind-set is to get Game 3 and try take away their confidence and win this series in L.A.. We knew it was going to be tough, but nobody said it was going to be easy.”

Bryant, who pledged to bounce back from a sub-par Game 1, scored 30 points – 13 in the fourth – on 11-of-23 shooting. In four losses to Boston this season, Bryant is just 35-of-93 from the field and can’t seem to get the same easy looks he enjoys against every other team.

Pau Gasol had 17 points and 10 rebounds for the Lakers, who were down 95-71 with 7:55 when they mounted a comeback that fell just short.

Bryant’s 3-pointer made it 102-91 and then the self-proclaimed “Black Mamba” slithered down the lane for two quick baskets that got the Lakers within 104-95. The Celtics, meanwhile, began to stand around on offense, thinking the game was in hand.

It was anything but.

After Vujacic hit a 3-pointer, Vladimir Radmanovic made a steal and dunk to make it 104-100 and Celtics, who had been dancing moments earlier began to panic. None of the Celtics seemed to want the ball and Rondo missed a jumper before Bryant’s free throws got Los Angeles within two.

Bryant, Lakers run out of time

Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers ran out of time Sunday night.

Perhaps their amazing fourth-quarter comeback will give them hope in a most difficult situation.

Bryant scored 13 of his 30 points in the last 7:40 Sunday night as the Lakers erased all but two points of a 24-point deficit before losing to the Boston Celtics 108-102 in Game 2 of the NBA finals.

Only three teams have ever recovered from the 2-0 deficit Los Angeles faces to win the finals, but the teams play the next three games at Staples Center, where the Lakers are 8-0 in the postseason and have won 14 straight since last losing March 28.

Bryant, who shot 9-for-26 and scored 24 points in a 98-88 loss in Game 1, shot 11-for-23 Sunday night, and also had five of his eight assists in the fourth quarter.

The Lakers have only themselves to blame for falling so far behind. They were within nine points before being outscored 27-12 to finish the third quarter and start the fourth, mainly because of a sieve-like defense. It was never more blatant than when unheralded Leon Powe, who scored a career playoff high 21 points, cruised down the lane for a dunk early in the fourth quarter. There was simply no resistance.

The Lakers were plagued by foul problems all night, and it was reflected at the foul line, where the Celtics shot 27-for-38 while the Lakers were just 10-for-10.

The Lakers’ bench was abysmal at times, but came alive to score 18 points in the final period including six each by Jordan Farmar and Sasha Vujacic.

Vujacic had a chance to bring the Lakers within one point with about 15 seconds left, but his 3-pointer was blocked by Paul Pierce.

Pau Gasol disappeared offensively in the second half for the second straight game, scoring only four of his 17 points. He had just three of his 15 after halftime in the opener.

And Lamar Odom picked up his fifth foul in the final seconds of the third quarter. He scored eight of his 10 points in the first half.

Trevor Ariza entered the game in the first 2 minutes when Vladimir Radmanovic picked up two early fouls and played his first meaningful minutes since breaking his right foot in practice Jan. 20. He wound up going scoreless in 7 minutes.

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Stern: Red’s recommendation helped create 2-3-2 format

Any Celtics fans complaining about the 2-3-2 NBA finals format should keep something in mind: Red Auerbach had a role in its implementation.

David Stern revealed that Sunday night during his annual finals press conference, recalling a conversation he had with the Celtics patriarch early in his tenure as commissioner.

“Although he’s not here to defend himself and deny it, I tell you that Red said to me back in ’84, ‘This is too much. Play, travel, play, travel, play, travel,”‘ Stern said. “In subsequent years he said it was terrible that we changed it to 2-3-2, but a young commissioner was motivated by the father of us all.”

Stern said the league would look into everything from determining penalties for flopping to the 9 p.m. EDT start times for the finals, but had little news to offer following what he called one of the league’s “best seasons in years.”

He added that the league should do some research on the finals format, but cited a statistic showing the higher-seeded team has won 75 percent of the finals series since the switch.

The lower-seeded team hosts Games 3-5 in the finals, a change from the other playoff rounds, which use a 2-2-1-1-1 format. The switch was made in 1984, Stern’s first season in charge, partly because of the difficulty in travel from Boston to Los Angeles, which met in both 1984 and ’85.

Boston coach Doc Rivers said Saturday he didn’t like the format because the higher-seeded team doesn’t get to host Game 5, usually a crucial game in a series.

At the league’s Competition Committee meetings last month, teams were told that players would be fined next season for flopping, when a defender falls down on purpose in trying to draw an offensive foul.

Stern has complained about flopping before and noted there is a rule against it in international basketball and soccer, but stopped short of declaring there will be a new one in the NBA.

“I think it’s a bad thing. It’s not a good thing. I’m not sure exactly how you deal with it,” Stern said.

“I don’t think it’s the most … it’s not the best part of our game, because it’s either designed to fool the official or to make the crowd think that the official did a bad thing by not giving him a call. So we’re struggling with exactly how the best way to deal with it, if at all.”

Stern also said the committee showed no interest in any changes to the postseason seeding process.

The league has been criticized for starting its games so late, leading to finishes too late for many children in the East. But league research has shown that its best ratings come late, something Stern acknowledged.

“We wrestle with it because if the idea is to let the largest audience see the game, including youngsters, there’s no doubt that at 11:30 Eastern, that’s when the largest audience is gathered in,” Stern said.

“Having thought about it, it wouldn’t be a terrible thing to have a Sunday night game at 7 o’clock, but our network partners tell us that your ratings will be lower, and to me that isn’t just about selling air time, that means that you’ll have a lower audience count, and why would you want to have a lower audience count.”

With little else to discuss, Stern allowed himself time to complain again about the pregame entertainment in arenas, which he complained about earlier this postseason.

“I’m allowed, as this is my 25th finals, I’m allowed to say that we’ve got to do something about flopping and we have got to do something about fireworks at games,” Stern said. “The fireworks have been much more popular with the media than the flopping, but you have to say something at press conferences as you go around, and so those are my two topics for the playoff season.”

Boston’s gone green this year

For Brian Shaw, these were the true sights and sounds of Boston.

Celtics flags everywhere. Fans shouting at the Lakers’ bus, most of them decked out in green. Even the driver taking the team to the arena was wearing a Celtics hat.

That was missing in recent years, and so were wins on the basketball court. But with the Celtics back in the NBA finals, the city has regained a part of its identity.

Beantown has gone green again.

“I’m sure that everybody feels like the team is back where it belongs and things are the way that they are supposed to be,” Shaw said.

Shaw began his career with the Celtics, ended it with the Lakers, and is now an assistant on Phil Jackson’s staff. Los Angeles was trying to even the series Sunday night in Game 2 before if shifted to the West Coast.

Shaw was drafted in 1988, the year after the Celtics lost to the Lakers in their last finals appearance. He was traded to Miami in 1992, and later realized that some of the fans left town, too.

“I know that there were games we played here in recent years that wasn’t sold out, which was different,” Shaw said. “The years that I was here it was always sold out.

“I know a couple of years ago the fans here were chanting ‘MVP!’ when Kobe put on a show here, that would have never ever happened before. So I think that the culture kind of changed. I’m sure that it’s coming back now to the way it was.”

Long before the Red Sox and Patriots became the dominant teams in their sports, it was up to the Celtics to bring titles home to Boston. They often delivered, winning 16 of them, tops in the NBA.

But the last came back in 1986, and in recent years the Celtics were even mocked, when they weren’t being ignored. Once the best in the NBA, they had to settle for being third best in their own city.

“I know it’s been a struggle for the Celts, since the ’90s, getting fans interested, especially competing against the Red Sox and Patriots. They’re kind of 1 and 2 I guess in Boston, so the Celts had to kind of compete with that. Now they’re back up there,” said Peter Colton, owner and manager of The Four’s, a sports bar across the street from the TD Banknorth Garden where patrons can look at pictures of Larry Bird while eating a sandwich named for him.

Bird retired after the 1992 season, and the Celtics didn’t win another playoff series until 10 years later. They missed the postseason the last two years and became a laughingstock last season, when they won 24 games and sometimes seemed more interested in losing for a better shot at landing the No. 1 pick in the draft.

“I guess the low point was a year ago when they lost 18 straight or something like that,” Celtics Hall of Famer John Havlicek said. “But you know there are cyclical things in sports and they reached rock bottom. Now they’re riding the wave of that championship feeling. So I think you have to go through the good and the bad, and fortunately right now they’re fighting for a championship.”

That hardly seemed possible last spring, when the Celtics celebrated the 50th anniversary of their first championship. Things were so bad that Boston’s first attempt to trade for Kevin Garnett collapsed because the All-Star didn’t think he had a chance to win there.

Garnett changed his mind after the Celtics acquired Ray Allen, and decided to come to Boston. The fans followed, as every home game was sold out after the team averaged 16,900 fans at its 18,624-seat arena last season.

“It’s such a different atmosphere now over the last two, three years as opposed to this year,” said Dana Barros, a former Celtics player who now works for the organization. “I think in any situation when you’re losing, even free agents don’t want to come. And once we turned everything around, you got everyone in the world calling trying to move here as well as coaches and everything else.”

Colton said he’s seen some of the hardcore fans from the 1980s come back around – perhaps some of the same ones Shaw noticed had been missing.

“I think the true Celtic fans kind of went away and hid the last few years when the team was down,” Shaw said. “But I’m sure everybody is back out now and they pulled out their Celtics flags and caps and T-shirts and is wearing them around town proudly now.”