(My Sportsbook) - The Los Angeles Lakers hope to place a stranglehold on their Western Conference quarterfinals series with the Utah Jazz Thursday when they series shifts to Salt Lake City for Game 3.

Kobe Bryant scored 18 of his 26 points in the second half on Tuesday, as the Lakers took a 2-0 series lead against Utah with a 119-109 victory at Staples Center.

Pau Gasol scored 22 points and Lamar Odom 19 on 8-of-9 shooting off the bench for the Lakers, who shot 60 percent from the floor and led wire-to-wire despite a strong push from Utah in the fourth quarter.

Bryant also had six rebounds and nine assists. Trevor Ariza contributed nine helpers and was 3-of-3 from beyond the arc on his way to 13 points. His triple with 33.9 seconds to play helped put the game away.

"We're not thinking about it being over at all we're just thinking about Game 3," Bryant said.

Deron Williams dropped 35 points and dished out nine assists for the Jazz, who also fell to the Lakers by double digits in Game 1 and have dropped 11 straight on the road against LA if you include both the regular season and playoffs.

"Our execution wasn't up to snuff offensively but defensively they shot a much higher percentage than in Game 1 and that's really the stat to look at," said Williams, whose 35 points were a career playoff high. "Could we have been better offensively, yeah, but we have enough offensive players to make up for that, so we have to get their shooting percentage down to where it was in Game 1."

Carlos Boozer added 20 points and 10 rebounds while Ronnie Brewer and Paul Millsap chipped in 14 and 13 points, respectively, in defeat.

The Jazz were again without the services of their second leading scorer, center Mehmet Okur. Okur sat out with a strained right hamstring and is expected to remain on the sidelines tonight since he did not participate in the team's shootaround Thursday morning.

Okur is Utahs second-leading scorer at 17 points per game and third on the Jazz in rebounding. He has not played since straining his right hamstring last Monday in a regular season game against the Clippers.

Utah hopes that the raucous crown at EnergySolutions Arena helps them get back in the series. The Jazz went 33-8 at home during the regular season, including a 113-109 win over the Lakers in February. LA, however, has succeeded in Salt Lake City in the past, clinching last year's conference semifinals in Utah with a 108-105 win in Game 6.

Overall, these two teams have played each other four different times in the postseason with each taking two sets. LA won in 1988 and 2008 while Utah got the best of the Lakers in both 1997 and 1998.

Game 4 is set for Saturday in Salt Lake City.