The Lakers held off a pesky, young Sacramento squad to win 118-108 on Sunday night at Staples Center.

Playing for the third time in four days, the Lakers had to bear down to win their 11th game of the young season. The Kings fought back from a 19-point fourth-quarter deficit to within four.

"I thought we played a stellar third quarter and came out and started the fourth quarter OK, but then we ran aground," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. "Good recovery though by the starters: They went out and settled us down and got the game under control."

In crunch time four starters and ever-active forward Trevor Ariza restored order as the NBA's most dominant team cruised to another double-digit victory before 18,997 fans.

And that, the Lakers said, is what matters.

"Sometimes you make yourself proud when you win and you didn't play your best," Lakers forward Lamar Odom said. "And all we care about is Lakers. We don't worry about what other teams think."

So if anyone's thinking Sacramento (5-10) and its speedy group of guards might have exposed some chinks, Odom and Co. claim not to be too concerned.

Not after authoring a final six minutes during which they outscored Sacramento 13-7 on a series of positive plays that included a couple of pretty layups from Kobe Bryant and Ariza, a putback from Pau Gasol and a couple big steals from Derek Fisher and Ariza.

Meanwhile, the Kings, who'd kept the heat on for so much of the evening, went cold.

To get close at all, Sacramento got an especially big boost from reserve guard Bobby Brown, formerly a star at Cal State Fullerton.

Brown scored 21 points in 25 minutes on 8-of-13 shooting.

Collaborating with fellow guards John Salmons (24 points) and Bobby Jackson (15), the Kings smalls rallied their team to 105-101 with 6:17 to go.

"There's a lot of stuff that we can improve on, we made a lot of mistakes," said Ariza, who accounted for 11 points, 11 rebounds, five assists and three steals in 24 minutes. "We had them down by 19 at the start of the fourth and we let them back in the game, so we know tomorrow when we get back to practice we have a lot to work on."

Bryant led the Lakers with 24 points.

The Lakers gave themselves reason to get giddy on the bench with a good third quarter, when they broke open a modest nine-point halftime lead by outscoring the Kings 35-28.

The first half was on the scrappy side and a real team effort for the Lakers, who spread 11 turnovers among seven players. They also got a balanced effort filling it up, shooting 53 percent in the opening half and getting scoring contributions from all nine players who stepped on the court.

Reach Mirjam Swanson at mswanson@PE.com