For 'Black Mamba' Kobe Bryant, this year's NBA finals are an opportunity and a challenge.

His team, the LA Lakers, beat Orlando Magic convincingly (100-75) in the first of the seven-final games on Thursday. The pressure is on Bryant to fill the gap left by legend Shaquille O'Neil to lead the Lakers to their first NBA championship win since O'Neil left.

The Lakers are pegged favourites this year and Bryant, who dazzled at the Staples Centre arena with an astounding 40 points against Orlando Magic on Thursday, knows what that means for his career.u00a0

Complete focus
"I want to win this title really bad," he said, flashing what local journalists here called 'his first smile in weeks.'

The focus on winning is complete and discernable even in the way he speaks. "I put everything into the game.

Physically, I am in great shape, perhaps best-ever. We are playing very good basketball. And I am hoping that we continue in the same vein," Bryant said.u00a0u00a0

The score at the end of the first quarter indicated that adoring LA fans would be kept on the edge of their seats by Dwight Howard and Co. But Bryant, who took his time settling down, justified why he likes to be called the Black Mamba, South Africa's deadliest reptile.

He started getting his way around in the second quarter, but in the third, he started dictating terms, scoring as many as 26 points to open up a 22-point lead by the end of it. With such a huge lead to negate inside 12 minutes of the last quarter, the visitors were complete goners. They had no chance, more so since Howard was totally off-colour and Magics' shooting at its worst.