My goodness, that was ugly. Toadstool ugly. Coyote ugly.

The first half of Game 3 was an unsightly mess, littered with bad passes, stupid fouls, laughably errant shots and thoroughly inept offenses.

The Lakers lead, 43-37, but you can’t really say they deserved to lead. They simply played not quite as horribly as did the Celtics, who were setting some sort of record for “worst 24-minute performance by a 66-win team.”

The Lakers also benefitted from a fat, 22-7 advantage in shots from the free-throw line. Had they been able to make more than 12 of those 22 … they could have been up 15. Easy.

It was a disquieting first half, no matter where your allegiances lie.

The Lakers were a one man and one Machine team. Kobe Bryant scored 19 points on 6-of-10 shooting as he worked, essentially, without backup from the rest of the starting five. And Sasha “The Machine” Vujacic came off the bench to score 12 on 4-for-5 shooting.

Other than that, the Lakers didn’t show up.

Lamar Odom, zero points, three fouls, 7:07 of game time.

Pau Gasol, two points on 0-for-4 shooting. Derek Fisher, two points in 13 minutes, Vlad Radmanovic three points in 9:31. Luke Walton scoreless in another useless 7:26 of game action.

The Celtics were as bad. Well, worse.

Kevin Garnett, 1-for-9, two points in a “this is a superstar?” half.

Paul Pierce, two points on 1-for-7 shooting.

They shot 32.6 percent in the half, and just stunk up the joint. The thing for them was, they were down only six, and very much in the game. This butt-ugly game.