The Lakers damn near lost this one. If Courtney Lee catches that end-of-regulation lob from Hedo Turkoglu perhaps six inches farther away from the backboard, he scores at the buzzer, the Lakers lose … and the NBA Finals is 1-1 as it shifts to Orlando.

Instead … Lee caught the ball a little too deep, was a little off-balance (and missed the shot), the Lakers heaved a sigh of relief and finally turned it up in overtime to dispatch the Orlando Magic, 101-96, at Staples Center tonight.

The Lakers were not very good. But neither was Orlando. It was an odd game. And not in an interesting way. The crowd was profoundly dead. All those stars and industry people apparently know when they’re looking at bad basketball.

Ultimately, it seemed as if it would come down to who would make the more memorable error, the gaffe his team couldn’t survive, and it turned out it was the Magic and, specifically, Courtney Lee’s inability to put down a layup — not an easy layup. But a layup, nonetheless.

In a sense, this game is creepy for Lakers fans. Orlando cleaned up a lot of its problems from Game 1, when the Lakers torched the Magic, 100-75, prompting all those front-running pundits to start talking about a sweep.

The Magic closed down the lane, pushed the Lakers back several feet on nearly every offensive possession and double-teamed Kobe Bryant so cleverly that he had trouble diagnosing the double and finding the open man.

The Magic made some threes (10-of-30) and Dwight Howard even managed a dunk.

Orlando played harder. Much harder. And the Magic was unafraid, “loosey-goosey” as Kobe Bryant put it. It makes for a team that doesn’t take its whippings personnally. Doesn’t internalize them. Which makes them dangerous because they have, to go with their talent, a spirit that is not easily broken down. Unlike, say, the Denver Nuggets. The Magic’s effort showed in the rebounding stat, which the Lakers lost decisively, 44-35.

Anyway, ugly game. Both teams laboring to score, out of their offenses. I found myself wondering if this is what the game would like like if the rims were replaced with models about an inch tighter.

The Magic led, 86-84, with 93 seconds to play. Despite playing a game in which it made 20 turnovers, shot 41.8 percent from the field and got almost nothing from its entire backcourt.

As Stan Van Gundy noted (and more than once) … Orlando’s guard corps (Rafer Alston, Jameer Nelson, J.J. Reddick, Mickael Pietrus and Lee) shot a combined 6-for-26. And as Van Gundy further noted, “I don’t think it’s much trouble to get our guards shots. They (the Lakers) aren’t guarding them. They’re only guarding three guys. So it’s not very hard to get those (guards) shots.”

Van Gundy despaired of his guards to the point that he went with a no-point-guard lineup for much of the third quarter, when the Magic threatened to take control of the game.

“I will say this,” Van Gundy said. “I’m not sure I have another lineup to throw out there that you haven’t seen now, OK? Unless I’m going to play, like, Dwight, Marcin (Gortat), Tony (Battie), Rashard (Lewis) and Hedo. I don’t have another one now. We played with no point guard. We played conventionally. We had Rashard at the 3.  We played Hedo at the 1, 2 and 3. We played Rashard at the 3 and the 4. We played big, we played with no point guard. What do they say? ‘Just keep throwing stuff at the wall and hope something sticks?’ ”

This almost stuck.

Can the Lakers close this out in Orlando? Maybe. Probably not. Can they win it, eventually? With five chances to win two games, I think so.

But this is a resilient opponent. Orlando bounced back from 3-2 down against the Celtics, and shrugged off that potentially crushing LeBron James miracle shot in Game 2 of the Eastern finals. They are not going to go away, and they won’t go down easily.

The Lakers will have to put them down.