New England often is very pretty in the spring. The Lakers are about to check it out themselves. Again.

Surprising a lot of people, including me, the Lakers turned up for Game 5 with a chip on their shoulder and anger in their hearts, and when push came to shove – and it always does when the Boston Celtics are involved – the Lakers pushed back.

All the way to Boston, where Game 6 of this suddenly extended NBA Finals will be contested, on Tuesday.

Lakers 103, Celtics 98. And the Lakers now officially have lasted longer than I thought they would.

Not that any of you should be thinking in terms of the Lakers actually winning this series. Not with NBA Finals history showing us that teams that trailed 3-1 have never won a title. Not in 28 previous instances.

Not when the Lakers must win twice in Boston, where the Celtics are 12-1 in the playoffs this season.

But they aren’t going to think in terms of the “macro” of winning two games. Just the “micro” of winning the next one.

“I told the team the same thing I said after Game 4,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said, “and that’s just keep forcing the games and making plays, keep making one play at a time, one quarter at a time. Don’t think anything past this next opportunity on Tuesday to play this team again.”

Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol showed up for the first time in the same game in this series, and their scoring/rebounding totals of 20/11 and 19/13, respectively, were critical in overcoming Paul Pierce’s eruption for 38 points.

Gasol is buying into Phil’s approach to fighting on, one day at a time.

“We know, obviously, that we’re two wins away from winning a championship,” Gasol said, “but we also know that without the first one, we’re not going to get the second one.

“So we focus tremendously on Game 6 because it’s going to be super-hard to be able to get that one. And we definitely want to give ourselves a chance to get to Game 7.”

They got to Game 6 by being tougher than the Celtics, for the first time in seven meetings this season. It probably was no coincidence that Celtics Big Body Kendrick Perkins, all 6-10 and 280 pounds of him, was unavailable with a shoulder injury. And then when Kevin Garnett got in foul trouble, and was limited to 33 minutes, the Lakers were able to pound the ball inside more effectively than in any game in this series.

The Celtics almost certainly still will win this thing. But they won’t do it in Staples Center, and that counts for something – especially considering the Lakers could have sulked right into the summer tonight, after blowing that 24-point lead in Game 4.

(Had they held on, Thursday, they could now be up 3-2 going to Boston and have a legitimate shot at winning this thing.)

“We wanted to go back home,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said, “but we didn’t want to play. You know what I mean? But now we have to go play, and we earned that right. That’s why the regular season is so important. We fought for it (home-court advantage) all year. We have Game 6 at home, and that’s not a bad place to be.”

The Lakers led by 19 early in the second quarter and by 14 early in the fourth, but the former lead shrank to three and the latter to one. This time, however, the Lakers kept a grip and fought back.

It didn’t help that Jackson chose the second quarter to go all Mad Professor on us, inserting center Chris Mihm into the lineup – for the first time since April 15. Mihm has been out, essentially, for two years, and there he was making his playoffs debut in a “must-win” game.

Before Jackson snatched poor Mihm back out, he had committed two fouls, made a turnover and shot an airball.

Eventually, the Lakers got almost nothing from the bench (aside from Jordan Farmar’s nine points) but significant production from their entire starting five. Kobe had 25 points, 15 in the first quarter; Derek Fisher had 15, including three clutch free throws in the final minute; and Vlad Radmanovic had seven points with five rebounds. And then there were Gasol and Odom.

Lakers fans, however, need to keep from getting overexcited. It will be something of a miracle if they get to Game 7. For them to win twice in Boston, well, that’s just not in the cards unless they play even better than they did in this one — their best game of the series so far.