I like Kobe Bryant as a basketball player; I hated him back in the early 2000's because I was a Blazers fan and a Mavs fan, and the Lakers were A-holes for winning so many games and championships. He won me over, though, during those terrible years laboring along when his best teammate was Lamar "Candy-man" Odom. A lot of people saw it as the just retribution for a spoiled, selfish young man who threw a tantrum until he got the team all to himself, and to be fair I was of the same opinion for the early part of those first couple of seasons. But then I started watching Kobe actually play; and I realized that I had never seen anyone play with that level of tenacity and grit since Michael Jordan was slaving away on the early Bulls teams. I also saw Dirk play with it during the 2011 finals run. I wanted to see Lebron play with it during the loss to San Antonio during the 2014 finals, but never did. Nothing tells you more about a basketball player than how hard he's willing to fight just to avoid losing to a better team. That's a different post, though.
All I mean to say is that Kobe finally wore me down and won me over; especially during that two year championship span in '09 and '10. So understand that when I say this, I don't say it simply just to throw more gasoline on the already smoldering remains of his reputation: the Lakers are terrible this year, and it is mostly his fault. Sure, the top tier free agents took a pass on L.A. the last two summers, but that happens. In a league with 30 teams and only about 10 sure-fire game changing players, you're going to end up losing those bets more often than winning, even if you're waving the temperate weather of Southern California in their face. But the reason that their current roster is the steaming pile of basketball dung that it is, is because Kobe - as he as always done throughout his career - decided to get his first, and force the rest of the organization to adapt. He was getting those $50 million; someone else coming into town was going to have to take that pay cut, because it wasn't going to be him. I don't exactly blame him for it; he'd earned the money, in his eyes, and he was right. As Jalen Rose says, you only get what you have the to leverage to negotiate. So congrats to him on making even more money; here's your door prize: a roster full of guys who , with 2 exceptions, max out as marginal blench players on mediocre NBA teams.
Steve Nash is a big name; he's also 40 and just injured his back carrying bags. That's the sort of injury that your grandmother tells you is the reason why she couldn't make it for Christmas. I love Nash, but the dude has been a disastrous signing for the team; not because he's played poorly, but because he simply hasn't played. And sure, Steph Curry had injury problems for a couple straight seasons, and so did Blake Griffin...but they're still way under 30. Your body doesn't just stop breaking down when you're 40: it actually accelerates the pace, which Nash has found out. It's too bad, because he's had a brilliant career and I really hope I'm wrong...but I'll be surprised to see him play in more than 30 games this season, and even more so if he has more than 5 significant outings during them. Of course, I'm no expert, so...I guess you could say I get surprised a lot.
The only other player on the roster of note is Jeremy Lin, who is a solid offensive player with terrific finishing skills, and a dependable jump shot, but is a little turnover prone. That's okay, most score-first small guards tend to be. He deserves to be on the roster, and he might even have a spectacular year; the problem is that, outside of him, there us not a single other player on the roster that can penetrate to the rim in the half court and get layups. He's also the only guy who can push the ball in transition and try to catch the defense off-guard for easy baskets; but he's not the one man fast break that Russel Westbrook is, or that Steve Nash was, so these opportunities will be scant.
I've been watching the Lakers in preseason, because I wanted to see how Kobe would look, and I was not surprised to see that his game is pretty much a steady diet of long jumpers and post fade-aways; he is still the best in the league at it, so that's fine. Gone, though, is his speed and explosiveness; I never once saw him push the ball up-court in transition, except on a steal when there was no defender on the same side of the court. There may have been others, but the trends are there: Kobe cannot consistently create shots at the rim for himself anymore. It may be a conditioning thing, combined with the fact that it's just the post-season and he's coming off of an injury, but what I saw was a 36 year old man who had logged a ton of minutes which were finally starting to show. Rarely has he even attempted driving deep, and when he does, he hasn't seemed to be able to push past the defense; instead, he ends up double-teamed along the baseline, having to make a tricky pass to get out of the situation.
As for the rest of the team, they have no reliable post threat, no real three point threats, and no one that can create their own shots. Which means that they all stand around near or beyond the free throw line, taking long catch-and-shot jumpers which, in today's NBA, are generally considered the worst shot in basketball. I both agree and disagree with that stigma, by the way. Mid-range jumpers are a fantastic weapon, as the 2011 Mavs proved, as long as you have the right guys take them. You want your guards and small forward, and maybe your stretch 4 if you're lucky enough to have one on the roster - though actual, dependable stretch bigs are few and far between, and in all honestly I've never seen a team win significant games with one (Dirk is a not a "stretch 4." He's a 7 footer capable of creating his own shot anywhere on the floor, which is way more than a "stretch big;" they only need to be able to knock down long jump shots if the ball gets passed out or swung around to them, so that there's more space in the lane for driving and cutting, and maybe a big making post moves) - but what the Lakers have are big guys who can't really shoot consistently taking those shots. Kobe really only seems interested in passing it to Carlos Boozer, who is the king of those lazy mid-range shots, and who hasn't really ever been a real threat in the NBA to do anything more than run a high pick and roll, so long as he doesn't have to move very quickly - because he can't and never could - and so long as he doesn't have to go into the paint - because he doesn't, and won't.
Basically, the Lakers struggle to get shots in the half court, simply don't get shots in transition, and rarely score in the paint. They are old, slow, and lack the talent to make the playoffs in the western conference; and they may be even worse than that, if Lin goes down for the whole season. There will be a lot of nights where Kobe will feel like Jordan did in the early part of the 1998 season, when Pippen was out with a foot injury and he had to carry an older, tiring Bulls squad through half of the year by himself: why did I bother coming back? Here's to hoping he can find something to keep him going all season, because he doesn't have a Pippen waiting in the wings to look forward to.
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