38 replies to this topic

[manaro90]

"This is probably the best I've played in a while. I've had years the last few years where I've felt pretty good but we kept my minutes down so the numbers didn't look the same, but this year I feel pretty good."

The evidence is in the numbers. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the month of December Bryant just finished playing was historic for him, as he had never reached the averages of at least 33.79 or more points, 5.57 or more rebounds and 4.64 or more assists all at the same time for an entire month before in his career.
Along with Bryant's improved scoring and efficiency, he's playing 38.7 minutes per game, slightly up from the 38.5 minutes he played last season under Mike Brown and significantly higher than the 33.9 minutes per game he logged in his final season under Phil Jackson.
"I think it's just the minutes," Bryant said. "I'm playing more. And I'm also extremely healthy. I had a whole summer to really be healthy, to be in shape, to get stronger and I think that has a lot to do with it. Diet has a lot to do with it, too. Watching what I eat."
Bryant said he was playing on "one leg" in Jackson's farewell season in 2010-11 and the Hall of Fame coach tried to manage Bryant's health by cutting his minutes, something that led critics to declare Bryant's career was on the decline.
"I played OK considering I was on one leg, but the minutes were also down too so the numbers were down," Bryant said. "It was one of the things that kind of frustrated me. Everybody said I was on the decline but the reality is my minutes were just fewer. That's something I took to heart and wanted to come back this season improved."

D'Antoni is enjoying his steady diet of having Bryant on his team, rather than as an opponent.
"He's played awful good, so it's a high level we're talking about but he's playing phenomenal," D'Antoni said. "You watch him from Phoenix and New York, you get one opinion which is good, but then you coach him and you start to appreciate what he goes through and how he gets himself ready every game. You got to really respect what he's doing."

The whole article here:

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8797823/kobe-bryant-los-angeles-lakers-says-season-best-played-while

[Cowboys&LakersFan]

I agree with Kobe. He hasn't looked this good since his MVP year in 2008. That's not to say he hasn't had great years since then, but not to this level of play. He just looks so much livelier this season. He's got that quick first step back and much better elevation on his jump shot. His postgame for a perimeter player has always been rock solid.

[manaro90]

and still people are not targeting him in the MVP list top 5 this year

what a SHAME!

[Cowboys&LakersFan]

and still people are not targeting him in the MVP list top 5 this year

what a SHAME!

I don't really care about that. Kobe doesn't either. It's all about winning a championship. Screw the MVP award.

Besides looking at the post Jordan era the two best players Kobe and Shaq have only one MVP each. That shows you how big of a joke it is.

[Piston Honda]

and still people are not targeting him in the MVP list top 5 this year

what a SHAME!

MVP is about being the best player on one of the best teams. It's not about being a true most valuable player.

[alec613]

Defensively, worse I've ever seen him play,

edit: He's actually no.5 in most bloggers' MVP lists.
Had he been winning games, he'd probably be no.3

Edited by alec613, January 01, 2013 - 10:38 AM.

[Ham]

Defensively, worse I've ever seen him play,

edit: He's actually no.5 in most bloggers' MVP lists.
Had he been winning games, he'd probably be no.3

He'd be number one with that 30 point streak and if we were winning more.

[PhillyLaker24]

The numbers seem to agree with him. His offensive game has been on point this year, but on defense you can tell he just doesnt care as much anymore, unless he is guarding a player he feels like that is worthy to be guard he doesnt play hard nosed defense anymore.

Edited by PhillyLaker24, January 01, 2013 - 12:33 PM.

[MDI]

https://twitter.com/...212484656934912

Kobe is shooting 56% with Nash on the floor.

[fido]

Meanwhile the Lakers are a .500 team.

[bfc1125roy]

We should still lower his minutes more and more until the playoffs.

[Majesty]

https://twitter.com/...212484656934912

What the difference a true point guard makes eh?

[Cowboys&LakersFan]

Meanwhile the Lakers are a .500 team.

Only because Nash has only played 6 games.

[ツ]

We'll see. If we're barely over .500 in the next 10 games then that's the point when we should really be concerned.

Edited by ツ  , January 01, 2013 - 02:08 PM.

[Thanatos]

He looked pretty good at the beginning of last year too, but then he clearly got gassed by the end of the season. We'll see how well this senior citizens team holds up as the season goes along.

[manaro90]

and kobe with a sick reverse slam dunk vs sixers thank you

[fido]

And the team is on the verge of sinking below .500 again.

It takes a team to win. This group calling themselves the Lakers is not anywhere near one. At this point in his career its been proven time and time again that when Kobe leads the league or is in the top 2 or 3 of scoring this team doesn't do well.

[Majesty]

And the team is on the verge of sinking below .500 again.

It takes a team to win. This group calling themselves the Lakers is not anywhere near one. At this point in his career its been proven time and time again that when Kobe leads the league or is in the top 2 or 3 of scoring this team doesn't do well.

Kobe goes for 34 on 48% shooting. Let's blame him for the loss and say we need to play as a "team" when the number 2 guy(Howard) on the team and our defensive anchor bottles it down the stretch and goes 1-7 during the game whilst never looking for his shot and causing a turnover at the end of the game for forgetting HE was the focal point of the pass Kobe was gonna give him off the screen and plays lazy defense helping 5 feet away from a jump shooting center when he doesn't have to.


We'll forgo all that and place all the blame on Kobe who still shot a high percentage and got 34 points. It's the most logical reason after all isn't it? Screw our number 2 guy going 1-7 never looking for his shot with spencer Hawes defending him that got outplayed by the power forward coming off the bench tearing up the same defense and let's forget about him playing lazy defense down the stretch. It's all on the mamba!! Right?

When all else fails blame Kobe, the Coach, or Both. Seems the MO.

Because it seems the only people willing to blame Dwight are people who overblame and try to use it as an excuse to have kept Bynum(and are subsequently banned cause they are idiots )

So let's break the trend shall we? I shall


Dwight effed up tonight. Was lazy on the defensive end, and stopped looking for his shot because a ref didn't call a foul on the first 2 plays of the game while also making stupid fouls out of frustration while anchoring for position and never looked for the pass off a pick and roll with either Kobe, nor Nash, who had to hesitate on passing to him each time because he kept looking away from the play(because he wasn't looking to be passed to)


Dwight wants to be "the guy" eventually right? Well tonight he didn't show it. Showed it in Portland, didn't show it tonight. He is gonna have to be consistent if he ever wants to be "the guy" here.


Dwight does one of three things(or all three) when he's mentally checked out.

1) he looks to the ref for help on fouls
2) He starts overhelping on defense when he doesn't have to so he can look at the guy that he leaves in an impossible situation of rotating and blame him when the guy he(Dwight) left open for no reason, scores.
3) He makes dumb fouls trying to anchor for position.


He did all three tonight. And doing the second one cost us in deep stretches at the end of the game when Kobe and Metta and Nash made the game close and Dwight would make the same defensive mistake every time down, leaving Hawes wide open when the Sixers are driving it to Pau anyway who is rotating(correctly) to block the shot which caused Pau to have to rerotate over and leave the paint and try to stop hawes, OR it would make Metta have to leave the wing to try to rotate to Hawes. These situations were created because Dwight decided to help defend someone who was already double teamed going to the basket.

Obviously he didn't have to, but when he's mentally checked out, he overcompensates to try to say "he played defense" and it's everyone else's problem if they didn't rotate over. Needless to say if Dwight STAYS on Hawes, Philly doesn't score in 4 straight possessions. If he wasn't gonna contribute on the offensive end(7 points) at the very least he should be defending properly. But he bottled it down the stretch at crucial times when everyone else was playing hard.


But its Kobe's fault of course...

Edited by Majesty, January 02, 2013 - 01:10 AM.

[fido]

Did I put all the blame on Kobe? Nope, sure didn't.

What I said was when he leads the league in scoring or is in the top 2 or 3 the team tends to do poorly, that's it.

Once again, you're misconstruing and twisting my words into something to support an argument of yours.

[Majesty]

Did I put all the blame on Kobe? Nope, sure didn't.

What I said was when he leads the league in scoring or is in the top 2 or 3 the team tends to do poorly, that's it.

Once again, you're misconstruing and twisting my words into something to support an argument of yours.

Of course.

You can make the same argument that when Kobe doesn't have said number of assists the team goes poorly.

Kobe scoring has more to do with whether or not his team mates are hitting shots or doing what they should be doing offensively etc.

If Kobe's teammates are hitting shots he gets more assists and less points. When Kobe's team mates aren't hitting anything he puts it on himself to score. Because that's his job, he's the guy, it's his team.

When Jordan played, if his team mates were stinking it up when he was passing them the ball what would have happened if he didn't take the initiative?


My main point is. Kobe's scoring doesn't equate to the team's lack of success. The team's lack of success has more to do with why Kobe decides he has to score. Hopefully I worded that correctly. No one else was scoring. So Kobe rather than passing them the ball and continuing to watch them clank it decided to score on his own and it was because of his scoring that we got back into his game.

But it was our anchor's defensive failings that lost us this game.


Kobe's scoring didn't have anything to do with us losing this game.
Dwight's defense at the end of the game did.

The two aren't related. That is what I am saying.


When he's leading the league and scoring the team does poorly, however he's only scoring as much because the team is doing poorly.

If Dwight and Pau didn't go 3-21 tonight then I'm sure Kobe would have scored less and had more assists. They weren't clicking, so Kobe took responsibility to score and get us back in the game and it worked. The defense of Dwight let us down at the end, not Kobe's scoring.

That's what I'm saying.

because if Kobe keeps passing, they keep missing and the lead keeps increasing. And as it's Kobe's team he has to be the go to guy when other things aren't clicking. It's his responsibility.

If he was the guy that blew his defensive assignments at the end of the game after hitting the shots that got us back into this game I would be putting more of the blame on him.

But he got us back into the game, and it was another player that cost us.

Kobe didn't "shoot us out" of this one. he's the very reason we had a chance to win.

Edited by Majesty, January 02, 2013 - 01:38 AM.