The Game No One Ever Talks About

Kobe can’t help it.
Mike brown can’t help it.

OTHER THAN KOBE: The Lakers have no reliable players. The Lakers have no players with fire in the belly. The Lakers have no players with heart. It is all about ATTITUDE. IT IS SAD TO SEE HOW BAD AN ATTITUDE THE PLAYERS HAVE.

MITCH KUPCHAK AND JIM BUSS KILLED THE LAKERS’ PLAYERS HEART. They were the ones who tried to blow up the Lakers to get Chris Paul. They are the ones who are still trying to trade for someone like Dwight Howard.

When tradewinds are in the air, the players have no feeling of stability or support from management. This instills fear rather than aggression in the players. A player that plays well may get traded. A player that isn’t playing well is not trade bait. This puts players in a quandry. The result is the losing you see. Only Kobe has a no-trade clause in his contract.

Pau, Andrew, Metta and the other players obviously don’t want to get traded. But if they play to the best of their abilities, they are trade bait. This obviously plays unconsciously into why the Lakers are missing shots.

SAD TO SEE. We might as well give Miami the championship. We cannot correct the attitude problems until Mitch and Jim trade for new players or tell the players they will not trade them.

I do feel kobe is all about wining and he does whatever he feels it takes to win. Thats why I feel at this point we really need a point gaurd that can help you or at least another ball handling gaurd with leadership and more athletic abilities than fisher, no championship team has been able to win without more than 1 guy that can create off the dribble. Its too much pressure on kobe to be out pg sg when he should be focusing only on high post ups and the occassional shots off screens and isos.

But I think your article is correct kobe only wants to win but sometimes he goes about it the wrong way. And sometimes its hard to tell if he’s being selfish or just trying to put the team on his back when it looks like they need it

That I feel our biggest problem is one of theses 2; 1) we either dont yet know how to use the pieces/players that we currently have in a productive way or 2) we need to shuffle the pieces/players around (via trade or free agent acquisition) to create better basketball chemistry. Now this is not some new idea ive come up with as you all know but what i’m saying is that I think the owners/mitch/coaches kobe and fisher know this and are working on this now. I know that by the trade deadline we will have a new improved starting line up or rotation one way or another

Andrew’s biggest problem against Howard has been staying on the court. Mike Brown should sit him down and watch tape on how Pau plays Howard, because Pau does a pretty good job. Andrew is big and strong and tries to go mano on mano with Howard. He body’s him and thats were he gets the ticky tac fouls. Pau understands that he can’t body Howard and gives him a cushion. This allows Pau to react to Howards moves and Pau’s length bothers his shot. Bynum is even longer then Pau. If he gave him the same cushion and not get all macho, he could be much more effective. Howard is a great player and you can’t shut him down completely but you can make it tougher but only if you are on the floor. We can never really see how Drew stacks up to Howard if he stays in foul trouble every time they play.

Absolutely loved the way he played last night. Well, until the end. The effing tech when they got close again, then he chucked one or two shots from three point land. Otherwise, he was glorious.

Yeah, he doesn’t have the best sense of when to facilitate and when to take over, and seems to have trouble working from the middle ground. I’m still hoping in his old age he finds it. And when he does decide to take over a game, to take smarter shots.

I’d hypothesize that a part of the Lakers problem is that his teammates are weirded out when they get the ball. Because (a) they aren’t expecting it, and (b) the intense expectations he puts on them to make the shot. They probably feel if they don’t make it, they aren’t going to get any more chances.

I hope he’ll keep going to them next game. Cause yeah, he can’t win alone.

One thing I would say is that last night’s performance struck me as bit of a pleasant rarity. I can’t recall that many games throughout Kobe’s career where he’s played in that “perfect” style: showcasing his offensive firepower within the flow of offense, orchestrating the ball movement, expertly punishing double teams with crisp passes to open men, and moving without the ball. He’s obviously shown he could do it for quarters, but nearly a complete game of impeccable decision-making + execution is hard to come by.

That said, last night’s outcome, as C.A. says, forces us to give Kobe more credit for the way he normally plays. I, too, like to think that Kobe tries to play with mental clarity about which type of performance from him will lead to the most positive outcome for his team. And I also wonder whether a quarter of ferocious, more assertive Kobe (see 3rd Q of game against Clips) would’ve swung the momentum in the Lakers’ favor last night.

But I do hope that Kobe is willing to trot out last night’s Mamba a few more times this season – that was beautiful to watch and I have wishful thinking that his teammates will reward him with better shooting, at least inside the arc.

It appears that the players want to continue the approach of last night: that the offensive execution was much better, and that shots just didn’t fall. Barnes said it, Fish said it, and Brown said it. Hell, even Kobe appreciated the offensive execution of that game, and said they should continue it.

This is how I feel about Kobe: he should always start the game playing like he did last night. Not distributing only, like he sometimes tends to do (and ends up having only 2 field goals attempts at the half). The perfect balance of attacking and distributing. When it appears that it’s not working (I don’t know when to make that distinction, however. Down 10? Down 20? The second half?), then go Mamba. But if it’s working? Play that way the rest of the game.

Even when he goes Mamba, his teammates cannot simply ball watch. Even when he goes Mamba, his teammates have to be ready to serve as pressure release points.

This is one of the biggest frustrations of Lakers and/or Kobe fans— the guy never wins. Even when the Lakers win, it’s always in spite of Kobe, never because of him. There is always something better he could do. In a way, I prefer it. It shows that there is a whole different kind of expectation of Kobe, more than anyone else I’ve seen—- even His Airness. He’s never had a scapegoat or an excuse. Perfection is demanded of Kobe every single night on every single play. It’s because of these great expectations that Kobe is where he is. I don’t think Kobe would push himself as hard as he does if it weren’t for them. As frustrating as it is now, I think us fans and Kobe himself, will be thankful for it in the end.

As far as the offense, i’m not concerned. You can’t expect good shooters to miss every single game. Eventually, all those open Pau/Fish/Matt jumpers will fall. And Bynum could only go so long missing easy bunnies. At least, I’d like to think.

And that’s good at this time, because it pushes Jimmy to make something happen.

Good piece. What Clark gets at here is the most tiresome thing about the Haters: they think everything revolves around Kobe. It doesn’t. He is one guy on the team. He is one guy playing against another team. But because they don’t care about anything related to the Lakers, except attacking Kobe, they miss the more complex reality. Which is why they should really all STFU and write about something else. Just once, I would like to see Moore, Abbott, Simmons, Kang, Lowe, Hollinger, Mahoney, Mason, Strauss, et al do a detailed breakdown of “Bad Jumpers in Traffic by Derek Fisher” or “Possessions on which Andrew Bynum failed to seal off his man and get position on the blocks” or “Pau Gasol’s Failure to Box Out: a video critique.” They, and we, might learn something.