Kobe Bryant Now Plays the Role of the “Old Dog”

LA Times:: The triangle offense, never an easy subject to digest, is being reinstalled, and plans call for an un-Laker-like pressure defense, but Bryant seems resolute in an entirely new way.

“I’m not teaching at all,” he said late Thursday night. “I try to nudge them along. Sometimes guys come to me throughout the course of practice and they ask me certain situations where to go, and I’ll help them along the process, but I really don’t want to interfere with their growth. It’s important for them to kind of figure out the system and how it works best for them.

“Lamar [Odom] is a prime example of that. What he’s being asked to do is exactly what my role was a few years ago. It’s something I know inside and out. But I came to that revelation through my own growth and I didn’t have anybody on top of me all the time telling me how to do it. I had Tex [Winter] teaching me and I had a couple of old dogs, which I guess now, I’m the old dog. Ron Harper was kind of nudging me along, providing me guidance. That’s what I try to do for them.”

Backing off is not easy for Bryant, but he says it’s necessary if the Lakers are to play beyond April.

“Sometimes it’s frustrating because throughout the course of a game, especially in the preseason, sometimes my competitiveness wants to take over and I want to just go outside of me and just go nuts,” Bryant said. “But it’s not going to help us. It’s not going to help us at all. And it’s important for me to realize that.

“Sometimes when our offense is breaking down or something like that, it’s important just to stay in the system and let the system work itself out because that’s how we’re going to learn. We’re not playing for right now, we’re playing for the long haul. It’s important to stay inside of that and be patient.

“It’s nonnegotiable. It really is. I’ve made up in my mind it’s just nonnegotiable. That doesn’t mean I won’t be trying to build a rhythm throughout the course of the game to be able to take a game over, especially when we need to do it. But it’s important for it to come within the flow of the game. Because that’s what is really going to help us grow and evolve.”

Till now Kobe had to always play the facilitator/initiator setting up his teammates in the triangle. Now he is the aggressor who is being set up by his teammates. Can Kobe take on his new role? Has Kobe truly matured into the type of leader that can lead by example and not by confrontation? Sound off in our CL.com Gameday Discussion!