hate... hate.. hate..

The case against Kobe: Funny, we thought basketball was a team game. The MVP doesn't lift his team solely on individual heroics. He makes his teammates better through his play. You honestly think Michael Jordan didn't make Steve Kerr, John Paxson, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant better? How is Lakers center Chris Mihm improving when he's constantly chasing Bryant's rebounds instead of getting feeds in the post.
What's the point of having Smush Parker at point guard when he doesn't have the ball, proving useless on the court? Anyone seen Lamar Odom? Oh, yeah, he's the guy in the background standing around watching No. 8 do his thing. If you take Bryant off this team, the Lakers don't make the playoffs. Right now, they're a playoff team that'll be eliminated in the first round.
Sorry, first-round exits don't get you the MVP. It'll be a shame to go from Steve Nash one year to Kobe Bryant the next for MVP.

AL TOBY

Bryant scores 81 but rates a zero as a hero

January 25, 2006

BY GREG COUCH SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST




It happens all the time. When one of our major sports leagues hits a dry spot, starts to run a little short in fan appeal, something, someone pops up and pow! He saves the league's backside.



And so just in time, the NBA has found someone to sell, someone for us to talk about. Someone to love. His name?

Kobe Bryant.

Kobe Bryant? Again? He scored 81 points Sunday in Toronto, and some people are calling it the greatest game ever played. It was amazing all right but not the greatest. Hyberbole aside, the NBA is using Bryant's game to juice the league and also to find a way out of a spot. For $3.95, you can buy a copy of the game on Google, part of a new working arrangement with the NBA.

And according to ESPN.com, the NBA store in New York is going to start selling a Lakers jersey today with No. 81 and Kobe's name. And Spalding will sell a commemorative ball on NBA.com.

Kobe Bryant? Are we supposed to love him again? This man already was made by a marketing campaign once before, and that worked out fine until reality forced us to open our eyes.

I'm not buying.

Wrong message



It's true that the charges were dropped in Bryant's sexual-assault case in Colorado. He said he was merely cheating on his wife in that hotel room, not assaulting anyone. But Bryant was built up as the anti-Allen Iverson, the next Michael Jordan. He was the good guy, the family man. And we know that wasn't true, don't we?

I'll never forget him winning a Teen Choice Award and surprisingly showing up with his wife, Vanessa, at the award show, decked out in bling: chains, a cross and silver "I love Vanessa'' bracelet. All that at the same time he was working through his legal troubles over a teenage woman accusing him. How insensitive for him to turn that into a photo op, botching a Martin Luther King quote, saying, "Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere,'' for his public-relations benefit.

How desperate must the NBA be to restart a Kobe campaign? You can say that the kids should just marvel over Kobe's jump shot and not try to be like him, not idolize him. But that's a little simple-minded. It doesn't work that way. This pitch is big.

And not long ago, American basketball was the ridicule of the sports world at the Olympics in Greece, as U.S. players didn't seem to understand that basketball was a team game. And a bunch of basketball guys in suits grimaced and sighed heavily and vowed to find a way for American basketball to return to what the game was really all about.

We can see where the sport is headed, with the beautiful teamwork of Detroit and San Antonio. Yet I don't see much of a Manu Ginobili campaign, and he's the greatest team player in the world.

Kobe again? Are you kidding?

"The only bad thing about it is that younger kids whose minds are easily warped are going to think, 'Oh, I'm going to go out and do it, intead of [honoring] the team concept first,''' New Jersey's Vince Carter told the Newark Star-Ledger. "That's what's missing in the game, guys understanding how to play as a team. ... You can still become a star in your own right if you play your role.''

It's absolutely amazing that Bryant scored 55 points in the second half. But the last 15 came in garbage time.

His play was amazing, incredible, fantastic. But to call it the greatest game ever played is to fall into a marketing campaign. It's to cherish exactly the thing that is hurting basketball. Eighty-one points in a nothing game against a terrible team does not outdo Michael Jordan's 69 against rival Cleveland in 1990. Jordan had a career-high 18 rebounds in that game, too.

Am I failing to give Kobe credit for his two assists Sunday?

NBA not interested in teamwork

Did you know that during Bryant's last physical, doctors found kidney stones? He refused to pass them.

That's the joke going around. Bryant had a chance to be part of a team, but all but ran out Shaquille O'Neal. He didn't want to be part of a team. He wanted to be himself.

Jordan won championships when he learned how to become a team player. Bryant took 46 shots Sunday. How many times did Jordan take 46? Once.

It's a little unseemly to see this shower of love on Bryant, as if 81 points made the man. But his marketing blackball is all over now.

This is business, I guess. The NBA has a superstar in Bryant but had been having a tough time figuring out how to push him. As of last year, his jersey wasn't selling much anymore.

The NBA can't sell basketball, can't sell teamwork. The Pistons were 33-5, and no one was talking about that. And now the league has these 81 points, and, after all, Bryant wasn't convicted of anything.

So the NBA has its hero back. Kobe saves the day.

nesli wrote:

The case against Kobe: Funny, we thought basketball was a team game. The MVP doesn't lift his team solely on individual heroics. He makes his teammates better through his play. You honestly think Michael Jordan didn't make Steve Kerr, John Paxson, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant better? How is Lakers center Chris Mihm improving when he's constantly chasing Bryant's rebounds instead of getting feeds in the post.
What's the point of having Smush Parker at point guard when he doesn't have the ball, proving useless on the court? Anyone seen Lamar Odom? Oh, yeah, he's the guy in the background standing around watching No. 8 do his thing. If you take Bryant off this team, the Lakers don't make the playoffs. Right now, they're a playoff team that'll be eliminated in the first round.
Sorry, first-round exits don't get you the MVP. It'll be a shame to go from Steve Nash one year to Kobe Bryant the next for MVP.

AL TOBY

Bryant's act isn't leading to a title
By Tom Knott
January 25, 2006


So much for the X-rated goings-on with the shaky woman from Colorado, chasing Shaquille O'Neal to Miami, accusing Karl Malone of trying to hit on his wife and leading the Lakers to an awe-inspiring record of 34-48 last season.
Kobe Bryant scores 81 points in a game, and it is all good.
No, it is better than all good. It is nirvana. It also is surreal, whatever the definition of surreal is.
You are obligated to employ the s-word at a time like this, just as you were obligated to employ it as O.J. Simpson led police on a low-speed freeway chase in pursuit of the Colombian cartel.
Although O.J. was unable to nab the "real killers" on the Los Angeles freeway, we have pretty much lived in a surreal state since then, judging from the obtuse commentary of the talking heads, not counting Chris Matthews, who has the best cheeks in the business.
Eighty-one points. Wow. Gosh.
So many male schoolgirls in plaid skirts and bobby socks have been giggling, squealing and batting their eyelashes since Bryant dropped 81 on the Raptors.
Where is Kwame Brown complaining about his lack of touches when you need him?
Come on, Kwame, you loser, show some backbone. Don't you want to slap Bryant?
With the outcome decided, the game turned into a cross between an AAU exercise and an asphalt-playground engagement, which is to say its farcical aspect was compelling.
Bryant's teammates would not have shot the ball if the Raptors had escorted them to the rim with a smile. So there was Bryant going one-against-five, as only he would have it.
Bryant never tires of shooting the ball, whether he is making a reasonable percentage of his shots or not. It only becomes convenient to criticize Lamar Odom if Bryant goes 12-for-35 shooting and the Lakers lose
Bryant said he never dreamed of scoring 81 points in a game. Huh? He orchestrated the occasion. This is his dream team -- teammates who defer to his every whim or he will have a diva-like fit and smash the nearest television monitor.
His principal instruction to his teammates is: "Throw me the ball."
This kind of attitude is considered contemptible, except, it seems, if you score 81 points in a game.
Let's try to stay consistent.
Bryant's approach will be contemptible the night he scores 150 points in a game, and the world pauses in his honor and the ninnies of the United Nations request that he meet with President Mad Man of Iran to strike an accord.
Tex Winter, the architect of the triangle offense, expressed the only mature observation after dispensing the obligatory superlatives.
"I don't think you can win a championship that way," he said.
Isn't winning a championship the principal motivation of the leading players in the NBA?
Well, not in Bryant's case. He is me, me, me, a thousand times me, and you can stick him and his 81 points wherever you like, just not on a genuine team.
The Zen master has done what he refused to do in his first go-around with the Lakers.
He has acquiesced to Bryant, which kind of figures for someone who looks more and more like Col. Sanders with each passing season.
Please, make the next bucket of chicken extra crispy, Col. Zen.
It is funny how it turns out.
Jeanie Buss is dating Col. Zen, and if you compare Bryant's 81 to Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in 1962, Bryant's output actually correlates to 332 points.
Sorry. A different time. Different era.
The exploits of Michael Jordan will not become less than what they were because of the ascent of 7-10 shooting guards in 100 years, assuming the ayatollahs, mullahs and the like permit the game of basketball to be played then.
By the way, Johnny Weissmuller is still the man, plus the best Tarzan ever, no matter if his swim times are surpassed by 12-year-old girls today.

King Kobe
Bryant's big night made possible by ruthless mindset
by chris ballard/SI


Let us forget, for a moment, that those were the same Toronto Raptors who lost to an Israeli pro team in the preseason. And let us not dwell on the fact that Toronto, for reasons unfathomable, was not immediately doubling a guy who was in the process of jacking up 46 shot attempts. What Kobe Bryant did at Staples Center Sunday night was remarkable -- something only he, among NBA players, could have done.

He didn't score 81 just because he's the premier scoring talent of the post-Michael generation (even less-celebrated, he's the NBA's best midrange jumpshooter). And he didn't do it because he's on a team that might have a hard time winning in the Pac-10 without him, though that is also the case. What allowed Bryant to score 81 last night is a unique mindset that might best be described as imperial.

There are three types of players in the NBA. Those who recognize the open pass and make it; those who don't recognize it until it's too late (or at all); and those, like Bryant and Allen Iverson, who recognize it and then weigh the consequences of making such a pass.

For most players in the third category, there lingers some remnant of the 9-year-old psyche, some urge to please the CYO coach or authority figure who encouraged/demanded that the ball be swung to the "open man" and that players "make the smart pass." And even if the star player can shut out this voice 90 percent of the time, there's going to be that one time out of ten when the Tracy McGradys of the world notice the big lug in the middle who is wide open, hands up, just waiting for the ball, and they can't help but pass it -- the order of the basketball universe demands it.

Bryant, on the other hand, truly believes that it is better for him to take a fadeaway 24-footer than for Kwame Brown to shoot an open 5-footer. And not just occasionally. Every single time. Setting aside that he might be right, this is still a remarkable mentality.

In psychology, it is said that we all have an "internal critic," and that it is how we deal with this critic that determines our happiness. One strategy, for example, is that of self-disputation: the idea that you will argue with someone who criticizes you ('What do you mean I'm bad at my job?") but not yourself ("I am a failure and I suck at my job."). Thus, we are encouraged to be as tough on our internal critic as we are on the friend/co-worker/spouse who dares besmirch our cooking/dancing/job performance.

Needless to say, Bryant does not need to do any self-disputing. In fact, it is possible that Bryant does not even have an internal critic (whom I like to envision as a grizzled Pete Carrill, perched on the shoulder), or that he somehow off-ed the metaphorical fellow somewhere along the way, perhaps while jacking up those airball three-pointers against Utah in 1997, perhaps while waving off Karl Malone at the All-Star Game, or perhaps in sincerely believing that the Lakers would be better without Shaquille O'Neal.

This is what makes Bryant simultaneously so maddening and so dangerous. After Sunday's game he spoke of pouring it on at the end to "demoralize" his opponents, as if merely winning by 20 and scoring 70 wouldn't do the trick -- it had to be 80. Of course, it wouldn't occur to Bryant that it might have been more demoralizing if Sasha Vujacic had dunked on a Raptor defender, rather than the league's top player scoring repeatedly on Toronto. In a similar vein, sometimes it is when power is withheld that it is truly intimidating, not when it is exercised.

As impressive as Bryant's performance was last night, I thought what he did against Dallas was more so; to score 62 points in three quarters, then leave the game. Now that is demoralizing. Of course, the game was close last night, so he couldn't do that, giving him the perfect opportunity to test his limits. The end result was surreal, and surely 10 years from now we will all claim we were watching the game on NBA League Pass, but it was not surprising. Surprising would be Bryant turning Kwame Brown into an All-Star. But scoring 81 points? This is what Bryant was born to do. Something tells me he is not surprised at all.

What the Mavs, who saw him score 62 against them, were thinking...

"You'd think the Super Bowl would lead 'SportsCenter' tonight. But you know it won't. It can't. Kobe will. He has to." -- Jerry Stackhouse, quoted on ESPN.com

"Imagine if our game had been close." -- Darrell Armstrong, quoted on ESPN.com

"How many assists? He didn't have any against us." -- Keith Van Horn, quoted on ESPN.com

"He took 47 shots?" -- Devin Harris, quoted on ESPN.com. (Ed. note: Kobe took 46 shots)

"I don't think that would be good from a team standpoint." -- Dirk Nowitzki, quoted on ESPN.com when asked if he could top 82