Kobe Discussion: shark swimming / #prayforthesharks (664)

Well that's one of our problems, many guys just standing around. Your reasoning seems to be that a lot of it is Kobe's fault because since teammates aren't expecting a pass, they don't move or get themselves ready.
I'm sorry, I don't agree with it. I think their standing around is most of the times the reason why Kobe ends up taking the shot. Whenever someone does cut or move without the ball (mostly Jamison when he was playing, sometimes MWP), Kobe tried to find them.

In that possession we've got:
-Hill who is mostly a put back kind of guy. He's on the weakside and that's fine by me. He's not a floor spacer but his defender is aware that he needs to stay close or else he will get an offensive board or cut to the basket and get the ball for a dunk.
-Nash who is spacing the floor and is ready to shoot if he has to (not even someone like me needs to have his hands out seconds before catching the ball to shoot, it's not that hard).
-Pau who's actually in good position: if Brown doubles Kobe he'll find Pau for a FT line jumper. That's assuming Turner doesn't go to cover Pau, which would result in Nash getting open.
-MWP who's also on the weakside spacing the floor. He should be behind the 3pt line IMO, he's of no use there. Maybe he was thinking about going for an offensive rebound but that's dumb IMO, his role right there when a shot goes up should be to run back on D, he's a key part of transition D in that sequence.

I see nothing wrong with that play from that screen shot. Kobe's one on one with Pau and Nash on the strong side ready to catch-and-shoot (or catch-and-drive) if they double Kobe, and we've got our weakside players, "spacing" the floor, one of them with the option to crash the offensive glass and one of them supposed to run back on transition D after a shot.

I haven't changed my mind at all after your post. I don't think "you could see guys disengage after a while too because they knew the ball was staying in Kobe's hands" is true at all.
When was that?

There was actually a stretch where Kobe didn't touch the ball for like 7-8 possessions in a row, I commented about it on the GD thread.
MWP took 17 shots. Hill, Gasol, Nash and Meeks all got plenty of looks. Howard did take fewer shots than usual but he was awful all night, didn't get into position as he normally does, and frankly he didn't look like a guy who deserved the ball. Missed EASY, GIMME layups, bricked FTs, terrible.
The team took 22 3s.

I just didn't see what you are talking about actually happen. I mean, you can make it sound like that's something that was going on, but watching the game there's actually no evidence of it.

Well, this is the first I've been able to comment, and this thread has grown TONS since last time I checked, and one of the things that stood out the most was. . . a couple pages ago, someone said "Kobe had an off night. . .". How anyone can you call Kobe's game last night "off"? He was the only one NOT "off". Not just talking about scoring either, everyone else just seemed. . . I don't know, hung over?

Gary Lee: Kobe on overcoming age problem: "It starts w/ acknowledging we are old, we are slow. Then, how do we compensate for it? How do we adjust?" Twitter @LakersNation

play at a slower pace. were gunna get out runned and out worked if were constantly pushing the pace. run when we can obviously but dont force it. we need to slow the pace down a bit and utilize what we have....which is NOT speed. when the 2nd unit comes in sure let them run a bit more or play a bit faster...but for our starters it should be a slower half court game. Not super slow but just a little bit less than what were doing bc were giving opponents too many possessions. games where we cut leads and come back are when were playing slower, faster, and allowing our ENTIRE team to get back on D. Dantoni needs to realize this and Kobe needs to vocalize his opinion bc fast pace isnt gunna work.

Interesting debate. Players standing around because Kobe won't pass the ball or Kobe not passing the ball because they are standing around.

JGC wrote:

puffyusaf#2 wrote:HAHA... I knew Kobe would be getting abused in this thread. All the things for people to complain about for this game and people are complaining about Kobe? Oh there are lots of targets but the usual suspects haven't been able to hate Kobe for a few games.... Eat up kids.. eat up.

I'm kind of surprised you would be so surprised. Kobe did not have a very good overall game Scoring was good, but passing and defense were sub par.

Why would you expect people to ignore those things?

During the telecast someone said something I agree with...... You can't get an assist if people aren't making shots. I'm not surprised at the people who have increased the thread page count by 1/3 since last nights game. Its the same group as usual. To be fair I wouldn't expect Kobe to be overlooked but I don't think the real issues to be overlooked just for the sake of hating on Kobe.

scissors wrote:Interesting debate. Players standing around because Kobe won't pass the ball or Kobe not passing the ball because they are standing around.

I will go with players standing around because Kobe won't pass the ball. Because it's not ONE player, it's playerS. It's Kobe's typical game. He wants to score, especially in the late of the game. Players are get used to watch Lakers hero. As I said many many times before, how came we blame on Pau's mistake in last year playoffs when Kobe made a PASS to him in last seconds of the ballgame. Everyone will get nervous and doesn't know what to do at that time.

odom1year wrote:

scissors wrote:Interesting debate. Players standing around because Kobe won't pass the ball or Kobe not passing the ball because they are standing around.

I will go with players standing around because Kobe won't pass the ball. Because it's not ONE player, it's playerS. It's Kobe's typical game. He wants to score, especially in the late of the game. Players are get used to watch Lakers hero. As I said many many times before, how came we blame on Pau's mistake in last year playoffs when Kobe made a PASS to him in last seconds of the ballgame. Everyone will get nervous and doesn't know what to do at that time.

WOW... you are amazing.

puffyusaf#2 wrote:

JGC wrote:

puffyusaf#2 wrote:HAHA... I knew Kobe would be getting abused in this thread. All the things for people to complain about for this game and people are complaining about Kobe? Oh there are lots of targets but the usual suspects haven't been able to hate Kobe for a few games.... Eat up kids.. eat up.

I'm kind of surprised you would be so surprised. Kobe did not have a very good overall game Scoring was good, but passing and defense were sub par.

Why would you expect people to ignore those things?

During the telecast someone said something I agree with...... You can't get an assist if people aren't making shots. I'm not surprised at the people who have increased the thread page count by 1/3 since last nights game. Its the same group as usual. To be fair I wouldn't expect Kobe to be overlooked but I don't think the real issues to be overlooked just for the sake of hating on Kobe.

Yeah but I feel as if this is a general theme of this team. Guys aren't making shots and Nash had what, 10 assists? How did Nash register 10 assists? He registers 10 assists any time he plays no matter how bad guys are playing. Not to say Kobe needs to get 10, but he should be able to get 5 EASILY every single night minimum with this group and then more than that when guys are particularly hot.

I looked at some stats today to see if my observations about poorer-than-usual movement of the ball were off. Here's what I found.

2012-2013 Assist Rank: 15

We're playing an uptempo offense, with Steve Nash at point guard (granted for only a handful of these games), Kobe, and a pass happy Pau Gasol and we're only 15th in the league in assists? That isn't acceptable. We should be WAY higher especially with legit advantage with our bigs who should be routinely fed the ball. We trail the Raptors, 76ers, and Bucks in that department.

I mean last season we ranked 6th in assists and that's in a slow-it-down Mike Brown offense without a legitimate point guard for most of the season. We had Derek Fisher at point guard most of the year!

If you look at the number of ratio of assists to field goals made, we're 22nd this year. Last year we were 8th.

If you look at assists per possession, again we're 22nd this year and last year we were 9th.

What else tells me we're not playing together? When we play on the road, we are 3rd WORST in the league in assists per possession. Last year we were just below middle of the road at 17th.

At home we're 13th in assists per possession, but last year we were 4th.

I understand Kobe isn't the ONLY culprit here, but he is the leader of the team and the team is just not playing together very well at all. I thought we were going to use the first part of the season to try to play as a team and work through the kinks and build chemistry even at the expense of wins but I don't see how abandoning the team concept when guys miss a few shots builds toward that. They spent the first 20 or so games, after losses, telling the fans and media to stay patient. How is abandoning the team concept being patient exactly?

Phil Jackson used to do this thing when the other team would go on a run... he'd... make the players figure it out for themselves. And this sometimes, resulted in losses. But we were always building toward something, learning, they were learning how to handle those situations and in many cases it paid off down the road even if it came at the expense of some wins early in the season. THAT is being patient. Instead, we panic whenever things just START to go awry, and then what happens? The team is jacking 3s with a FULL minute left in a game where we are only down by 4.

borri wrote:Sorry, but anyone blaming Kobe at all for tonight should lose all credibility on CL.

Paulina 2-11
D12 1-7
Ron 6-17

Enough said. If anything Kobe should have gone into complete ballhog mode tonight.

To me, Kobe did well in offense even with zero assist. But his defense sucked.

JGC wrote:

puffyusaf#2 wrote:

JGC wrote:

puffyusaf#2 wrote:HAHA... I knew Kobe would be getting abused in this thread. All the things for people to complain about for this game and people are complaining about Kobe? Oh there are lots of targets but the usual suspects haven't been able to hate Kobe for a few games.... Eat up kids.. eat up.

I'm kind of surprised you would be so surprised. Kobe did not have a very good overall game Scoring was good, but passing and defense were sub par.

Why would you expect people to ignore those things?

During the telecast someone said something I agree with...... You can't get an assist if people aren't making shots. I'm not surprised at the people who have increased the thread page count by 1/3 since last nights game. Its the same group as usual. To be fair I wouldn't expect Kobe to be overlooked but I don't think the real issues to be overlooked just for the sake of hating on Kobe.

Yeah but I feel as if this is a general theme of this team. Guys aren't making shots and Nash had what, 10 assists? How did Nash register 10 assists? He registers 10 assists any time he plays no matter how bad guys are playing. Not to say Kobe needs to get 10, but he should be able to get 5 EASILY every single night minimum with this group and then more than that when guys are particularly hot.

I looked at some stats today to see if my observations about poorer-than-usual movement of the ball were off. Here's what I found.

2012-2013 Assist Rank: 15

We're playing an uptempo offense, with Steve Nash at point guard (granted for only a handful of these games), Kobe, and a pass happy Pau Gasol and we're only 15th in the league in assists? That isn't acceptable. We should be WAY higher especially with legit advantage with our bigs who should be routinely fed the ball. We trail the Raptors, 76ers, and Bucks in that department.

I mean last season we ranked 6th in assists and that's in a slow-it-down Mike Brown offense without a legitimate point guard for most of the season. We had Derek Fisher at point guard most of the year!

If you look at the number of ratio of assists to field goals made, we're 22nd this year. Last year we were 8th.

If you look at assists per possession, again we're 22nd this year and last year we were 9th.

What else tells me we're not playing together? When we play on the road, we are 3rd WORST in the league in assists per possession. Last year we were just below middle of the road at 17th.

At home we're 13th in assists per possession, but last year we were 4th.

I understand Kobe isn't the ONLY culprit here, but he is the leader of the team and the team is just not playing together very well at all. I thought we were going to use the first part of the season to try to play as a team and work through the kinks and build chemistry even at the expense of wins but I don't see how abandoning the team concept when guys miss a few shots builds toward that. They spent the first 20 or so games, after losses, telling the fans and media to stay patient. How is abandoning the team concept being patient exactly?

Phil Jackson used to do this thing when the other team would go on a run... he'd... make the players figure it out for themselves. And this sometimes, resulted in losses. But we were always building toward something, learning, they were learning how to handle those situations and in many cases it paid off down the road even if it came at the expense of some wins early in the season. THAT is being patient. Instead, we panic whenever things just START to go awry, and then what happens? The team is jacking 3s with a FULL minute left in a game where we are only down by 4.

5 of those 10 assists were from Kobe alone and Nash has been out all season, of course the Lakers aren't going to be at the top of the league in assists overall. I'm pretty sure I saw a stat on the telecast that said they were averaging a league leading number of assists since Nash came back.

kobe is a ball hog.. tired of defending him sometimes. theres a reason phil jackson had some words about kobe in his book... last year in the okc series, some want to look at blake for missing that wide open 3 in the corner but two games in a row, kobe gave up some clutch turnovers that led to okc fastbreaks and wins.. yesterday with the game on the line, he shot it on 3 defenders, got swatted, that led to a philly fast break. wide open 10 footer for hawes that pretty much sealed the win. yes our team overall shot poorly, but we still had a chance.. they dont shoot it on 2-3 defenders like kobe does.. its so frustrating when i talk to the tv and say, pass the ball, u have a wide open gasol, or artest.. or they blitzing u kobe. hurry up and give it up.. nope he tries to split double teams that converts to a turnover, or takes the toughest shots..the media has made so much of kobe being the next jordan, it has him thinking hes superman and not playing team ball.. hes scoring over 30 a game are we winning???

Ball Hog.... Selfish..... 5 time champion.... ego centric..... chucking shots.... 5 time champion.... dominates ball too much.... 5 time champion....... won't change..... 5 time champion.... too old..... uncoachable.....5 time champion..... low efficiency rating.....5 time champion..... won't play defense..... cares only about his stats.... 5 time champion

Rooscooter wrote:Ball Hog.... Selfish..... 5 time champion.... ego centric..... chucking shots.... 5 time champion.... dominates ball too much.... 5 time champion....... won't change..... 5 time champion.... too old..... uncoachable.....5 time champion..... low efficiency rating.....5 time champion..... won't play defense..... cares only about his stats.... 5 time champion

Perfect Post. I've been critical of Kobe, but in the end, this is what matters to me.

i was fine with how kobe played, except for the last 3 minutes when he went into hero mode.

i'd like to see him defer more to nash to find seams, angles, and scoring opportunities. kobe should be getting the ball in scoring positions, not putting up some crazy shots when all we need to do is run the offense and get a good look at a 2 pointer.

Rooscooter wrote:Ball Hog.... Selfish..... 5 time champion.... ego centric..... chucking shots.... 5 time champion.... dominates ball too much.... 5 time champion....... won't change..... 5 time champion.... too old..... uncoachable.....5 time champion..... low efficiency rating.....5 time champion..... won't play defense..... cares only about his stats.... 5 time champion

Says all that needs to be said, I've argued here sticking up for the man, nothing gets through, it's this simple...

"Nothing gets through" is a great way to put it.

Ariza3 wrote:

Gary Lee: Kobe on overcoming age problem: "It starts w/ acknowledging we are old, we are slow. Then, how do we compensate for it? How do we adjust?" Twitter @LakersNation

play at a slower pace. were gunna get out runned and out worked if were constantly pushing the pace. run when we can obviously but dont force it. we need to slow the pace down a bit and utilize what we have....which is NOT speed. when the 2nd unit comes in sure let them run a bit more or play a bit faster...but for our starters it should be a slower half court game. Not super slow but just a little bit less than what were doing bc were giving opponents too many possessions. games where we cut leads and come back are when were playing slower, faster, and allowing our ENTIRE team to get back on D. Dantoni needs to realize this and Kobe needs to vocalize his opinion bc fast pace isnt gunna work.

Someone tell Kobe to give the death stare again.

Pig Miller wrote:i was fine with how kobe played, except for the last 3 minutes when he went into hero mode.

i'd like to see him defer more to nash to find seams, angles, and scoring opportunities. kobe should be getting the ball in scoring positions, not putting up some crazy shots when all we need to do is run the offense and get a good look at a 2 pointer.

This is how i saw it as well. Kobe played fine and wasn't the reason we lost. But he took several bad shots down the stretch that did hurt us. But I would think that Laker fans would be used to that at this point. Kobe takes tough shots all the time. I can't tell you how many times I have stipped mid curse word and starting cheering when Kobe takes an ill advised shot. It is what itis at this point.

I would like to see him work the ball to Dwight more but I am hoping that will come with more time.

ElginTheGreat wrote:

Pig Miller wrote:i was fine with how kobe played, except for the last 3 minutes when he went into hero mode.

i'd like to see him defer more to nash to find seams, angles, and scoring opportunities. kobe should be getting the ball in scoring positions, not putting up some crazy shots when all we need to do is run the offense and get a good look at a 2 pointer.

This is how i saw it as well. Kobe played fine and wasn't the reason we lost. But he took several bad shots down the stretch that did hurt us. But I would think that Laker fans would be used to that at this point. Kobe takes tough shots all the time. I can't tell you how many times I have stipped mid curse word and starting cheering when Kobe takes an ill advised shot. It is what itis at this point.

I would like to see him work the ball to Dwight more but I am hoping that will come with more time.

the one thing that does bother me is that throughout a game, we see kobe get to the basket for layups or short 7 foot jumpers. but for some reason, it seems that more often than not in the last minutes, he's pulling up for long jumpers.

it's strange to me that he gives up that part of his game the closer we are to the final moments.

I want the ball in Nash hands and ball movement down the stretch .. and I don't care if players have struggled all night ... both D12 and Pau didn't have great offensive games against the Warriors and Knicks but they still contributed in a big way down the stretch ...

Saying let's go to Kobe hero ball because the others are shooting the ball like crap is as ridiculous of a statement as you can read ... Kobe ball at the end of the games hasn't won a game for seasons , it doesn't work ... so why did we go back to this whereas a more collective effort down the stretch won the previous two games ?

I couldn't care if D12 played like crap offensively , I still take a Nash/D12 PNR over Kobe and freaking Metta playing iso ball and launching ridiculous shots in the 4th .

Do you think it normal D12 was involved in ONE single play during the whole 4th quarter ? I don't and I couldn't care less about his 1-7 shooting

JGC wrote:This.

It makes it really difficult to have a real discussion because every time someone brings up Kobe and his shot totals, the first response you almost always get is something sarcastic along the lines of "Oh, it's ALL Kobe's fault". Somehow, what he does cannot be criticized unless what he does comprises 100% of the teams's problems. I just don't believe it is feasible for reasonable fans to believe, deep down in their hearts, that the way Kobe played overall against the 76ers was NOT a net negative when you factor in distribution of the ball and defense.

The bottom line is that there are going to be games where you need hero ball. There is no doubt. When we've tried to move the ball, when Kobe is setting guys up and they are unable to make shots and we start to fall behind. I'll say it again. There are times when Kobe will need to take upwards of nearly 30 shots in a game to bail us out of wins. But it should only happen after we've tried and tried and tried to get the team concept working and only when we have exhausted all other avenues to get the team concept working should we resort to such a desperate and unsuccessful tactic. We should give it a try for at least 3 full quarters before thinking about bailing on it. In other words, it should almost NEVER happen. We win as a team, and we lose as a team.

Plus, I thought the purpose of these first set of games in the regular season was to build chemistry as a team. How exactly do we build chemistry by bailing on the team concept in the 1st/2nd/3rd quarters? If we're trying to get as much on-court time together as a unit, wouldn't it make sense to force the team concept for every min of the game early in the season until we've jelled even at the expense of W/L? All hero ball has done is take us out of any chemistry building flows, and then we've sacrified that just to add more Ls to the Loss column. That's like, a double whammy.

It seems that every game, the popular response is to say "Well, without Kobe hero ball, we would have lost by 20" or something along those lines. But that should not be viewed as a justification of Kobe hero ball at all. It should be viewed as an indictment on our team's ability to play at a level high enough, and with enough consistency, to avoid resorting to such an inept tactic.

Man I am starting to love you ... great post

Finwë wrote:Well that's one of our problems, many guys just standing around. Your reasoning seems to be that a lot of it is Kobe's fault because since teammates aren't expecting a pass, they don't move or get themselves ready.
I'm sorry, I don't agree with it. I think their standing around is most of the times the reason why Kobe ends up taking the shot. Whenever someone does cut or move without the ball (mostly Jamison when he was playing, sometimes MWP), Kobe tried to find them.

interesting is that it usually happens when Kobe has the ball (the standing around) ... just an observation .

Anyways this season's problem isn't that much about Kobe's O - Do I want him to take 20 shots at maximum? yes ... do I need to see him having 5 assists a game? not necessarily - I just want him more fluid, move the ball, stop hesitating and shaking and baking when catching the ball ...

Main problem on the Offensive side are his TOs and complaining - I mean stop it for gods sake - it's usually 4 points a game from those two things alone IMO ...

Also his D is just terrible this season - from effort standpoint, and also from fundamental standpoint ... he rotates wrong, and his effort isn't there ...

i have just to say there are so many kobe haters outhere but you my friend odom1year you are the worst. everytime you have an oppurturnity to put hate on kobe you will do it.so what s wrong with you. are you that kind of kobe hater or are you more a lakers hater in generall and you only hide your true identity as a lakers hater . because it s obvious you have a real problem with kobe bryant regardless what the outcoming is you will attack kobe bryant for simply everything. hey nolQQkpass we won the last 6 of 8 games and in this 6 games kobe scored 5 times over 30 points how about that ? so yes we won it despite kobe scored 30 points or more. oh by the way if kobe didn t scored so much in the losses then the outcome of these games would have been more worse then they looked at the end. so that argument is not really a good one. and it seems you hate kobe bryant and not like him as you said because no one really could hit a shot yesterday and you call kobe selfish and a ballhog ? in which year do you live ? 2004/2005 or what ? kobe couldn t get an assist because no other then him and nash maybe mwp in the end a little could really hit a shot and score. that s the truth but it s very simple for all you haters to put the major blame on kobe and that despite gasol and d12 shot 3 for 19 . so in my opinion you hopped on the hate kobe train because it s so mucg easier to say it s all kobe s fault then to find the real issues why we loose so many games

Rooscooter wrote:Ball Hog.... Selfish..... 5 time champion.... ego centric..... chucking shots.... 5 time champion.... dominates ball too much.... 5 time champion....... won't change..... 5 time champion.... too old..... uncoachable.....5 time champion..... low efficiency rating.....5 time champion..... won't play defense..... cares only about his stats.... 5 time champion

I'm not really sure what the point of this post is. Does this mean there is no valid criticism of Kobe because any criticism can be countered with 5 time champ?

If that is the case, that's fine, but is 5 the minimum threshold after which any player can no longer be criticized?

If that's not the case, then, there is really no point to the post, right?

JGC wrote:

Rooscooter wrote:Ball Hog.... Selfish..... 5 time champion.... ego centric..... chucking shots.... 5 time champion.... dominates ball too much.... 5 time champion....... won't change..... 5 time champion.... too old..... uncoachable.....5 time champion..... low efficiency rating.....5 time champion..... won't play defense..... cares only about his stats.... 5 time champion

I'm not really sure what the point of this post is. Does this mean there is no valid criticism of Kobe because any criticism can be countered with 5 time champ?

If that is the case, that's fine, but is 5 the minimum threshold after which any player can no longer be criticized?

If that's not the case, then, there is really no point to the post, right?

well yeah that's the full on, mature and great duscussion concerning Kobe ;) we gotta get used to it ..