[Lefty Noob]

How do you have your star player score 51 and still lose the game by 11 points? Kobe Bryant and the Lakers did just that yesterday, with L.A. falling to the Phoenix Suns 107-96. Odom had 17 and Parker had 14, but no other Laker scored more than 4 points. As a result, they've now fallen into a tie with Sacramento for the 7th spot in the Western Conference. Is this loss on Kobe's head for taking 33 shots and being selfish, or did his sorry excuse for teammates just let him down?

[wvuauthor]

Bryant was 19-33 which is not terrible. I just think he lacks the skills to get everyone else involved..

Also, why don't more people look at the Lakers defense? They put up 96, maybe they can try to play some defense???

[Gotham Dark Knight]

Originally Posted by Lefty Noob

How do you have your star player score 51 and still lose the game by 11 points? Kobe Bryant and the Lakers did just that yesterday, with L.A. falling to the Phoenix Suns 107-96. Odom had 17 and Parker had 14, but no other Laker scored more than 4 points. As a result, they've now fallen into a tie with Sacramento for the 7th spot in the Western Conference. Is this loss on Kobe's head for taking 33 shots and being selfish, or did his sorry excuse for teammates just let him down?

Come now Lefty, Insert any other NBA mega star in Kobe's role and the results would not be much different...I once saw Kevin McHale take a shot from his knees...cause as he put it...he was open...and he didn't get bashed as bad as Kobe...of course, Kobe didn't have Bird, Parrish and the rest of the Celtics around him...

[desertrat]

Originally Posted by wvuauthor

Bryant was 19-33 which is not terrible. I just think he lacks the skills to get everyone else involved..

Also, why don't more people look at the Lakers defense? They put up 96, maybe they can try to play some defense???

We are talking about the Phoenix Suns. 107 points is almost like a slow night for them. As for getting everyone else involved, it would help a lot if the Lakers had enough players to actually be worthy of getting involved. Lamar Odom is capable of stardom but doesn't seem focused enough to be consistent. Kwame Brown is basically a role player, grabs some rebounds but is not much of a scorer. Smush, well what can be said about him other than he is a role player, more like a backup PG than a true NBA starter. This team severely lacks depth so Kobe has to shoot often for the Lakers to have any chance of winning.

[Wizard of Os]

Originally Posted by desertrat

We are talking about the Phoenix Suns. 107 points is almost like a slow night for them. As for getting everyone else involved, it would help a lot if the Lakers had enough players to actually be worthy of getting involved. Lamar Odom is capable of stardom but doesn't seem focused enough to be consistent. Kwame Brown is basically a role player, grabs some rebounds but is not much of a scorer. Smush, well what can be said about him other than he is a role player, more like a backup PG than a true NBA starter. This team severely lacks depth so Kobe has to shoot often for the Lakers to have any chance of winning.

Gack, another ugly loss for the purple-and-gold, to bring them to about 50% ugly wins and 50% ugly losses.

Desert Rat pretty much hit the nails on all their heads with his comment. The Lakers do -- despite everything else negative you can say about them and, o boy, can you say a lot... -- play defense. This is Dr. Phil's bread and butter, and with championship teams was what made the difference between great and legendary. The Suns can score this much (especially without Stoudamire, it could be argued) on any given night, and the Lakers are not nearly quick enough to deal with the speed. Look at Nash's line: 25 points, 8 assists. When he does that, the Suns win.

Desert Rat says the Lakes severly lack depth. He's right again. Depth is the single deadliest problem on the team, and it seems to all come down to the question of who in their right mind wants to play on Kobe's team? Luke Walton, in whom i see great potential (and apparently so does Phil), is still 2-3 years away from frequent double-doubles. Chris Mihm is filling space just about adequately. Let's see, who else is there...? Vujacic, who knows?

Don't even get me started on Andrew Bynum (when they could have had Lobo Danny Granger! ); what did Kupchak think? That if they put some huge dude out there with the Shaq haircut that everyone in LA wouldn't notice O'Neal was gone? (The backroom meeting: "Just think -- we could get an 18-year-old and milk the deception for years!" "Uh, gee, Mitch, think we could pull it off?" "What do you mean can i pull this off? This is Hollywood!") I wouldn't write off Smush as a second stringer just yet. In his third season out of Fordham (?), he's averaging 11.5 points per game: passable, not brilliant, as Antoine Walker is scoring 11.8 in 7.8 fewer minutes per game. Passable. He could learn a thing or two from Phil. (Hey, that reminds me: Isn't Kareem around these days to teach Bynum a thing or two?)

And then there's Lamar Odom. Odom has superstar potential -- yes, superstar -- but he's like a Brad Pitt out there; give him crummy direction and he'll be crummy; put a tight leash on him and he does 12 Monkeys' worth of badass play. Lamar has never been known for his improvisational skills on or off the ball, and what the dude appears to need is a coach who will sit his butt down and say, "look, this is the game plan and this is what you do. Deviate and die." (Is Mike Shanahan available? Straightforward shooting worked perfectly for Jake The Snake...) The 2001 Jackson would have put Odom over his knee and Odom would have been good for 18, 20 a night alongside Kobe and Shaq.

Back in the day, a common strategy was to just give up 30 points to Shaq or Jordan and shut down everyone else. With the 2005-06 Lakers, you can give Kobe 40 and still win.

(And Danny Granger could have been theirs...grrrrrr.)

The funniest bit about the Lakers-Suns game? Coach D'Antoni's quote: "Bell did a heck of a job [on Bryant]." O, so that's what D'Antoni was yelling on the sidelines. "O heck! Heck!"

Cheers, all.

[ThePundit]

Gotham: Kobe wouldn't want McHale, Bird and Parrish on his team. Isn't it obvious when he basically sent Shaq packing? Kobe doesn't care about winning. Kobe cares about Kobe. Period.

[cjg11582]

Kobe has an inflated ego and was tired of living in Shaq's shadow. My guess is he probably felt he was as important to those three title teams as O'Neal was (he would be wrong, but that is what he thought) and wanted to be considered "the man" on a contender. Now currently they are not contending. But if The Lakers acquire Garnett and he plays second fiddle to Kobe next season, are you really prepared to say they won't at least win their division?
This is just me, but I cannot fault a guy for taking 33 shots if he makes 57% of them; win, lose or draw. Sometimes the sum of the parts on the opposing team is too much for one player to overcome, and this appears to be the case in this game.

[Lefty Noob]

See, this is what bothers me about Kobe. Look at the Lakers field goal percentage leaders. Kwame Brown, Brian Cook, Chris Mihm, Lamar Odom, Laron Profit are all averaging at least 10 minutes per game and have a higher shooting percentage from the floor than Bryant, who's hitting on 44.8% of his shots. Both Brown and Mihm are 50%-plus shooters, and Odom is a 48% shooter. Would that keep up if they took more shots? Maybe, maybe not. But with Kobe running the show, they'll never have that chance.

[cjg11582]

I saw a statistic with Odom that stated The Lakers are like 2-17 when he takes more than 15 shots a game. That might be an inherent fluke but those numbers are so staggering I have to believe they count for something.
As far as Brown, Profit, Cook and Mihm; what have they ever proved to deserve more shots a game? You can make a case for Cook (young player who has been with the Lakers his entire career), but the other three are liabilities. Kobe, Parker and Odom get them open looks whether they be dunks or short jumpers, they receive high percentage shots because of the one-three positions.
Speaking of post-players for the Lakers, in my fantasy basketball league, we had a rule of thumb that if you need statistics and want to acquire a player for essentially just one extra start, if The Lakers are playing that night always take a big man on the opposing team; and it never failed. Anyone from Kris Kaman to VIllanueva to Kristic, any big man has a better than average night when playing against The Lakers. He wasn't available on the waiver wire but Brad Miller had two triple-doubles against them this year... Brad freaking Miller! I know this speaks to their defensive rather than offensive ineptitude, but it is telling of the caliber of player if he cannot contain Brad Miller to at least a double-double.