Enjoy the show
Don't knock Kobe, just appreciate his greatness
Lang Whitaker, CNNSI
As I sit down to write this column, it's Sunday night and the clock is showing 9:32 p.m. on the East Coast.
Tonight, I am looking forward to watching the Los Angeles Lakers play. Specifically the guy wearing No. 24.
If you like basketball, right now the greatest show on earth has nothing to do with CBS. Its name is Kobe Bryant. And it's become must-see TV.
I should stress that this wasn't an easy admission for me to make. Long ago, something about Kobe refused to let me appreciate him. I didn't like how brash and unconscionable he appeared early in his career. I didn't like the way he announced he'd be opting out of his contract during the NBA Draft, and then seemed to drag out his free agency for effect. I didn't like what happened in Colorado, whatever happened, and I didn't like the way all of that ended. Mostly, though, I just never liked the way Kobe never appears to show us his real self. Maybe what we see is what we get -- maybe this Kobe, as we know him now, really is who he is. But I'm convinced that somewhere deep down inside, there's a Kobe who pulls practical jokes on his teammates, who drives around with his windows down and The Clipse blasting, who doesn't intentionally try and channel Michael Jordan during interviews. We just don't get to see that Kobe.
At some point this year, I decided to give Kobe a fresh start. And you know what? It's been great. He's obviously not a perfect basketball player. Does Kobe share the ball like Steve Nash? No. Does he play defense like Bruce Bowen? Nope. But he sure is fun to watch, if for no reason other than the complete hedonism of his offensive game.
I can't recall the last time I saw a player with such a free reign to shoot whenever he feels like it. When the Lakers come down on a fast break, if Kobe gets the ball, it's going up, regardless of how the defense is aligned. If Kobe has the ball anywhere on the right side of the court, it's likely going up. Actually, if he's open anywhere on the floor, he's probably going to shoot. Even if defenders are right on him, he just jumps over them and gets his shot off.
The thing is, the ball keeps going in, and you eventually get conditioned to this brand of basketball Kobe is playing, until you find yourself cheering for Kobe to shoot the ball more and more and score 50 points once again. There was a point during the game tonight when Kobe came down and caught a pass from Luke Walton at the 3-point line. He pump-faked a defender, who sailed past. Kobe then re-set his feet and went up for the shot, without taking a dribble. Under normal circumstance, this would be probably be considered a bad shot, because he could have either taken a dribble to improve his rhythm or driven to the basket past his beaten defender. But as Kobe pulled up for the shot, instead of thinking, "Oh, come on, Kobe," I immediately thought, "Oh, I hope he makes it!"
That's the way he's been playing the last few weeks, and the other Lakers seem to have accepted that this was Kobe's destiny all along. Veteran NBA players can develop a certain veneer with the media, answering questions with little candor or expression. But when I asked Lakers center Andrew Bynum, the youngest player in the NBA, what it was like to play with Kobe, Bynum's face lit up. "Dude is so nasty on the basketball court!" Bynum enthused. "Playing with him, anything he does makes it easier on me. If he cuts by me, my guy almost always goes with him, which gives me openings on the court."
And to Kobe's credit, he's been finding the open guys when he's double-teamed. Well, usually. Then again, if I were Kobe, with some of these teammates, I'd be jacking the ball up, too. Kwame Brown is almost equally as entertaining to watch as Kobe, but for far more nefarious reasons. Brown must lead the league in forcing refs to choose between calling an offensive foul or a turnover. I'm not sure if it's ever been explained to Brown in such explicit terms, but the goal is to catch the basketball when it comes into your personal space, not bat it about aimlessly.
Phil Jackson referred to reserve forward Vlad Radmanovic as a "space cadet." That was a few weeks before Radmanovic separated his shoulder while snowboarding over the All-Star Break. Lamar Odom seems to drift in and out of games. Walton is probably their most solid player right now, other than Kobe. Never in his life was Brian Cook's return from an injury so eagerly awaited.
The more I watch the Lakers, the more I'm reminded that they're sort of a franchise adrift at the moment, not good enough to contend for a title but fitted with young players (like Bynum) who will be great a few years from now. In the meantime, until the Lakers are able to recover their royal lineage, there's Kobe, endlessly driving to the rim and firing up three-pointers.
During the game tonight, Kobe started out on fire, scoring nine points in the first three minutes, but then settled down and didn't look to force things in the fourth quarter. The Lakers won, but Kobe's streak of consecutive 50-point games ended at four games. Tonight, alas, he only scored 43 points. Again, he only scored 43. That's 268 points in his last five games, an average of just 53.6 points per game over the span.
Why shouldn't we root for Kobe to score, score and score? He may not play basketball the way Larry Brown would want him to, but he could morph into Magic Johnson and it still wouldn't help Kwame catch a pass. Right now, we're witnessing a prolonged show of dominance from Kobe Bryant, the likes of which we haven't seen in the NBA in a long time.
At least since that O'Neal guy was in L.A.