LOS ANGELES — It was an unusual scene. Here was Kobe Bryant, casually comfortable in his hooded sweatshirt, calmly reflective late Friday after the Los Angeles Lakers lost their third consecutive game to start the season.
Their 118-111 loss to their hallway rivals, the Clippers,
was sealed when Bryant — the sneering, lip-biting closer supreme —
missed a pair of shots late that might have been the difference between
defeat and victory.
“I couldn’t be more pleased in this loss, actually,” Bryant said. “I think we figured a lot of things out.”
There
was no sarcasm, no seething. Bryant, once notorious for his
hair-trigger impatience — with teammates, coaches, the front office and
any sort of losing — was now wrapping his arms around a moral victory,
prompting a question about the last time he had felt so good after a
loss. “Probably never,” he said with a shrug.
If
this is a Zen-like transformation or merely some late-career
pragmatism, it helps explain the current state of the union between
Bryant, 36 and coming off two serious injuries, and the Lakers, with a
roster of flotsam and jetsam surrounding him. It is going to take
continued compromises.
And
that may be the only item of interest with the Lakers this season: Will
this good soldier still be so at ease with his circumstance in
February, or will his desire to win another championship prompt him to
ask for a trade?
Bryant’s
patience is being tested. He lost a kindred basketball mind with Steve
Nash’s season-ending injury and lost a promising young talent he might
mold when Julius Randle broke his leg. And then he lined up again
against Chris Paul, another reminder of the trade to the Lakers that
David Stern nixed.
“I
know him and I know he’ll stay professional about it,” Clippers forward
Matt Barnes, who spent two seasons with the Lakers, said of Bryant.
“You always want to see someone who’s had a historical career go out in
the right way, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen that way.
It’s going to be a long season for him.”
Bryant
can no longer carry a team, not the way he once might have been able to
do over 82 games or even attempted to do when the Lakers lost by 18 to
Houston and 20 to Phoenix to open the season. But on Friday, Bryant
revealed how he can still influence a team — and a game.
He
whipped passes out of double teams. He guarded Paul. He blew past
Barnes for a reverse dunk and later sold him on a pump fake. He stole
the ball from Blake Griffin in transition. He sank a fadeaway 3-pointer
in the corner over the shot blocker DeAndre Jordan and suckered him with
a highlight reel pass fake before banking in a layup. He threw in a
reverse lay in. And he kicked a pass out to Wayne Ellington, whose
3-pointer tied the score for the last time.
When
Bryant did not have the ball in his hands, he was often pointing the
direction he wanted to see it move. When he sat on the bench, he did not
keep his observations to himself.
“They
still take his lead,” Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said of Bryant, who had
21 points and 7 assists. “He gives that team toughness, he gives them
resolve. I guarantee you, whether they play well or not, they’re not
going to be a team that gives in, because Kobe never gives in.”
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What pleased Bryant the most was how Jeremy Lin,
the point guard, played as if he were running the team — being decisive
with the ball and more assertive with his direction. After the loss to
Phoenix, Lin and Bryant shared text messages late into the night. On
Thursday, Bryant initiated ones with Wesley Johnson. Soon, all the
players were looped in.
This was a different, more collegial, tact than he might have taken in the past, Bryant said. There were no death stares.
“Absolutely,”
he said. “A lot more teaching. A lot more communication as opposed to
the players we had in the past. Here it’s really kind of teaching, how
to get things down, how to deal with the emotional roller coasters that
take place throughout the course of games, the challenge of things and
figuring things out.”
Midway
through the fourth quarter, Bryant had Paul posted up on the block, and
demanded the ball from Ronnie Price, the backup point guard who had the
ball on the wing. But Price, sensing that Blake Griffin would be
crashing down from the free-throw line to double-team Bryant, instead
fed the ball to Griffin’s man, Jordan Hill. He sank a long jumper, the
last of his 23 points.
A few minutes later, with the shot clock winding down, Lin waved off Bryant and hit an off-balance 3-pointer.
What Bryant liked is having a teammate strong-minded enough to make his own decisions on the fly.
“You
have to be able to assert yourself, especially on a team I’m playing
on,” Bryant said. “I don’t want chumps and I don’t want pushovers. If
you’re a chump and you’re a pushover, I will run over you. And so it’s
important for them to have that toughness and to say ‘I believe in
myself. I can step up and make these plays, I can perform.’ I think
that’s very important.”
The Lakers, Bryant seemed to sense, will need much more of that this season if they are going to leave any kind of mark.
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