Eh a PG is supposed to pass:grin: If this happens the other lakers will really only see the ball when they get to inbound after a opponent make. I wonder what is the Highest FGA/G in NBA history while shooting below .400?, or in the NBA in the last 20 years. Iverson shot 27 FGA/G while shooting .398. So there have been bigger ball hogs than Kobe. (but not that many).
Kobe is pretty good at passing, the problem is he holds and dribbles the ball forever before either shooting or passing. Dude gets assists, but so did Allen Iverson and Steve Francis and these guys hardly helped ball movement.
Well, the Iverson "practice" rant might not be so out of line for Kobe after all, if he is indeed moved to play PG. They are quite similar on offense, going solo without a conscience. But Iverson's Sixers were very good at playing defense.
The Sixers traded any and every player who wanted the ball (Stackhouse, Larry Hughes, Van Horn, etc.) and acquired/kept only defended and rarely shot (Snow, McKie, Ty Hill, Ratliff and later Mutombo). If you are gonna win with a high volume shooter making 38% of his shots, this is probably the way to go. Most of those defensive guys that the Sixers acquires were not highly valued on the market, either. Maybe the Lakers can find some of them cheaply, but they sure have not been very successful at this. Besides, their big plan seems to be hoarding cap space, tank to keep their pick and go after a pie in the sky free agent in 2015.
It's interesting with all the news about Kobe about to pass Jordan on the all time scoring list, how some people say this means Kobe has a legitimate claim to be better than Jordan. Of course the problem with that claim is it took Kobe 195 games and counting more to get past Jordan and Jordan has a career shooting percentage that is 4.5% higher, and Kobe's is likely to decline even more by the time he retires. And Jordan took over a year and a half off in the prime of his career to try and play baseball.
I don't think many people will use what happens the next 2 years to judge Kobe vs MJ besides a few silly Lakers homers. Nobody else gives a care what they think anyway. ESPN might want to use it as a filler talking point for a few news cycles.
It's hard to imagine who they could convince to come next year of real value. Rondo maybe? A ball dominant PG who can't shoot is hard to imagine as a good fit for Kobe ball. It's hard to imagine Marc Gasol, Aldridge or Love leaving their current teams, and even less likely that Lebron does. And if any of them did, why would they pick the Lakers? Omer Asik could be a great pick up, but the Pelicans didn't give up their number one pick to rent him for a year, and it's hard to argue that the lakers with Asik would be better than the Pelicans with Asik anyway. Kobe wants to be the alpha scorer still, and it's hard to imagine another star wanting to come to their losing team to play as Kobe's supporting cast. Kobe wants to win, but not if it means he is just a role player rather than the man. I don't think he has any desire to play the aging Vince Carter or Grant Hill off the bench role for a contender over staying where he is and wracking up stats as the man.
Kobe will always be Kobe. His greatest weakness is his supreme confidence in stubbornly winning HIS way no matter the costs. If this means alienating All-NBA winners like Shaq, Bynum, Pau and Dwight, then so be it.
Watching Lakers local broadcast preshow now, it is amazing how much they suck Kobe's dick. All they talk about is Kobe passing Jordan. This is why nobody with other options chooses to go to the Lakers.
Kobe right now is basically Tyreke Evans as a rookie. I still remember the Kings having him throw up a ton of bad shots one game just so he could average 20-5-5 as a rookie. They even handed out 20-5-5 souvenir for the occasion.
Here's the narrative: If the Lakers suck, it's because Kobe's teammates are scrubs. If the Lakers win, it's because Kobe is such a great player.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Byron on Kobe's chase of MJ: "Probably for us it would be better to happen sooner than later."</p>— Bill Oram (@billoram) <a href="https://twitter.com/billoram/status/543590064479948800">December 13, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
JVG and Mark Jackson just talked about the Kobe practice tirade. They both said it never happened with teams they coached. They find the thing strange and JVG said that it's a more sensitive situation with Kobe not practicing and the shows up and yells at everybody. JVG also thought it was strange that no player and no coach went back at Kobe.
wait. Kobe wasn't even practicing? he just shows up blasts everyone and nobody says anything? LOOOOOL
It was obvious the whole drama was directed by kobe himself. The purpose is cleared just to let the media knows that despite the poor results he still care about winning and yelling at Mitch basically telling everyone it was not his fault but his teammates fault.
