I missed it. What happened...what was said? Any beef? Edit: Never mind...found the transcript on the lakers board: Ernie: Here's kobe! And we welcome you to the tnt arena. Ernie johnson, kenny "the jet" smith, charles barkley and our guest for the evening, the lakers' kobe bryant. It's good to see you. I think this is going to be good for fans out there, too, because we see you on the floor, see you maybe in some one-on-one interview, this is going to be fun for you tonight. I'm excited to be here. Kenny: You know how long we're here? Charles: We're here from 8:00 until 2:00 in the morning, but we only work 25 or 30 minutes. Ernie: It flies by, it really does. Charles: No it doesn'T. Ernie: When you're hard at work it does. Mean fime, let's talk about, your relationship with charles barkley, shall we? Maybe we can do this now and be done with it and just have a jolly ole time the rest of the night. You said something about kobe's performance. Charles: In game seven. Ernie: I think the term that came up was – charles: Selfish. Ernie: Then came a bunch of text messages, apparently, from you to charles and back and forth. Now you're meeting face-to-face. Charles: I criticized kobe in game seven, he didn't like it, he let me know it. I think I probably made one mistake, taking it public, but i wanted to get size side, his point of view. I have no problem with him disagreeing with me. I think I did make a mistake making that public. Because he, he didn't take it public, I did. But i didn't like the way he played in game seven, i didn't think he was aggressive, i understand why he didn't like it, me calling him out on national television he let me know it, and to me that should have been the end of it. Kobe: I think that's the critical, important point is we go out and bayplay the game we play the game to win. Obviously we had a strategy that worked well for us in three game, tried to keep the strategy going in game seven and other games as well, it didn't work out for us. We're out there trying to win. To label me as being selfish was something i took up with charles over the text messaging thing. It's one thing to criticize an individual's game, but it's another thing to – Ernie: Did you see where taking three shots in that game was going to raise eyebrows? Kobe: Not really. If you look at how we played throughout the series, game four, in particular, we had a deficit in game four, a double-digit deficit, 12, 13, 14-point game. We stuck to the script. Because we knew in order to beat the fex suns, we have to stop them. And in order for us to stop them, everybody has to feel you're more evolved. When you play better offensively, when you hit down one, two jumpers, your energy picks up yoush defensive level picks up. That's the only way to beat the phoenix suns. If I score 20 points in the quarter, they can care less. Charles: Let me ask you one question. I understand what you were trying to do. At some point, you've got to say, I got to take this game over, and I got to be aggressive, I at least got to go down firing, that was my only point, directing that at you. We've all been in that situation where the coach says, hey, coach what you drew up ain't working, you guys were only down 15 at halftime. Kobe: It worked for us in game four. We had a deficit in game four that was tough to overcome, i said, I'm going to take other the game offensively, but i didn't do that we knew that the strategy was to get everybody involved. That affects the defensive end of the floor. We did it very well in game four. The shot that devean george gave me a great pass on, the shot i hit, was my first basket of the whole fourth quarter and we're in double digit deficit the entire game. Kenny: When do, charles says, sometimes I look at it and say, it's not working. And sometimes you say, i heard even phil jackson say, i give kobe the liberty to get everyone involved, and let him be aggressive. When do you look at the score and say, this is time for me to be aggressive? Kobe: It depends on who we're playing. There are certain teams you can demoralize by scoring a lot of points. If I come out against a certain team that I know are geared to stop me, if i go out there and score 20, 25 points a quarter, it takes their momentum away. Phoenix is not one of those teams. I've scored 20 points against them in a quarter, it doesn't do anything. They just keep shooting the ball. To demoralize them, you have to stop them. Ernie: That was in the past, we're now in the present. Charles: Why are you going to change your number. Kobe: I'm not going to jump over the table and hit him. Charles: Why are you changing your number? Kobe: Number eight has been with me for a while but i felt like it was time to move on, do something, move on to something different. When I came back from italy and came to the states to play, first number i selected was 24. It was a new beginning for me. That's what the second half of my career is about. Ernie: Let's talk about this game that we're watching right now with the cleveland cavaliers beating the detroit pistons, who won the first two games of the series handily, now cleveland wins at their place and let's go to "kobe's pictures" and talk about lebron james and what he has been able to do. Charles: Don't get comfortable with it. Take kenny's name out of there get him out of there. Kobe: Lebron james, what he's been doing in the first half, he's been changing and dictating the momentum of the game. The play he is makes, he had a missed dunk there, but this play gets the cleveland bench involved in the game, gives his teammates confidence. When he gets plays like this three-point plays, he keeps the momentum in cleveland's favor. He's one of those players cha can alter the momentum of the game. That's what he's been doing a great job of in the first half. Ernie: Do you look at him at 21 and think of yourself at 21. Kobe: I was much skinnier. Charles: He's from the dominican republic, he's not 21 kenny: Here's the thing with detroit, would it be more demoralizing to score 20 in a quart ore stop them? Kobe: You have to score points against detroit to beat them. You have to keep them out of transition, look in the first half, only forced two turnovers. Detroit is at their best when they're getting steal ans and creating turnover, but you've got to be able to score points against them. Kenny: So you would be offensively aggressive? Kobe: What lebron is doing is keeping cleveland in the game, he's not allowing detroit to create that cushion. That benefits cleveland. You've got a player who can dictate the tempo and control the bawl P. He's doing a great job of that kenny: He had kobe's pictures, took my name off. I had pictures too. Ernie: We'll get to these. Kenny: These are my pictures, these are the pictures i had. Start the boat up. Talk about taking me out of this show? No we're going to go fishing, first. We're we caught a big one. That was in orange county. Laguna beach. Kobe: I'm cool with the fishing and all. You didn't have to give me that tight yellow shirt. Charles: We need to put jack nicholson in the picture too ernie: We're coming back.
He kept using the phrase "change the complexity of the game." Which doesn't make sense. Isn't it "change the complexion of the game"?
You're right. I think a lot of people make that mistake. Overall, I thought Kobe did extremely well. Have you guys seen Darvin Ham on Fox Sports? He struggles quite a bit.
Man, I saw Kobe's smug mug come up and I had to change the channel. I had enough of him on TV during the first round. You lost - go back to LA and try to teach your teammates to pass you the ball so you can lead the scoring race again.
dude, he's deflecting his responsibility as the teams best scorer by pointing out the game plan to beat them. they still have to score points to win, and smush parker and kwame brown were making juwan howard look good. charles and kenny were right. kobe maybe didnt attempt to take over the scoring responsibilities to exploit that his teammates stunk. do u remember that time he got criticized for not passing the ball? he didnt shoot 1 field goal in the second half to prove his point. he's completely selfish.
Man, I saw Kobe's smug mug come up and I had to change the channel. I had enough of him on TV during the first round. You lost - go back to LA and try to teach your teammates to pass you the ball so you can lead the scoring race again.
Kobe's argument made complete sense...in fact, he made some very keen points throughout the night...points that only players in his position would likely pick up on, and he made them in a very articulate way. He clearly has a better basketball mind than Kenny or Charles. Plus, I think I would take Phil and Kobe's understanding of the game over that of Kenny and Charles.
Yeah, Kobe's argument makes sense if you know the laws of the game, Phil Jackson learned these laws from Red Holzman, passed it on to Jordan, Pippen, Shaq, and Kobe.
kenny charles > kobe phil i dont care how articulate Kobe is. he's not as entertaining as Kenny and Charles.
I thought Kobe's insight was pretty good, and he can be engaging when he wants to be, far more than one would expect, but it was obvious that the guy is an introvert and a fish out of water with Chuck & Kenny, who are the class clowns while EJ plays the pefect straight man.
Kobe did have a point about how defensively you have to stop the Suns to beat them, or demoralize them. His point was that if the whole team is involved, then the defensive intensity is increased for all those players and they play better at that end of the court. But when you get to a point in the 2nd half where it is obvious that this philosophy is NOT WORKING, then you go to your backup plan which is to start chucking. Trying to get everyone else involved didn't do it, you change your tactics. I know that Kobe knows that, so the only reason I can think of that he DIDN'T try to take over the game is because he didn't want to, probably to make a point as others have theorized. Regardless, I think Kobe's pretty selfish.
No one has been a bigger Kobe detractor than me since he disbanded the Lakers and sold out Shaq in 03. But him going on that show, where he's been criticized the most has garnered him a lot more respect imo. As much as people might think he looked uncomfortable on that stage. I'll take him over Magic or any other fourth player analyst that's been on that show. I remember one of Magic's comments after one game on TNT during the regular season: "The Lakers.........(long pause)..... just got beat....... (still pausing)...... by the best team in the NBA"
Kobe actually offers much better insight that alot of these 15 year veterans ... I would overlook the fact they most of them aren't well-spoken, but often times they don't balance that with interesting tales from playing days and what not ... the ideal commentator would be an ex nba player who can speak, has stories to share, and sees things we don't unfortunately, there are none like this ...
I laughed when his co-anchor sid something like "someone who knows a thing or two about winning championships" referring to Ham. Uh, how much did he even play for Detroit?
