TMac vs Kobe: TMac has confidence in his teammates

t-mac had much worse teammates than an odom and luke walton, kwame brown (this should be the icing on the cake because as bad as kwame is, orlando never had a big close to his level), etc while in orlando and he still passed the ball. so this is no excuse. and t-mac didn't stop passing when yao was out when deke is a dropped pass waiting to happen, hayes a blown layup waiting to happen and rafer a display in house building waiting to happen. all this "look at his teammates" crap is just that ... crap. they aren't bad, he just brings the worse out of his team.

 

Hayes OWNS Kwame dude.

Hayes is a straight up baller.

Oh and Rafer will always be a better streetballer than Smush Parker. At least Rafer doesn't upset his coach by not playing with energy.

 

Kobe doesn't have another go-to superstar teammate, like TMac has Yao. He had one in Shaq but Kobe wanted him out. Kobe wanted to be the only star on the Lakers and he got his wish. Now, the Lakers depend on Kobe for everything, for better or worse.

 

i'm not that sure man. kwame is a good defender and rebounder. he usually plays guys like duncan, garnett VERY well. he's just prone to foul trouble like chuck and fumbles balls like chuck

 

Kobe definitely has help. He just wants it to be the Kobe Show. I kinda wanted the Lakers to win just so we wouldn't have to face the Suns later, but whatever.

 

tmac passed before yao. after yao. when yao is injured. when yao comes back.

passing is not dependent on having superstars or not. we can see kobe's lack of willingness to involve his teammates w/o looking at the assist #s.

 

That's true but if you look at it like this:

1. They are both relatively useless as go-to-guys in the post offensively.

2. They both guard guys much better than themselves.

3. They both are foul prone and make silly mistakes.

If you look at it like that, Hayes owns Kwame with his hustle and basketball IQ. Kwame could be a legit force in this league, but he just doesn't have the basketball IQ Hayes does. And Hayes is a pretty good defender for his size.

Plus, Hayes is a Rocket.

 

alright, can we stop actually comparing these 2 players offesively, Kobe is better, PERIOD!! Maybe this was an argument in 03 when Mac was averaging 32, but now, he has lost a step, and his offensive arsenal is no where near KB24's. Kobe's got the better shot, ability to finish, get to the line, dunk, even now he shoots 3's better than TMac. But Mac does have the trust factor down, although alot of those Laker role players just really SUCK!

 

The real problem with Kobe is that his team does not fit the triangle offense. The players are not right for that system. Kobe would really thrive in run and gun type game like Phoenix. Imagine if you plug in Kobe for Marion and you have lights out team. The reason Kobe resorts to ballhoging is that his teamates cannot create their own shots and so Kobe is stuck being PG and teams lock on to him with triple teams. That is why they were trying very hard to get Jason Kidd near the trade deadline. They need a playmaker other than Kobe to run the offense and open things up. Guys like Odom, Bynum and Brown need to be fed with the ball in order to be effective. At this point Kobe doesn't understand his playmaking ability needs to supercede his shooting game. Truly sad because Kobe has peaked to his prime and will never rise above this cealing.

 

Bingo

 

Odom is never a 20 points scorer. As good a reputation as he has, his career assist number is 4.6/game. He might be a passer, but he is not a PG, neither a scorer. Odom is never an inside presence. None of the other Lakers is a 20-point scorer. Odom is also quite inconsistent score wise.

Anyway, T-mac has taken the road Kobe is taking now. You need an inside presence to win in this league. Yao has taken the score load off T-mac. T-mac knows that now he can take 2 quarters off from scoring and Rox would still be in a pretty good shape. For Kobe, he has to score for 4 quarters, he might be able to do it for one game or two, but he can't do it consistently.

 

lamar avg 20 pts w/ miami.

 

Right, and of course T-mac eventually got fed up with the situation and gave up and asked for a trade to Houston. He might be able to do it for a couple of seasons, but he can't do that over a long time.

Kobe just needs an inside presence. Maybe Paul Gasol will sign up this off season.

 

Before I wrote that Odom never averaged 20 points, I actually checked his career average. No, he didn't average 20 points. He average 17.1 pts with Miami.

 

well that's still damn good.

all i'm saying is if u watched tonight's game, whoever odom was on, he did well. he was 8-16. he should have taken 20+ shots tonight. kobe did not have to take 33 shots.

 

His teammates expect Kobe to do his thing down the line. It's a double edged sword....

 

I would say Kobe has too much ego. He would take a shot no matter how good/bad his teammates are. I bet he would do the same thing even if Yao was on his side,

 

I watched that team a lot, the one with Odom, Wade and Caron. Odom was the first option on that team and go to guy. He would also run the point forward and set up teammates. Wade was the second guy theyd go to. If Kobe's role in the team were similar to dwyane wade's on that heat team and allow odom to create, the lakers can be better. the suns have no answer for Odom, so they should go to him a lot.

And also like someone mentioned before, TMac PASSED the ball in Orlando. People just tend to focus on his scoring b/c he lead the league, but mac had good assist numbers with the magic. None of his teammates ever accused him of ever being a ballhog. Tmac has ALWAYS been unselfish, coming into the league he wanted to be point guard.

 

and knowing how nice and humble yao is, yao wouldn't say anything so kobe would keep shooting. shaq didnt have that so they broke up.

tmac knows he has yao, he gets yao involved first and only when yao struggles will he take that many shots.

 

That's true, Odom should take more shots, however, he only had 2 FTs. 16 shots with only 2 FTs, it tells you that Odom mostly took mid-range jumpers. He scored 17 points. As a matter of fact, only 3 players on the Lakers team had FTs. It tells you there is no inside presence. When you do not have inside presence, it is very difficult to win.