Kobe’s To Blame for Lakers Fall from Grace | Thebigtip

The Lakers were always bound to cruise through the regular season to an extent. Coming off back-to-back titles, running riot for a third regular season was never going to happen. Taking that into account, it’s hard to be too harsh on their general play and third place in the Western Conference. However, there is one issue that is slowly rearing its head – Kobe’s play.

At 32 years old and coming off three successive 100-game seasons, it’s only natural that the miles on the legs build up and affect his play. Where he used to go through defenders, he now has to work around them. His hot streaks used to consist of shots all over the floor. Now they tend to be contained to his mid-range jumpers. Of course, Kobe is still such a great player that against most teams, he’s able to mask the limitations creeping into his game.

It’s when the Lakers face trouble in a game that the problems become apparent. In Kobe’s mind, he’s still the stud that’s capable of anything on the court. The reality is that teams with either a top individual defender or smart team defence know how to play him and how to limit his effectiveness to a degree. In all but two of the Lakers losses to date, recorded below, Kobe’s played a part in shooting his team out of the game:

@ Denver – 11/32

@ Utah – 10/21

v Indiana – 14/33

@ Memphis – 9/25

@ Houston – 10/24

@ Chicago – 9/23

v Miami – 6/16

@ San Antonio – 8/27

In the aftermath to these defeats, the murmurs out of the locker room have always been the same: ‘We need to play smarter,’‘"Kobe shoots too much,"

‘We need to use our advantage."

Only one of those quotes are made up. If it was any other team with a struggling guard that also had a size advantage with their bigs, the guard would stop throwing shots up, instead opting to pound the ball inside. It was most evident in their loss to the Spurs, where in the second quarter with Kobe sitting on the bench, the Lakers found some rhythm in their offence. Gasol and Bynum were going to work and the Spurs didn’t have too much of an answer – until Kobe checked back in. He attempted to take over again, the big men were frozen out and the Spurs were able to readjust their defence to win going away.

It’s tough to figure out exactly what it will take for Kobe to realise he has to cede to his teammates a little bit more for the rest of the season and long-term. On the surface, it appears simple – there is new depth in the team that hasn’t been there in previous seasons, their big men are capable of beating anyone if given the opportunity and their defence can shut down any offensive lineup as shown in Game 7 of the Finals last season.

What could stop him is that he simply doesn’t know how to just because he’s never been around a similar situation in his career. Even when he was the number two to Shaq earlier in his career, Kobe was always angling to be the alpha dog on the team. It’s not like the situation where Magic Johnson and Kareem had a relatively smooth transition, or when David Robinson allowed Tim Duncan to become the focal point in the offence.

It’s that experience early in his career that’s made it easier for Duncan to become the secondary option on offence this season after the guard play – because he knows that it has to happen for the Spurs to have a better chance at winning a title. Kobe has never been around that, and it appears he doesn’t trust his teammates enough to at least give equal control of the offence to Gasol – who was undoubtedly the reason the Lakers flew out of the blocks in the first couple of weeks this season.

If Kobe, Gasol and Phil Jackson figure out a way to return the offence to something similar to the first couple of weeks while still giving enough touches to Kobe to keep him happy the Lakers won’t have any problem making their way to at least the Western Conference Finals. But, if Kobe decides he has to keep playing as a volume shooter, there is every chance that the Lakers will fail to get out of the West.