Kobe Bryant will always be in a catch 22 situation when the Lakers are struggling.
If his teammates aren’t playing well and he goes into beast mode he will be called selfish. If he allows his teammates to stink out the joint then people will say that he isn’t a good leader.
Either way he is screwed regardless of the five rings on his fingers.
Phil Jackson likes to twist the knife from time to time, but Kobe has been around Jackson for so long, he doesn’t have any issues firing back barbs.
Check out this back and forth.
“Kobe has to screw up the game and energizing the team and going one on one, which take the rest of the guys out,” Jackson said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “As a consequence. that didn’t bring us back in it. It did give us a run and got back into it, but we couldn’t sustain it.”
Jackson also pointed a finger at himself, saying he’d reconsider the off days he’s been giving the Lakers. He gave the team New Year’s Day off, but said he’d “learn better from that.”
Bryant had his own remarks about Jackson — albeit indirectly — and how the Lakers are handling their recent struggles.
“We’ve had days off and blown teams out, so I’m not buying any of that Zen (bulls—),” Bryant said, according to Fox Sports. “I think we’re looking too far down the road instead of looking just at the game that’s right in front of you. You start skipping steps if you look too far down the line.”
Personally I think the Lakers as a whole are bored except Bryant who is obsessive about winning. The question begs will they be able to turn it on when the playoffs come.
It is extremely difficult to go to four straight NBA Finals.
I think people may have been taking the Lakers for granted. This isn’t the 60’s when the Celtics only had to win a few games to get to the Finals.
They are the champs until the crown is taken from them, but it is resting a bit uneasy right now.