Can Kobe Bryant Really Still Carry the Los Angeles Lakers?
Carrying the Los Angeles Lakers is a familiar task for Kobe Bryant.
Armed with unequaled self-confidence and an insatiable desire to prevail over opponents—both literal and figurative—on his own terms, ferrying Los Angeles' hopes has become Bryant's preferred way of life. He wouldn't have the Lakers entrusting their fate to anyone else. He wouldn't share the strain of expectations even if he could.
Nothing has changed.
Almost two decades into Bryant's reign as Hollywood's king, the Lakers are still very much his team, the roster reflective of their dollars-dependent future and—most importantly—a patent pledge to continue building around No. 24 until the bitter end.
But where such conduct once engendered hope and teamwide tenacity befitting Bryant's own aplomb, time has turned the tables.
Certainty has given way to confusion. Age and injuries have created doubt. Bryant's burden-bearing, hope-hauling capabilities have come under siege.
Can he still carry his team?
For the first time, the answer is less about Bryant's bionic mystique and more about where the Lakers intend to go.
Charting Expectations
Talk of summer 2015 and all the promise it holds has been temporarily suspended.
New head coach Byron Scott refuses to accept that the mountain ahead is too steep to scale now. References to patience and process have come few and far between, their existence secondary to seemingly ungovernable optimism.
"I think it would be unfair for us to put any expectation on those guys, but the bottom line with me is winning. That’s the bottom line, so I’m not putting any limitations on our guys as well," the new Lakers head coach said on Fox Sports Live, per NBA.com's Joey Ramirez. "I’m gonna go in there the first day of training camp and say, 'Guys, we’ve gotta shoot for winning a championship.' "
Title talk can be interpreted as any number of things.
Is Scott being serious? Using boundless bluster as a motivational tool? Selling something the Lakers don't—and won't—stock anytime soon?
This year's Lakers will stumble into 2014-15 following a 27-win, injury-infested debacle. They're barely recognizable from last year, though not in ways that guarantee they'll win more games, play more defense or move forward at all.
Through it all, Scott constantly cites Bryant.
Sometimes he focuses on Bryant's limitations and the balance between reality and stardom he must find. Other times he can be heard adding weight to Bryant's two-ton crown.
"I've got a lot of guys that I don't really know," Scott admitted in August, via the Los Angeles Times's Eric Pincus. "I've got to get to know these guys and see what makes them tick—but I've got one guy that I do know what makes him tick and that's a great piece to have."
Judging by those words, Scott is no different from any other Lakers coach, and this team no different from any other Lakers team.
Winning—impractical or not—remains the standard, and it's Bryant who must lug the bar to which they hold themselves.
Bryant's New Reality
Current expectations would have seemed tame not two years ago.
Neither time nor age had bested Bryant. Serious injuries weren't holding him back. His game was his game, his production and reliability timeless.
Circumstances have since changed, even if Bryant's career-long role hasn't.
At 36, his basketball mortality obvious, Bryant must adapt. And though adjustment isn't exact science, specific lines—those which Bryant, Scott and the Lakers are forbidden to cross—must be drawn.
That may involve him settling for even more jumpers or playing point guard and ceding the most physically demanding responsibilities to Nick Young, Jeremy Lin, Carlos Boozer and Julius Randle.
It most certainly entails him playing less.
Scott has already stressed the importance of conservation, hinting at a minutes limit for his shooting guard, according to Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News. Yet a potential minutes cap has done little to curb the coach's enthusiasm.
“I see a guy who’s going to average 20-something points a game, [who] will have a great year and have a lot of people eating crow,” he told Medina. "I’m glad people are saying [otherwise]. Keep adding it. It motivates him that much more. It makes my job easier.”
Averaging 20 points is a tall order by itself. Forget collective wishes, wins and losses and every other aspect of the game. Twenty points, on its own, is ambitious.
Players aged 36 or older have averaged 20 points per game only nine times since 1983. More complicated still, three players—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (three times), Michael Jordan (twice) and Karl Malone (four times)—make up all nine occurrences.
Not once did any of those players log fewer than 30 minutes per contest. Jordan and Malone—who make up the last six instances—each needed at least 34.9 minutes to complete the feat.
Bryant, meanwhile, is supposed to eclipse similar numbers on a minutes cap.
Only five players in NBA history, who qualified for the minutes per game leaderboard, have ever averaged 20 points in under 30 minutes per game. It hasn't been done since 1990-91 (Ricky Pierce), and the oldest player to do it was 32 (George Gervin).
Last season saw a 35-year-old Bryant muster 13.8 points a night in 29.5 minutes. Six-game sample sizes don't offer windows into Bryant's basketball soul, but if he's to score as much as Scott and the Lakers want, stringent playing restrictions are the enemy.
And even if he does that, even if he stays healthy and makes history while playing at a familiarly high level, there's still the matter of having to carry everyone else.
The Lakers ranked 28th in defensive efficiency last season, according to NBA.com, and aren't built to be much better this year. They ranked 21st in offensive efficiency, playing a fast-paced brand of basketball Bryant isn't fit to exist within and Scott won't run.
Single cures aren't out there for what ails this Lakers team. Not even a statistically magnificent Bryant would be enough to revive Los Angeles' winning ways. Not if he stands as the Lakers' lone star.
Different Reality, Same Old Misconceptions
Mentions of the Lakers and "winning" and "playoffs" in the same breath cast a cloud over Bryant's impending return.
These (mostly) self-delivered forecasts—borne out of design or blind belief—are, as Bleacher Report's Jim Cavan implies, a double-edged sword:
"On the other hand, the Lakers are coming off their worst season in almost 60 years, play in a perpetually loaded Western Conference and are poised to pay their best player—the 36-year-old Kobe Bryant—a whopping $48.5 million over the next two years, despite recent injuries to the aging star’s Achilles and knee.
Meanwhile, L.A.’s second-best player, Carlos Boozer, was grabbed off waivers after being released by the Chicago Bulls via the NBA’s amnesty provision.
If this doesn’t sound like the blueprint for a championship-caliber team, congratulations: You are firmly grounded in this dimension.
"
Multistar powerhouses make up the Western Conference. Kevin Durant isn't on his own in Oklahoma City. Chris Paul has Blake Griffin. Damian Lillard has LaMarcus Aldridge. James Harden has Dwight Howard. Tony Parker has the rest of San Antonio's roster.
Old and fragile as ever, Bryant is all alone, surrounded only by bit role players acquired to appease his unbending faith and protect Los Angeles' books.
Teams built on this whim—however well-intentioned—don't make the playoffs out west, let alone contend for championships. Contenders aren't founded upon one 36-year-old superstar who has appeared in just six games since April 2013.
No NBA player of Bryant's age has ever racked up more than 18.2 win shares. Under the most ideal circumstances—Bryant has never amassed more than 15.3 win shares in a single season—if the Lakers actually wish to flirt with a playoff berth, where are the other 30-35 victories coming from?
Some combination of Boozer, Lin, Young, Jordan Hill, Ed Davis and Steve Nash, who totaled 17.4 victories between them for their respective teams last year?
Hope of Bryant's return resembling a miracle runs amiss here, where he's being asked to carry the Lakers further than reason allows, acting as something more than an encouraging bridge between this era and the one in which lofty expectations belong.
*Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference unless otherwise cited.
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