Point Guard Kobe Bryant Sums Up Everything Wrong with Los Angeles Lakers
All these years later, months removed from injury rehabilitation, speeding toward the end of his NBA career, Kobe Bryant is still viewed as this immortal lifeline the Los Angeles Lakers can exploit and exhaust to their liking.
That's a problem.
More importantly, it's a problem that sums up everything wrong with the Lakers of today, the team that, despite its hopeless and hapless start to 2014-15, is still trying to mask and treat its flaws with a decades-worn solution.
The latest ploy has head coach Byron Scott considering a lineup change and positional shift in which he'll start Bryant, a career shooting guard, at point guard for the answers-seeking Lakers.
“I even talked to him about it,” Scott said of the possible move, per the Orange County Register's Bill Oram. “I said, ‘I’m thinking about it, but I’m not there yet.’ So yeah I have thought about it.”
Not only has Scott thought about it, but he's tested it.
During the Lakers' 98-95 victory over the Sacramento Kings, Bryant logged just under seven minutes in the outcome-swaying fourth quarter. Almost all of those minutes were spent at point guard, initiating the offense, creating shots for his teammates and himself.
And, on this night, the move worked.
Los Angeles outscored the Kings by nine points with Bryant on the floor, per NBA.com (subscription required), and left Staples Center with its sixth victory of the season. It's only natural Scott would consider rolling with what worked, however briefly.
Bryant is the team's old head, but also someone the Lakers coach can trust. And he clearly doesn't trust his other point guard options. Jeremy Lin has already been benched, Ronnie Price, a nine-year veteran, never averaged more than 15 minutes per game before this season and Jordan Clarkson has just 12 career appearances to his name.
Putting the ball in Bryant's hands is familiar. For all the shots he takes and possessions he absorbs, he's still a playmaker. He's assisting on 25.3 percent of made baskets when on the floor, tying him with Lin for the team lead. This is just the Lakers asking more of their best player—a request that's getting old, like Bryant himself.
Playing Bryant at point guard only adds to the heavy burden already placed upon his shoulders. He is sixth in minutes played (779), continues to contend for his fourth scoring title and remains on pace to register the fourth-highest usage rate (36.3) in league history. All at 36 years old.
Demanding more of him isn't part of any solution.
It's the progression of an internal battle that pits the Lakers' true ceiling against their own crazed competitor. Yahoo Sports' Kelly Dwyer expands:
"The Los Angeles Lakers are not successful, nor are they even-keeled. They’re a poorly constructed team that many think was cobbled together in order to tank the season so as to hang onto the rights to its 2015 NBA draft pick. The problem with this set is that the Lakers still boast Kobe Bryant, the league’s highest-paid player and leading scorer. He’s in his twilight years and could retire in 19 months, and the dude wants to win now.
"
Knowing that Bryant demands results, Scott can feel justified in his team's reliance on one player. Shifting Bryant to point guard could, in fact, give the Lakers a better opportunity to win.
Win what, we don't know. Not even a peak Kobe Bryant could carry this Lakers squad into the playoffs. Any victory they secure at this stage brings them one step closer to losing this year's first-rounder, which is owed to Phoenix and under top-five protection.
There is no way, then, Bryant should be playing 35-plus minutes every night for a Lakers team darting toward one of the league's seven worst records no matter what.
He made just six appearances between May 2013 and the start of this season, and Scott hasn't offered him an opportunity to gradually come back. It's been baptism by fire, to the point where Bryant—until recently, per ESPN Los Angeles' Arash Markazi—wasn't practicing with the team.
Working him any harder puts the Lakers at risk of burning out their prized player before they have something to contend for. If the plan is to wedge Bryant's title window back open, the first priority must be about conserving his body, not potentially improving the offense of a Western Conference bottom-feeder.
That's the other thing: This season isn't about the offense. The Lakers are actually fielding a decent point-piling assault. They rank 15th in points scored per 100 possessions (106.5), and their offense has been better when Bryant is on the bench.
| With Kobe | 779 | 105.5 | 19 |
| Without Kobe | 288 | 109.1 | 6 |
| Overall | 1067 | 106.5 | 15 |
Not that this is a matter of the Lakers being better without Bryant. It's a proposition worth considering, but benching him isn't an option. He's under contract, recognized as one of the greatest scorers ever and is the lone luminary standing between the Lakers and inescapable irrelevance.
Defense remains this squad's biggest problem above all else. The Lakers are allowing 114.6 points per 100 possessions, which, if it holds, would give them the second-worst defensive rating of all time. When Bryant is in the game, this historically horrid defense has been even worse, relinquishing 118.5 points per 100 possessions.
Moving Bryant to point won't improve the defense. Rather, it's a defense-debilitating shift, no matter what Bryant himself says.
Opposing shooting guards are already registering an above-average 17.6 player efficiency rating when being guarded by him, according to 82games.com. That number won't start improving once he's tasked with defending the deepest position in basketball—a responsibility that will demand he regularly match up with players like Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Damian Lillard, Eric Bledsoe, Goran Dragic and Stephen Curry.
Why put Bryant's body through that added strain? Mike D'Antoni tried having him ply his craft at point guard, and Bryant was less than receptive. And though the 2012-13 Lakers won 70 percent of their games (28-12) when he dished out at least six assists—his season average at the time—this isn't that team.
Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Metta World Peace and a sporadically healthy Steve Nash aren't in the rotation to complement Bryant. He instead has Wesley Johnson and Nick Young, Carlos Boozer and Ed Davis, Jordan Hill and Lin. This roster is far inferior to those of years past.
These Lakers are, unequivocally, the worst team Bryant has ever been on.
Talk of moving him to point guard is merely an extension of that listlessness—baggage the 36-year-old Bryant shouldn't have to carry, nor wants to carry, per Lakers Nation's Serena Winters:
Scott merely suggesting he may use Bryant as a point guard at all is a sign of everything wrong in Los Angeles. It's an indictment of the roster's surrounding talent. It's further proof of the Lakers' destructive dependence on Bryant.
Most of all, it's the latest symptom of a struggle between the Lakers and their inability to accept this season for what it is—a foregone failure Bryant cannot change on his own.
*Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference unless otherwise cited and are accurate as of games played Dec. 11, 2014.
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