Lakers Will Have Success When Kobe Bryant Isn't Greedy on Offense

The Los Angeles Lakers have had their problems offensively pretty much all season long, but we saw a much better all-around effort Wednesday night that featured a much more aggressive Pau Gasol.

There are many ways to fix the Lakers offense. Gasol being more aggressive is one way. Finding a point guard and some guys that can make shots is another. But in the meantime, the best way to get the Lakers rolling is for Kobe Bryant to become less greedy as a player.

This isn't another "Kobe needs to take less shots" column that you've probably read a 1,000 times already. Does he take too many shots? Probably, but that's not the entire point.

Bryant is a guy that wants it all, and there's nothing wrong with that. Michael Jordan was the same way.

There have been Lakers teams that he's been on where Bryant can practically do it by himself and the Lakers can still have success.

This isn't one of those teams.

If that's the way the Bryant and the Lakers want to go at it, then the results will be like they've been throughout the season so far. The Lakers are close to a third of the way through their 66-game schedule, and they really aren't more than an average team that's slightly above .500.

To really be much better than that, Bryant has to make a point to making Gasol, Andrew Bynum and whoever else can step up a bigger part of the offense.

Without a quality elite point guard that can do that for the Lakers, the onus falls on the shoulders of Bryant. He's had to do it with worse supporting casts, he's more than capable of doing it with this one. The kicker is that he still needs to be aggressive on offense and maintain his scoring, but he has to juggle both scoring and making everyone else a factor as well.

He just can't simply defer to his teammates like he did in the past.

If the Lakers stay this way and Kobe plays with a little greed to his game, this team won't win in the postseason. If they become more balanced, though, then this team once again could become one of the better ones in the Western Conference. Until then, this Lakers offense will be filled with inconsistencies and won't produce many more wins than losses.