NBA Rumors: Kobe Bryant Smart to Rally Lakers Amidst Stormy Season
Usually, NBA teams don't hold players-only meeting after scoring big home wins over quality competition.
But the Los Angeles Lakers aren't your run-of-the-mill pro basketball team, nor has the 2011-12 campaign been ordinary in any sense for the Purple and Gold.
Hence, whether they'd won or lost to the Portland Trailblazers on Monday night, it was about time that Kobe Bryant, Derek Fisher and Pau Gasol called the team together to spark a new narrative heading into the second half of the season.
And that, according to ESPN's Chris Broussard, is precisely what took place after the Lakers' 103-92 win over the visiting Blazers. As Broussard said of the meeting:
"Their message was clear: Trade rumors do not matter; your feelings about management or the coaching staff don't matter; all that matters is that the 14 men in that locker room support and believe in one another. If they stay together and stay on the same page, they can get to where they want to go as a team.
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A perfect rallying cry, indeed, for a team that, while clearly in some turmoil in this season of change, still has some key, championship-caliber components that no other contender does.
Namely, two skilled seven-footers and Kobe Bryant.
Beyond any changes to the roster—should they be upgrades at point guard, small forward or on the bench—what the Lakers need most is a sense of unity, solidarity and calm amidst the storm that's been swirling around the team of late.
For one, the transition from Phil Jackson, a laid-back former player with 11 rings on his fingers, to Mike Brown, a noted "stat boy" known for his heavy-handed approach and painstaking attention to detail, has been anything but a smooth one, though the compressed schedule hasn't made things any easier.
Rather than having a full training camp, preseason games and practices to get to know his players and their tendencies, Brown and his team have been forced to adjust to one another on the fly, with scant time to iron out the particulars amidst a 66-game sprint to the finish.
Changes to the front office and the roster have also put a drain on the team this season. As Ken Berger of CBSSports.com so scathing points out, the Lakers' front office underwent a perplexing overhaul during the lockout, one instigated largely by Jim Buss, the team's vice president of basketball operations and one of owner Jerry Buss' sons.
That shift, which included the promotion of some part-time mixologist named "Chaz" into a scouting position, has disrupted the flow and status quo of communication between the Lakers' management and players (i.e. Kobe), to the point where the Black Mamba felt the need to address it publicly on Sunday night.
Add to that the apparent panic trade of Lamar Odom to the Dallas Mavericks for next to nothing before the start of the season, and you get a picture of an organization that more closely resembles a cubist Picasso painting than an immaculate Jacques-Louis David work.
What do all these factors have in common?
They're currently beyond the players' control. Andrew Bynum and Metta World Peace can complain all they want about Brown, but they can't bring the Zen Master back and they certainly won't be dictating a change on the bench anytime soon. Kobe can cry foul to Mitch Kupchak, but the front-office dysfunction appears to be beyond the GM's control.
And the whole team can pine for the good ol' days of LO, but nothing can or will bring him back to LA.
What the players can do though, is obvious: go out and play to the best of their collective ability. The core of this team—Kobe, Gasol, Bynum and Fisher—has won two of the last three titles and are surrounded by veteran players who've had plenty of success in their own right.
It's the players, not the coaches or the Buss brothers, who will ultimately determine whether the Lakers rise back to the top or continue to slink toward a future filled with mediocrity.
What's most important from here on out is that the Lakers play as a unit, one saddled with a considerable but highly motivating chip on its shoulder.
For the first time in recent memory, the Lakers, bona fide NBA royalty, can justify an "us against the world" mentality, even (and especially) if that world includes the rest of the organization.
Whether and how they pursue that angle may well determine their success or failure as they creep into the second half, beginning with a brutal back-to-back stretch against the Dallas Mavericks and the Oklahoma City Thunder before the All-Star Break.
