Los Angeles Lakers: Continuous Struggles a Byproduct of Poor Offensive Game Plan

Every time I think Mike Brown has found his sea legs with the Lakers, something happens to remind me that he and the Lakers are still a work in progress. The Lakers just dropped their second straight road game—first on Tuesday to the Pistons and tonight to the Wizards—and I'm appalled. 

Watching the game, I began debating who was more of a problem, Kobe Bryant or his coach, Mike Brown.

Mike Brown’s lineup decisions and his substitution patterns are baffling at times. He plays Metta World Peace too long when he can’t make a shot. He fails to intervene with Kobe when he is stubbornly shooting bricks.

And Brown fails to find lineups that stop the other team's momentum or generate offense after his timeouts to stop the opposition’s long runs.

Brown needs to accept that when the starters are on the court—especially in the fourth quarter when their age shows—the opposition is playing five-on-three, leaving Metta World Peace and Derek Fisher wide open on every play.

The lack of another offensive threat on the floor makes Kobe pass less and shoot more because he lacks confidence in both Metta and Fisher.

The opposing coach knows that and uses either Metta or Fisher’s man to double-team Kobe—and in many instances, triple-team Kobe.

In both the Detroit and Washington games, the Lakers could not score down the stretch. It’s not rocket science. If you double-team the post and double-team Kobe, that leaves either Bynum or Gasol covered by one defender while no one guards Metta or Fisher.

I watched these games 3,000 miles away and even I could see it. I don’t know why the coaches don’t see it, because every team is playing a variation of this defense after watching film of the Mavericks sweeping the Lakers in last year's playoffs.

To make makers worse, it seems the Lakers cannot successfully run a play out of a timeout. Nor can they feed the post in the fourth quarter to stop the double-teams on Kobe.

It was not until the three-minute mark that Kobe made a pass into Pau, who fed Bynum for a shot attempt. Bynum was fouled and made two from the line.

In the next series, an entry pass was made to Bynum, who went to the hoop for two more. Other than that, Gasol and Bynum were statues in the fourth quarter. Neither of them is to blame, as Kobe dominated the ball, failed to pass and shot bricks—he was just three-for-17 in the second half.

The bench got its usual criticism from Lakers announcers Bill MacDonald and Stu Lantz, who noted that the bench scored more points in Washington than it did in Detroit.

But, the bench stats are deceiving because Brown has elected to play Kobe with the second unit, probably out of coaching paranoia. With Kobe dominating the ball, what chance does the bench have of shining?

The criticism of the Lakers' bench is often unwarranted. Their failure in this game can best be illustrated by analyzing early fourth-quarter criticism by the Lakers' announcers. MacDonald and Lantz, wondering outloud when Mike Brown would go back to his starting lineup, ignored the obvious; the problem on the floor was Kobe throwing up four really bad shots in a row without one pass.

Kobe Bryant is a great player—easily a first-ballot Hall of Famer—but he can be stubborn.

When the team is not playing well, Kobe has put it on his shoulders and carried it to great heights.

But on some nights, he drags the team down with his stubbornness, just as he did in the Pistons and Wizards games. At one point, Kobe was 8-for-24, and Stu Lantz bemoaned the fact that the team's shooting percentage had dropped to .410 without pointing out that Kobe was shooting only .333 and taking the lion’s share of the shots.

Kobe went 0-for-6 in one stretch of the fourth quarter, including a costly illegal-dribble turnover, when the lowly Wizards opened up a six-point lead, 98-92.

Kobe just doesn’t get it. Even brilliant players like him can have off nights. Especially when being double- and triple-teamed in the fourth quarter. On those nights, star players need to attract the double-team and give up the ball.

When Kobe shoots poorly, it seems to drive him to stubbornly shoot even more. The worse he shoots, the more he shoots. Finally, with 4:30 left to play, Kobe made his first shot of the quarter, a three-pointer. Arguably, it was his worst shot of the night.

For coach Brown, it seems to be one step forward at home and two steps back on the road.

My wife’s aunt likes to say, "What you don’t see, you have to feel."

When Mike Brown starts to feel the weight of these road losses, maybe he will change. If he doesn’t, Lakers management will likely make the change for him.

It happened to Paul Westhead after winning a championship, and it can happen to Mike Brown, too.