Lakers Rumors: Kobe Bryant Must Keep Ego in Check to Coexist with Mike Brown

When the Los Angeles Lakers decided to hire Mike Brown to succeed Phil Jackson, everyone immediately wanted to know what Kobe Bryant had to say about it.

His response, per the Los Angeles Times, was not to comment at all. At the time, myself and many others deemed it the loudest "no comment" in sports history.

With the NBA season set to kick off in a couple of days, the good news for the Lakers is that Kobe is talking about Brown now. Better yet, he has some nice things to say about him. Which, you know, is a little surprising, seeing as how Brown called him out for not playing hard enough in the team's preseason opener against the Los Angeles Clippers.

Via ESPNLosAngeles.com, here's what Kobe had to say about Brown's remarks after practice on Tuesday:

"

That's his job. I'd be upset if he was just letting me skate through things. You make mistakes and the coach's responsibility is to point those out. If he can't point that out to me, he has no chance of pointing that out to anybody else.

"

But wait, there's more. Kobe admitted that Brown's approach has taken him by surprise. Contrary to popular belief, Brown doesn't mess around:

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What I've heard about him (before this season) was he was a pushover, he doesn't say what he's thinking and all this other sorts of stuff. I haven't seen that at all. He's been the complete opposite. He's been detail oriented, he's been up front and open and honest. He praises guys when they do well, he jumps on them when they're messing up right away.

"

But wait, there's even more. Despite all the amazing things he's accomplish during his career, Kobe made it clear that he doesn't expect preferential treatment:

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We're here to be coached. I'm here to be coached just like everybody else. It's important for everybody to understand that. If I make a mistake, the coach's job is to correct that. You can't be sensitive, you can't be a baby. You're here to win.

"

So there you have it. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Kobe is coming around to his new coach.

Either that or he's just playing nice. It would certainly be easy for him to do so at this point, as it's the preseason and he has to know that the Lakers can ill afford more bad press.

That said, you do have to hand it to Kobe for being so eager to get on board with his new head coach, who—let's face it—is no Phil Jackson. The Lakers have an uphill climb ahead of them, and the only way they're going to avoid collapsing is if Kobe and Brown peacefully coexist.

So far, so good.

But now that Kobe has yielded authority to Brown, he has to be careful to honor and protect the status quo. 

This is going to be easier said than done. Like I said before, it's easy for Kobe to play nice during the preseason. It's another thing entirely for him to play nice when the Lakers start losing games and people in Los Angeles start pointing fingers.

Rest assured, this is going to happen this season at least once, and probably more often given how thin the Lakers are.

Somewhere beneath Kobe's currently cheery exterior is a rather sizable ego. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. The question is how long it can stay contained, and that's entirely up to Kobe. He can either follow Brown's lead, or he can start a power struggle, effectively drawing a line in the sand.

If that happens, the Lakers' uphill climb will get even more uphill, and disaster will be right around the corner.

Make no mistake, things are going to be volatile in Laker Land this season.

Then again, when are they not?