Stuckey, Pistons Blow By Lakers, 88–85 in OT
When Kobe hit the 17-foot jumper at the buzzer to force overtime, he solidified his reputation as The Man You’d Most Want to Shoot the Last Shot. No one else playing today comes close to him, and only Jordan, Bird, Jerry West, maybe one or two others, were ever on that level.
Oh, Kobe can shoot, and he can score, but he can also shoot too much, a problem that never affected Jordan, Bird or West. In fact, Kobe shoots too much rather often.
Tonight, against a 12-24 team that could not stop either Bynum or Pau, Kobe took 26 shots and hit eight of them. The man missed 18 shots, including seven 3-pointers.
Meanwhile, the Pistons were at Bynum’s mercy. They couldn’t stop lobs to him or to Pau, who were having their way with an undersized, not very good Pistons team. Bynum was 13-18 from the field and finished with 30 points, 14 rebounds (six on offense) and three blocks. Dominant enough? Actually, no.
Pau was 8-14 from the field for 20 points, 10 rebounds, six assists and four blocked shots. As good as those numbers are, they should have been bigger and, as it happened, needed to be.
Each of the Big Three played 40 minutes or more in a losing effort.
After the game, James Worthy said it several different ways, but couldn’t quite get the following words out: Kobe. Shot. Too. Much.
Mike Brown talked about missing a lot of 3s (the Lakers were a pathetic 3-22 from deep). Others mentioned spotty defensive effort. Others mentioned the lack of bench contribution. Nah. Kobe shot too much.
One more time: By shooting too much, Kobe deprives Pau and Bynum from dominating their opposite numbers. Even when Kobe shoots 50% (unlike tonight’s 28%), the twin towers are doing even better against their defenders—55%, 60%. And they’re getting those undersized Pistons in foul trouble.
After tonight, if Kobe doesn’t get it, if Mike Brown doesn’t get it, the Lakers are toast, and even home court advantage in the playoffs won’t matter. They are using a losing, (and outmoded) strategy. Kobe needs to be reined in, but Mike Brown doesn’t appear to be the coach that will go there.
Basketball is the ultimate team game. Group dynamics is everything. That’s as old as the pick-and-roll.
The Lakers are deceptive—tough to bet on or against–because despite the fact that they have two holes in their starting lineup (and one of the holes is at point guard, making them about the only NBA team that doesn’t have a good starting point guard!), their Big Three is truly gifted–and unique, in that the Lakers have two All-Star caliber 7-footers—the two best offensive big men in the NBA, okay? And Kobe Bryant. Thus, they are going to be winning a lot of basketball games. But the good teams, the ones with balance and depth, will beat them because those are two things the Lakers ain’t got.
To recap: Kobe shoots too much. The converse of which is that Pau and Bynum don’t shoot enough.
Not to put it all on Kobe. The Lakers might be able to win it all even with Kobe shooting too much if they got some help. They just don’t have enough good players—even though they usually have the three best players on the court. And you don’t see that too often. But that’s how weird the Lakers are.
My point is that if the Lakers want to win an NBA title this year with the team they’ve got, they need to follow my simple instructions: Kobe must see to it that Bynum and Pau dominate in every game (outscoring him most of the time) while he picks up opportunity points and distributes the ball. Then, maybe, Kobe can get his sixth ring. Otherwise they are pissing in the wind.
Rodney Stuckey was heroic in a 34-point outburst, hitting all seven of his foul shots.