If you hang around the NBA anywhere near as long as Kobe Bryant has, you’re bound to run into your fair share of obstacles. Injuries, on-court struggles, off-court drama, locker-room squabbles—the Black Mamba’s seen them all and has come out the other side mostly intact, save for a few of his body parts and his NBA 2K rating.
But the 2015-16 season might not just be Bryant’s last in the NBA; it could also be the rockiest, most potholed one he’s yet had to tread in his 20 years of playing pro ball.
The biggest roadblock of all may well be Bryant’s health. Each of his last three seasons have been ended by major injuries. In 2013, his Achilles tendon snapped. In 2014, his knee fractured. Last season, his right shoulder fell apart.
Mentally, Bryant seems prepared to put his setbacks behind him and plow right ahead. As he told a live audience during a recent trip to China (h/t Lakers Nation’s Corey Hansford):
They gave me perspective. Prior to the injury I knew that the game wasn’t going to be there forever. I knew that, but I wasn’t expecting it. I told my kids, “My career could be over now”, so when that happened, it changed my perspective. I started reflecting on this journey. It made me understand the finality of things and to appreciate them.
Physically, there’s reason to wonder whether Bryant will be able to simply to fend off his creeping mortality with a flurry. His recent injuries aside, Bryant just turned 37 and has already logged 55,418 minutes between the regular season and playoffs—the fifth-most in NBA history.
With that kind of mileage on his creaky body, Bryant won’t have as easy a time bouncing back from a taxing game, let alone a back-to-back set or an actual ailment as he once did.
The fact is, Bryant’s not going to look like anything, his old self included, if he can’t stay on the court. For his own good as well as the good of the Lakers, he’ll likely have to adapt to an unfamiliar role, interns of both playing time and responsibilities.
Head coach Byron Scott admitted that he may have allotted too much time for Bryant, who averaged 34.5 minutes per game last season, via Lakers reporter Mike Trudell:
He had minutes on his mind that he felt he could handle, and I felt he could handle a little bit more, and I felt he was right. Obviously when we talk heading into (the season), I’ll ask him again what he thinks minutes wise, and I think this time I’ll take his word for it instead of going with my own gut, because he was absolutely right.
In the eyes of long-time (and soon-to-retire) Lakers team trainer Gary Vitti, the workload that Scott gave to Bryant had little, if anything, to do with the latter’s shoulder injury.
“If he plays 25 minutes, there’s less chance he gets hurt than if he plays 35 minutes. But the 35 minutes, in terms of the shoulder injury had nothing to do with it,” Vitti, who insisted the shoulder issue was “trauma-related,” told Trudell.
Either way, Scott seems to have learned his lesson. If he’s going to build the Lakers back into a winning operation, he can’t afford to lean on Bryant as though the two were transported back to 1996, when Scott mentored a teenage superstar-in-training out of Philadelphia. Instead, it’ll be up to the Lakers’ other, younger guards and wings (i.e., D’Angelo Russell, Jordan Clarkson, Lou Williams, Nick Young, Jabari Brown) to both ease Bryant’s burden and bolster L.A.’s prospects for success.
There’s no guarantee that Bryant will spend all of his time at his typical 2-guard spot. If anything, it would be wise to bet on Bryant getting in some run at the 3, and even a little at the 4, to save him from having to chase around so many quicker opponents and to open up more space for the Lakers’ youth movement on the perimeter.
As Scott told NBA.com’s David Aldridge:
The one thing that we wanted to do and accomplish through this draft and through free agency was to try and be a little more versatile, have some versatility. So I think (Clarkson, Russell, Williams) can definitely do that. Kobe can play one, two and three. There’s no doubt in my mind. And there’s some games. against some teams, where he’ll probably play four. With his tenaciousness, the way he guards people and when his mind is set, if I say “Kobe, you’ve got him,” he takes that as a challenge. You know how he is. He’ll compete.
That adjustment has the makings of a tough one for Bryant. According to Basketball Reference, he’s played just nine percent of his career minutes at small forward and almost none at power forward. Bryant, forever a student of the game, is certainly capable of learning new tricks, but at some point, there may be no ignoring the old dog that he’s become.
All the while, Bryant will likely be asked to teach and mentor the very youngsters who will soon take his place in the Lakers’ pecking order. He’s already had to school Russell, his “lil bro” and presumptive successor in Lakerland, in some basketball history. Russell, the No. 2 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, wondered aloud (in a tweet that’s since been deleted) if Tracy McGrady, one of Bryant’s chief competitors in the early 2000s, was the greatest of all time. Bryant, like McKayla Maroney before him, was not impressed.
As with any team rebuilding with young talent, there will be growing pains for the Lakers in 2015-16. Bryant will not only have to suffer through them like all the other veterans, but he will have to be more patient and understanding than anyone when they pop up. As the caretaker of the franchise, Bryant will be expected to show the likes of Russell, Clarkson and Randle how to succeed while giving them the opportunity to fail.
If you’re at all familiar with Bryant’s career, you’ll know that he can be abrasive, particularly with teammates who don’t live up to his lofty standards.
“There are certain players that I’ve made cry,” Bryant told ESPN’s Baxter Holmes. “If I can make you cry by being sarcastic, then I really don’t want to play with you in the playoffs if that’s making you cry.”
Bryant, though, has come to understand the importance of being a bit more sensitive to his teammates’ emotional needs. As he explained to Holmes:
For me, stop being an a–h— really meant you’ve got to start approaching the game on a human level and understand that we are people and we need to have that connection versus this hard drive all the time. Because no matter how skillful you are, it’s an emotional game. If you don’t have that emotional connectivity with somebody or with a group, you’re not going to get at your highest level of potential.
For Bryant, then, it’s vital that he connects with all of his teammates, the younger ones in particular, if the Lakers’ latest collection of players is to grow into something resembling a respectable squad.
Bryant’s contract will expire at the end of the coming season, though he hasn’t closed the door on extending his career beyond that point. A key addition or two next summer, when the salary cap is set to skyrocket—and Kevin Durant, Al Horford and Hassan Whiteside will be among those available on the market—could propel the Lakers into contention and, in turn, lure Bryant back for one last shot at the sixth ring he so covets.
That juice would more than likely be worth the tiresome squeeze that’s on tap for Bryant this season. Even if he doesn’t return for a 21st year, Bryant will have the tail end of his legacy to consider as he slogs his way through what could be the most grueling campaign yet. As ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle put it:
For Bryant, his final season, whenever it is, will be his one chance to create a favorable last impression for fans and young players alike…Is putting up an empty scoring average for a bad team really a fitting swan song for a five-time champion? In the end, the answer to that is really up to Bryant and his body’s ability to hold up for a full season.
Fortunately for the Lakers, Bryant’s never been one to back down from a challenge. If he can stay healthy, he has the capacity to rise to whichever occasion comes his way this season and, circumstances permitting, the ones to follow.
“Twenty years, that’s nuts!,” Bryant told former teammate Shaquille O’Neal on the latter’s podcast. “I couldn’t imagine playing for 20 years back in the day. I’m just getting ready. I’m really excited for this year.”
And that is as much as anyone can ask of a man who’s already given so much to the NBA’s marquee franchise.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
Read more Kobe Bryant news on BleacherReport.com
from Bleacher Report – Kobe Bryant http://ift.tt/1L99Tjt
via IFTTT
Bryce's Notebook 