Kobe Bryant Discussion: Mamba Out!

I can't believe it's been 10 years, feels like it just happened. Also, I was watching a Lakers game from like 2006 on NBA TV last night, Kobe scored 51 or so vs the Kings with Smush, LO, Turiaf, Mihm, and a lot of other guys not worth mentioning. He was so damn good, so much quicker, got to the hoop at will, made scrubs around him better, man he was amazing.

 

First time this season Kobe was yelling at his teammates in the huddle because of terrible pick and roll coverages. I didn't see this during the game because it was during a commercial break but in the postgame show Byron mentioned Kobe, during a timeout when the team looked defeated Kobe started pointing to some of the guys calling them out and was visibly pissed off. While Byron was talking about this is when they showed the video of this going down.

Byron, just stood there nodding his head of course. The timeout wasn't over but Kobe after he was done saying what he needed to at the guys just walked off back to sit down in frustration.

I just wanted to share this because it stuck out to me being one of the few times we saw Kobe's scowl, frustration come out and I do miss this kind of Kobe. This isn't to blame the other guys because Kobe's TOs tonight were terrible as well, but the emotion and frustration during this timeout was cool to see.

 

Might be trivial, but Kobe is at 25.1 PPG for his career. I'm hoping he doesn't drop down to 24.9 before the season ends. Just doesn't look right to me.

 

He should have been doing this all season.

Seems like the kids took it well. Hopefully it doesn't need to happen again, but if it does hopefully Kobe can be focused like that all season. I'm sick of happy smiling Kobe who doesn't care if he's barely hitting the rim.

 

Wait. So was the dude shooting that trying to capture Kobe yelling at the kids, or did he happen to catch that while stalking the pretty blond in the front row?

 

Lol. What a video.

 

So who's the coach here? The guy yelling at the team in a timeout, or the guy standing there watching and saying nothing? What does B0ron even do here?

 

Interesting, very interesting. I'd like to think that if Kobe was harshest on Russ and Randle that he believes in them the most. Unless I'm mistaken, Kobe usually is toughest on guys he believes most in and sees the most potential in. That, or the ones he doesn't think are putting in the work they should be. No matter what he said though, it's not going to matter with B0ron as coach, Russ playing 23 mins in games where he's 8-12 shooting, and Randle not being given a clear role and helped much more with his development.