Kori Ellis
11-29-2005, 03:58 AM
Lakers' act: Bryant shoots first, last, almost always
Web Posted: 11/29/2005 12:00 AM CST
Mike Monroe
Express-News Staff Writer
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA112905.1D.BKNspurs.lakers.bryant.8a8a60c.html
LOS ANGELES — When Phil Jackson walked out of the SBC Center and into a steamy San Antonio spring night a little before 11p.m. on May13, 2004, euphoria surrounded him and the entire Los Angeles Lakers entourage.
It lingered long after Derek Fisher's buzzer-beating shot had deflated the Spurs in Game5 of the Western Conference semifinals in the most dramatic single moment of an entire NBA season.
The buzz carried them all the way back to Los Angeles and right into the 2004 NBA Finals.
Who knew it would be 565 days, two major trades, three coaching changes and one more Spurs championship run before Jackson would walk back into the arena that afforded him his last great playoff memory?
Things are different these days for the Lakers, who are 5-7 and dead last in the Pacific Division as they meet the Spurs tonight at the SBC Center. And things are especially tough for the coach San Antonians love to hate.
Jackson is trying to teach the triangle offense — to which he is so committed — to one of the NBA's youngest rosters. He has a lineup that does not seem suited to run the triangle the way it functioned when Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen provided two nearly equal-length sides of the triangle in Chicago, or when Shaquille O'Neal was the base and Bryant the hypotenuse in Jackson's first go-around in L.A.
"We are really young," Bryant said after a recent practice. "I mean really, really young. Andrew Bynum was 3 years old when the Bulls won their first championship and 7 years old my rookie year. We're very young, so these concepts are completely new."
Indeed, Bynum, who played 12 minutes in the Lakers' 102-96 overtime loss to the New Jersey Nets at the Staples Center on Sunday night, celebrated his 18th birthday on Oct.27, making him the NBA's youngest player ever.
Bryant was only 21 when Jackson arrived in Los Angeles for his first run on the Lakers' bench, but learning the triangle was easier then with a roster full of veterans.
"We had Rick Fox, Brian Shaw, Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, myself and Shaquille (O'Neal) and Glen Rice and A.C. Green," Bryant said. "We had guys who had been around a long, long time, guys who knew the pro sets and knew the triangle offense from having played against Chicago many times. So it was easy for us to pick it up."
Now, Bryant is one of only four Lakers who were with the club in 2003-04, the lone starter remaining from that NBA Finals team. And what has become abundantly clear, even to Jackson, through the Lakers' first 12 games is the fact their only chance to win, at least for now, is to go to "Plan B."
Plan B is simple: Bryant takes over. Consequently, he also takes most of the shots.
In the Lakers' loss to the Nets before a crowd that booed them during a first half in which they scored only 28 points, Bryant took 36 shots. The other four starters took 38. At one point in the fourth period, he had scored 45 of the Lakers' 89 points.
"We had to start going back to Plan B, which is getting Kobe to activate himself," Jackson said. "We had to get him going in the second half and get us back in the ballgame. So it's setting up for having to start getting more support for him."
For the season, Bryant has taken 349 of the Lakers' 990 shots (35.2 percent). By contrast, Tim Duncan leads the Spurs in percentage of shots taken: 210 of 1,035 (20.3 percent). When the Bulls won an NBA record 72 games in 1995-96, Jordan, who averaged 30.4 points, took only 26.9 percent of the shots.
For now, Bryant has little choice. Not when his scoring average, an NBA-best 34.2 points, is 20 points higher than his next most-productive teammate, Lamar Odom.
The dilemma Jackson faces is simple: Where does he find help for Bryant? Odom was supposed to be the Lakers' Pippen to Bryant's Jordan. Jackson even brought Pippen to training camp in Honolulu, specifically to school Odom on the fine points of the triangle.
Thus far, it hasn't registered, except on rare occasions.
"It's a major concern for us," Jackson said after Odom missed 10 of 11 shots on Sunday night. "A major concern. We have a player like Lamar Odom who is coming off a ballgame where he had 23 points ... and he comes back and was hesitant. That's a major concern for us. And our offense kind of sputtered behind that."
Odom insists he is getting more comfortable with the offense. It takes time, he said, and even Jackson is fond of reminding everyone, often, that learning the complex offensive system "is a process."
"Raising your IQ as a basketball player and learning a new offense is going to help us in the long run," Odom said. "As we get more and more comfortable with it, everything flows more easily out there. It's a real cohesive offense, so I really like it."
What about the mistakes he and his other triangle-challenged teammates make so often, which has caused the Lakers to shift to Plan B?
"If you're a football coach," Odom said, "and you and your offensive coordinator move to a new team, you expect a guy to run a wrong route or not to pick up a blitz every once in a while. It's going to happen."
Jackson has to bite his lip and focus on the few positives he can find while he waits for it to happen. So he praised his team's defense in the second quarter of a remarkably ugly first half against the Nets because the Lakers kept the Nets scoreless through the first six minutes of the period. He takes comfort in his team's gritty comeback from a 16-point second-half deficit to force overtime.
"We got ourselves mired in the mud out there," Jackson said of that first half. "Moving the ball was difficult for us. Passing the ball was difficult for us. Shooting was tough for us. Yet we found a way to come back and be in that ballgame."
Veterans who remember what the Lakers were like in Jackson's first incarnation in L.A. do their best to be kind.
"They've got a unit in there that's growing, and it's early in the season, and they're going to have growing pains," the Nets' Jason Kidd said after slicing up the Lakers' defense for 35 points. "But I think by the end of the season, Phil and Kobe will have those guys playing at a high level."
Jackson remains sure of it, at least in his public utterances.
"We're starting to make the second and third options work for us," Jackson said, "and that's really important. Now the idea is to counteract and be subtle with the offense, and deploy the defense, and make them react and come back to the other side, and do things like that which are a little more elite."
Of course, that was before Sunday's first-half debacle against the Nets, which necessitated Plan B — the Kobe alternative.
Web Posted: 11/29/2005 12:00 AM CST
Mike Monroe
Express-News Staff Writer
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA112905.1D.BKNspurs.lakers.bryant.8a8a60c.html
LOS ANGELES — When Phil Jackson walked out of the SBC Center and into a steamy San Antonio spring night a little before 11p.m. on May13, 2004, euphoria surrounded him and the entire Los Angeles Lakers entourage.
It lingered long after Derek Fisher's buzzer-beating shot had deflated the Spurs in Game5 of the Western Conference semifinals in the most dramatic single moment of an entire NBA season.
The buzz carried them all the way back to Los Angeles and right into the 2004 NBA Finals.
Who knew it would be 565 days, two major trades, three coaching changes and one more Spurs championship run before Jackson would walk back into the arena that afforded him his last great playoff memory?
Things are different these days for the Lakers, who are 5-7 and dead last in the Pacific Division as they meet the Spurs tonight at the SBC Center. And things are especially tough for the coach San Antonians love to hate.
Jackson is trying to teach the triangle offense — to which he is so committed — to one of the NBA's youngest rosters. He has a lineup that does not seem suited to run the triangle the way it functioned when Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen provided two nearly equal-length sides of the triangle in Chicago, or when Shaquille O'Neal was the base and Bryant the hypotenuse in Jackson's first go-around in L.A.
"We are really young," Bryant said after a recent practice. "I mean really, really young. Andrew Bynum was 3 years old when the Bulls won their first championship and 7 years old my rookie year. We're very young, so these concepts are completely new."
Indeed, Bynum, who played 12 minutes in the Lakers' 102-96 overtime loss to the New Jersey Nets at the Staples Center on Sunday night, celebrated his 18th birthday on Oct.27, making him the NBA's youngest player ever.
Bryant was only 21 when Jackson arrived in Los Angeles for his first run on the Lakers' bench, but learning the triangle was easier then with a roster full of veterans.
"We had Rick Fox, Brian Shaw, Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, myself and Shaquille (O'Neal) and Glen Rice and A.C. Green," Bryant said. "We had guys who had been around a long, long time, guys who knew the pro sets and knew the triangle offense from having played against Chicago many times. So it was easy for us to pick it up."
Now, Bryant is one of only four Lakers who were with the club in 2003-04, the lone starter remaining from that NBA Finals team. And what has become abundantly clear, even to Jackson, through the Lakers' first 12 games is the fact their only chance to win, at least for now, is to go to "Plan B."
Plan B is simple: Bryant takes over. Consequently, he also takes most of the shots.
In the Lakers' loss to the Nets before a crowd that booed them during a first half in which they scored only 28 points, Bryant took 36 shots. The other four starters took 38. At one point in the fourth period, he had scored 45 of the Lakers' 89 points.
"We had to start going back to Plan B, which is getting Kobe to activate himself," Jackson said. "We had to get him going in the second half and get us back in the ballgame. So it's setting up for having to start getting more support for him."
For the season, Bryant has taken 349 of the Lakers' 990 shots (35.2 percent). By contrast, Tim Duncan leads the Spurs in percentage of shots taken: 210 of 1,035 (20.3 percent). When the Bulls won an NBA record 72 games in 1995-96, Jordan, who averaged 30.4 points, took only 26.9 percent of the shots.
For now, Bryant has little choice. Not when his scoring average, an NBA-best 34.2 points, is 20 points higher than his next most-productive teammate, Lamar Odom.
The dilemma Jackson faces is simple: Where does he find help for Bryant? Odom was supposed to be the Lakers' Pippen to Bryant's Jordan. Jackson even brought Pippen to training camp in Honolulu, specifically to school Odom on the fine points of the triangle.
Thus far, it hasn't registered, except on rare occasions.
"It's a major concern for us," Jackson said after Odom missed 10 of 11 shots on Sunday night. "A major concern. We have a player like Lamar Odom who is coming off a ballgame where he had 23 points ... and he comes back and was hesitant. That's a major concern for us. And our offense kind of sputtered behind that."
Odom insists he is getting more comfortable with the offense. It takes time, he said, and even Jackson is fond of reminding everyone, often, that learning the complex offensive system "is a process."
"Raising your IQ as a basketball player and learning a new offense is going to help us in the long run," Odom said. "As we get more and more comfortable with it, everything flows more easily out there. It's a real cohesive offense, so I really like it."
What about the mistakes he and his other triangle-challenged teammates make so often, which has caused the Lakers to shift to Plan B?
"If you're a football coach," Odom said, "and you and your offensive coordinator move to a new team, you expect a guy to run a wrong route or not to pick up a blitz every once in a while. It's going to happen."
Jackson has to bite his lip and focus on the few positives he can find while he waits for it to happen. So he praised his team's defense in the second quarter of a remarkably ugly first half against the Nets because the Lakers kept the Nets scoreless through the first six minutes of the period. He takes comfort in his team's gritty comeback from a 16-point second-half deficit to force overtime.
"We got ourselves mired in the mud out there," Jackson said of that first half. "Moving the ball was difficult for us. Passing the ball was difficult for us. Shooting was tough for us. Yet we found a way to come back and be in that ballgame."
Veterans who remember what the Lakers were like in Jackson's first incarnation in L.A. do their best to be kind.
"They've got a unit in there that's growing, and it's early in the season, and they're going to have growing pains," the Nets' Jason Kidd said after slicing up the Lakers' defense for 35 points. "But I think by the end of the season, Phil and Kobe will have those guys playing at a high level."
Jackson remains sure of it, at least in his public utterances.
"We're starting to make the second and third options work for us," Jackson said, "and that's really important. Now the idea is to counteract and be subtle with the offense, and deploy the defense, and make them react and come back to the other side, and do things like that which are a little more elite."
Of course, that was before Sunday's first-half debacle against the Nets, which necessitated Plan B — the Kobe alternative.