Kobe screwed up the game, says Phil Jackson after Lakers loss
Kobe Bryant (photo. Nike)
From the “Any publicity is good publicity” files, Kobe Bryant‘s 2010 — marked by his fifth NBA championship and second Finals MVP — took a passenger’s seat to the year of LeBron James, who became the game’s primary headliner thanks to his combination of success (league MVP) and controversy (“The Decision”).
To kick off 2011, Kobe is back in the controversy business. In the L.A. Lakers’ first game of the new year, the two-time defending champs were routed at home by the Memphis Grizzlies. After the loss, in which Kobe (28 pts, 2 asts) took 22 field goals while no teammate took more than nine, coach Phil Jackson put his superstar on blast:
“We get behind early on in the third quarter on some stupid plays — poor passing, poor transition defense — and then Kobe has to screw up the game and start energizing the team by going one-on-one and that takes the rest of the guys out as a consequence,” Jackson told reporters. “That didn’t bring us back in, but it did give us a little run, we got the game back a little bit but we couldn’t sustain it and we just went right back and made the same mistakes again.”
Jackson also said some nameless Lakers were, “Trying to do too much with the basketball … Teams are double-teaming, coming to help, we have to move the ball.” Jackson added, “The game got to a point where we didn’t use our strength, which is our inside players.”
Or maybe Jackson wasn’t actually bashing Kobe.
It’s hard to tell when the coach is being serious or sarcastic in his interviews, whether he’s trying to bait the media or bait his players who read the newspapers.
In Kobe’s defense, the Lakers wouldn’t have been in the game at all without his 17 third-quarter points, and Jackson knows it. The Grizzlies simply outplayed the Lakers as a whole — you can’t blame Sunday’s loss on one or two players. Ron Artest played a role by being unable to stop Rudy Gay (27 pts), the Lakers were outrebounded 44-37 and gave up 12 offensive boards, and Kobe had only three of the team’s 20 turnovers.
There was plenty of blame to pass around.
What do you think? Will Phil Jackson’s comments cause problems for the Lakers down the road? Does Kobe need to change his style of play?
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January 3rd, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Mike "Yahoo! Exclusive" Mihalow says:
Phil’s blasted Kobe before, so who knows.
January 3rd, 2011 at 1:19 pm
drew says:
this wasn’t really a bash by phil jackson, but i would expect nothing less than an uninformed article from austin burton (it’s no secret austin is a pro lebron and anti kobe dime columnist). A respected poster on realgm made this great argument (@ tsherkin):
“A couple of people said it, but the words Phil used don’t sound like he was ripping on Kobe.
You’ll notice that he said that Kobe energized the time by going one on one… that’s not something you usually look at as a negative. I mean, yeah he took too many threes and didn’t accomplish much else apart from his scoring but he was isolating and trying to do something. The Lakers were down 9 at the half and Kobe scored 17 of 23 points in the third. The team only scored 85 points the whole game, right? In the second quarter, almost everything was from outside and they weren’t getting it into the post or to the rim and same in the fourth and really, the end of the first, as well. The Lakers did a bad job of looking for high-efficiency shots. Pau and Bynum combined for 4 shots in the second quarter. Out of 16 shots. They looked a little better in the 3rd because they were almost all short jumpers and layups, not tons of threes or long 2-pointers, they just didn’t get up enough shots or get to the line enough. The Lakers were 9/16 or something close to it in the 4th, and 6 of those shots were from 19 feet or farther out (though they mostly made them in a bunch at the end of the quarter). They had little runs and bursts but they couldn’t keep it up and they didn’t dominate in any capacity. They shot about 51% under the arc, 33% beyond the arc, didn’t dominate at the line, got smoked on the glass and had more than twice as many turnovers as Memphis. Sloppy, sloppy stuff.
And for everyone pushing on Gasol to have more shots, he had 5 of L.A.’s 21 (!) turnovers. Kobe had 3, but he also had 22 shots in 31 minutes, so it’s not all that surprising (although what does that say about the approach to the game L.A. brought). The team’s starters didn’t play starter’s minutes, they definitely gave up on this one. Fisher, Odom and Shannon Brown combined to go 8/22 and Artest didn’t score and Memphis MURDERED them on both points in the paint and fast break points.
This game wasn’t just on Kobe, this game was on L.A. as a whole just sucking.
So when Phil says Kobe HAD to isolate to energize the team, I don’t necessarily look at that as only a criticism of Kobe’s play but definitely a comment about the state of the rest of the team.”
January 3rd, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Shot In Ya Face says:
I haven’t watched Laker games recently as my TV died, but the games that I’ve been watching, Kobe has been jacking up shots like no tomorrow and Pau Gasol has his shot attempts cut in half. That’s where the Lakers are being hurt…too much Kobe, not enough Pau.
January 3rd, 2011 at 1:25 pm
drew says:
@ shot in ya face
maybe you should watch some laker games then. the whole team’s been in a funk and pau is the poster boy of that. phil’s already said that pau doesn’t have “good base” on his shots, and when youre turning the ball over like he is when youre not missing shots, it’s not necessarily a case of kobe gunning in this case.
January 3rd, 2011 at 1:33 pm
drew says:
this is what phil’s entire quote meant in english for you haters
“We got down early therefore Kobe had to deviate from our normal game plan in order to make some buckets and get the team going.”
January 3rd, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Ian says:
drew
hahahahahahahaha goh
January 3rd, 2011 at 2:13 pm
92021SpurMD says:
Um Drew, i think Phil was being sarcastic with the “energized the team” comment…
January 3rd, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Ape says:
What does it say about LA’s interior defense when Darrell Arthur is dunking on your bigs.
January 3rd, 2011 at 2:44 pm
drew says:
@92021SpurMD
read the whole thing again… unless you see what you want to see.
@Ape
that no defense is being played. wide open 3s on unecessary help defense by kobe can contribute to that. if kobe should be criticized for anything in last night’s game, it’s his lack of defense, just like everyone else on the team.
January 3rd, 2011 at 2:47 pm
karizmatic says:
I’ve been talking about this with some of my peeps…it doess seem like Kobe is pressing a little bit and not letting the game come to him. Kobe may need to cut his shots down a bit and look to the middle.
I think these comments will affect the Lakers more sooner than later. Kobe will inevitably pout for a couple of games, you’ll know next game if he only takes one or two shots for the whole first half while forcing bad passes into Pau Gasol, and then after that the Lakers are likely to find their rhythm and settle back into playing decent basketball. At least that’s what usually happens.
January 3rd, 2011 at 3:04 pm
FIrst & Foremost says:
Who writes a Ph.D thesis in the comments section?
January 3rd, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Count Doucheku says:
Put these NuTz on BlAsT
January 3rd, 2011 at 3:27 pm
SWAT says:
Lol @ first…yea drew ease up on the damn post. Evrybody knows phil plays head games…whether ur on the team or playing against him. Thts all this is.
January 3rd, 2011 at 3:36 pm
dagwaller says:
@ Drew – I’ve never found Austin to be anti-Kobe. Just my opinion on another person’s opinion though, haha.
I’d put it on Kobe. He gets the “best in the world” talk when they win, why shouldn’t he be criticized when they lose?
@ those blaming Pau: People with ears and eyes should have seen this coming long ago, just listening to Gasol’s interviews. He’s been complaining about not getting the ball enough for YEARS. He’s pulling a Kobe on Kobe by not demanding the ball anymore, probably.
January 3rd, 2011 at 3:42 pm
the cynic says:
Kobe has been “energizing” the team a lot the last couple of weeks
January 3rd, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Amy says:
As a team they are playing crappy defense. And Pau is playing….wait a minute Pau is really not playing. He is like a zombie out there. He half asses on defense and his offense has not been good . He living up to that Gasoft name he playing like it. Thank lord for Drews return.
January 3rd, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Stunnaboy2K11 says:
Kobe really “energized” them against San Antonio right. I mean missing 13 shots in a row is mighty helpful apparently.
Shit, Phil said straight up if he was a player he’d stop passing to Kobe at that point. I guess he was sarcastic as well?
January 3rd, 2011 at 7:59 pm
sh!tfaced says:
Typical Kobe. He got BEHIND and he SCREWED up again. Guess some things will never change…
January 3rd, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Tiredof thefakers says:
Okay 1st off, exactly how many of you have spoken to Phil Jackson personally? Secondly, how many of you actually watched the post game conference? I did. Phil was pretty damn straight forward with what he said. There was no ‘hidden’ meaning behind the quote. It was pretty blunt. I love how all of the Phil experts explain what he meant as if they had some conversation with him themselves.
January 3rd, 2011 at 9:52 pm
uqk says:
uncoachable
January 3rd, 2011 at 10:23 pm
drew says:
here’s phil clarifying his comments for you geniuses at dime
http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles/lakers/post/_/id/14355/phil-jackson-clarifies-comments-on-kobe-bryants-game
Given the stir his comments caused, that Jackson was asked to clarify Monday in El Segundo wasn’t surprising. “When a game starts getting out of hand- rightly so- Kobe will crank it up, not screw it up. I used that term “screw it up,” but not in terms of being an error or a mistake,” he said, “but crank it up. He’ll go to another notch to try and get us back in the ballgame. That’s something we do in the fourth quarter. That’s our fourth quarter action, that’s how we win ballgames. And to have to crank it up and do it in the third quarter, we didn’t have much left in the gas tank after that.”
January 3rd, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Stunnaboy2K11 says:
You honestly believe that drew?
January 3rd, 2011 at 11:34 pm
drew says:
@stunnaboy
absolutely, especially if you saw the game. im willing to bet no one here who commented actually saw the game, but rather just saw the words “kobe screwed up” so they brought full ammunition. there are games when kobe has to stop gunning because it hurts the team but this was not one of them.
January 3rd, 2011 at 11:37 pm
drew says:
if kobe’s gunning just to “get his” and is taking his shots at the expense of the team’s offensive flow ill be the first to call him out for it, but his main period of gunning if you will, was in the 3rd quarter because the game was beginning to get out of hand and we needed a boost. pau was playing like a sissy the whole game with no foul shots but did plenty of bytching. and he had 5 TOs which were mostly from being swarmed when he went up for his shot in the post.
January 4th, 2011 at 12:34 am
oobhz says:
^^i never thought kobe’s PA posts here..lol
January 4th, 2011 at 4:40 am
geek says:
celtics. that is all.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:09 am
E$ says:
I didn’t hear a peep from a place called queens
January 4th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
92021SpurMD says:
Drew, i think YOU are hearing, or actually READING, what you want to hear. I watched the interview, I SAW how Phil said what he said… the “energize” comment was total sarcasm, no matter how hard he’s trying to back down from it now. And for you to believe his explaination on his prior comments, you’re pretty slow. Phil made his point, and the right point at that!