Seven Big Questions

Given this summer's weirdness, the Lakers didn't really have much of an offseason. Purple and gold news has simmered some days, boiled others, but has basically run hot since the conclusion of last season's exit interviews. Is J.O. coming? Is K.G. coming? Is Ron-Ron coming? And, most significantly, is Kobe going? Enough rumors and unsubstantiated reports to fill months worth of Us Weeklys.
That's a lot of rumors and unsubstantiated reports.
Of course, now that it's all said and done, after a tumultuous few months followed by an unsteady preseason, the bunch that finished the '06-07 season in disappointing fashion is back, more or less intact (though improved with the exchange of Smush Parker for Derek Fisher). The regular games are about to start, which means questions need to be answered. Seven of them. Why? Because that's the number of good ones I could think of before I started repeating myself.
So without further ado ...
1. How will the "Kobe situation" affect the season?
Might as well get the big one out of the way off the top. While I'm inclined to believe that Kobe isn't going to be moved anytime soon, the reports from ESPN's Chris Sheridan (a guy I find both credible and not particularly hyperbolic) that talks between the Bulls and Lakers have been ongoing and intensive could change that. So maybe he is on his way out faster than I thought. Or maybe not. Which is sort of the point. There's no way this won't be a front-burner issue until some sort of resolution is found, at which point the resolution (likely in the form of a trade) will become a front-burner issue.
At least I know if I get fired, it won't be for a lack of things to write about.
Unfortunately, there's no way for a 24/7 KobeWatch! to be a positive thing for the Lakers. Every game, every question, every everything seen in the context of one guy. Three-game winning streak -- is it enough to keep Kobe happy? Three-game losing streak -- is Kobe going to start pouting? Maybe they should bring in Ron Artest just for the potential to distract. All of this is necessary because the Trade of Kobe Bryant is so monumental that it deserves a) capitalization, b) every opportunity to get the best possible deal because it'll shape the franchise for years to come. But in the short run, it can't be anything but a distraction.
2. Something of a black hole last year (aside from Kobe, of course), how will the Lakers' guard play be this season?
Improved, but not to the point where they'll be the envy of the league. Losing Smush Parker was addition by subtraction. Not only was his play erratic, but his antisocial disposition makes him about as well-suited to be a high-level, team-leading NBA point guard as I am, despite my lack of hops, shot and ability to go left (or right, really). Derek Fisher will provide steady minutes, no doubt, and is a freakin' rock as far as leadership and character go. But for the Lakers' backcourt to show real progress, the kind that translates into multiple wins, it'll take a leap from Jordan Farmar in the backup PG spot, improvement from Sasha Vujacic, and contributions from No. 1 pick Javaris Crittendon. All three look possible, but it's important to temper expectations with the reality that no real games have been played, and we're talking about young players with either little to no experience (J.F. and the Critter), or who haven't shown the ability to succeed at the NBA level (that would be Sasha).
3. What are the Lakers going to do with all those centers? Is anyone going to step up and demand minutes?
OK, that's really two questions. Whatever.
In elementary school, my friend Jason used to make these drawings where he'd morph characteristics of superheroes, monsters and comic book characters into these uber-badass creations that were pretty much unbeatable. That's what the Lakers need to do with their three-headed monster at center. Take Kwame's post D, combine it with Bynum's hands and growing two-way game, with a little of Chris Mihm's offensive smoothosity as seasoning.
Or, failing that, if the Lakers are going to get the best out of their multitude of bigs (toss Ronny Turiaf into the conversation, too) and matchup combinations, they'll need one or two of those centers to play a little PF. It cold be Mihm, who has the ability to hit the mid-range jumper but lacks the foot speed to guard anyone away from the hoop. It could (probably should) be Kwame, who has the physical tools and the experience as an NBA four but seems to lack the will to actually make the move. However it's done, if the Lakers can figure out how to get more minutes for the three-headed monster, it'll serve them well.
In terms of guys stepping up, obviously Bynum has the most potential to make a big jump in production. He's shown flashes of putting together a consistent game on both ends. It's not there yet, by any stretch. Generally one side suffers or the other. In some ways, the question isn't just who will step up, but who is willing?
4. Once he's healthy, is Lamar Odom a three or a four?
Ideally, a three, but to a large degree how you answer this question relates to the answer to the previous questions. If the Lakers can find solid play at the four, enhanced by some of that center depth bolstering the position, it'll give L.O. more time to play the three. There, he should all at once take less physical abuse on the defensive end and be able to better exploit mismatch opportunities on offense. The only downside would be an increased tendency to hang out around the perimeter, instead of moving down to the post where he can be incredibly effective.
This would effectively put Luke Walton in a sixth-man role, one for which he's probably better suited. It would allow him to push the second unit and likely play important minutes down the stretch, but still have his shortcomings on the defensive end protected as much as possible by not requiring the Lakers to expose him for 30-35 minutes a night.
Obviously, strong play from Turiaf could change the equation, but as much as I love Ronny -- what kind of awful human being doesn't love Ronny? -- to expect him to make the jump to starting-caliber power forward is a tall order.
5. What's the best-case scenario for '07-08?
Kobe gets happy, Bynum makes "The Leap," while Kwame transitions smoothly to the four, providing quality minutes there with Ronny while adding depth at center. L.O. comes back strong in mid-November and stays in the lineup for the rest of the year. Luke Walton plays like a Sixth Man of the Year candidate, Farmar becomes a quality backup. Everyone stays healthy. There's taco night at least every other home game in the media dining room, and we either a) finally get that swanky yearly parking pass from The Times or b) find our secret spots around Staples open every night. Lakers rise to near the top half of the W.C., win the first round and push for a surprise spot in the Western Conference Finals.
6. What's the worst-case scenario for '07-08?
The injuries that are currently looming over the Lakers don't cooperate. Odom is more out than in. The respective ankles of Kwame and Mihm don't cooperate, leaving the Lakers thin up front. Walton can't stay in the lineup. Fish disappoints, the defense remains a swinging gate, Kobe's frustration goes up with every loss. The Lakers are unable to move him, but unable to continue forward. Somebody says something that ticks off someone else, and the Lakers find themselves playing without Kobe -- though he remains on the roster. The quality deals the Lakers already find tough to form become even tougher as teams pull back to see if they can get him on the cheap. He sits, the Lakers run out a glorified D-League team and punch a lottery ticket.*
And taco night is totally axed from the menu. Lord help us all if that happens.
7. How many games will the Lakers win this season, and where will they finish?
Again, that's two questions. Oh, well.
Given all the obstacles in front of them, the rosiest scenarios spit out by the wheel-running hamsters in the BK mental computer have the Lakers pushing 50 wins. I'm talking visit the florist for your wife on Valentine's Day rosey. But for all the drama surrounding Kobe, the biggest problems facing the Lakers are much more mundane. Health problems, talent problems. They're simply not that good. They're not that bad, but they're not that good.
The Lakers are a team that needs everyone on board to make a run, and all signs point to that not happening. That Odom will start the season injured isn't a good sign. And we're not talking about a little tweak here. Dude's recovering from surgery. Kwame is only now reentering games he's exited once, and questions regarding how much of the proverbial "warrior" mentality he has should more injuries pop up are legitimately raised. Mihm? He's already said he'll be playing in some pain this year.
We all saw what happens when the available talent on this team thins out. They're deeper than they were last year, but make no mistake -- relative to the better teams in the NBA, the Lakers aren't deep. They don't have a lot of players who would be big rotation players on contenders. They have only two players that would start for most good teams (that would be Odom and that Kobe fella, for those keeping score). They have Bryant, but for how long, and with how much investment into the success or failure of the team? I don't think he'll tank games, but will he have the willingness to do what needs to be done to win (I'm not talking about scoring, but leadership, ball distribution, etc.)?
All told, I see the Lakers to be slightly improved. The good news is that because Ray Allen and K.G. were exported eastward, and the injuries to Elton Brand, Greg Oden and Mike Bibby, the W.C. isn't quite the monster it's been in years past. Their backcourt, a serious problem last season, will be better, but still far from elite. The natural improvement curve from Bynum and Farmar should help, but how much? In my Best-Case Realistic Scenario, I see 48 wins. In my worst, lots of doctor's visits and 37 (why not 36? 39? Who's to say?). I'll settle in right at 45, a seven seed in the West, and gone after the first round.
Sound familiar?

by Brian Kamenetzky
LATimes Blog

Bryant, Still a Laker, Hears Boos

LOS ANGELES -- Kobe Bryant played Tuesday and, most notably, he did so for the Lakers.
He wasn't a Bull, even as so much surrounding the flaky Laker these days seems to be just that, bull.
The rumors, the suggestions, the read-between-the-lines logic. All put aside for the strangest of reasons, for the sake of a basketball game, believe it or not.
But an interesting thing happened during Bryant's welcome-back embrace. The warmth was interrupted by a shivering sensation, ice cubes falling like confetti from the Staple Center seats.
Boos.
No kidding. Genuine, 100-percent-pure boos. Some of the home team's fans actually jeered the home team's star. Not a lot of them, mind you, but not just a couple of them, either.
First during pregame introductions, then each of the first few times Bryant touched the ball. Boos. Suddenly, this place was Sacramento, minus the cowbells.
Understand, Staples Center never reacted this way during Kobe Bryant v. Eagle, Colo. He has been booed here before for spotty play but never for shoddy behavior. Kobe going one-on-one against Shaq didn't produce this sort of arena noise.
Interestingly, when it came time to select a player to address the crowd, to thank the fans before the start of another season as is NBA custom, the Lakers handed the microphone Tuesday to Derek Fisher.
So after a summer during which Bryant said and un-said pretty much everything and a training camp in which Jerry Buss basically said one thing, the fans finally had a chance to speak.
Here were the Laker lovers, the worshippers of all things purple and gold, the people who really know Jack, summoning venom for one of their own, the most beloved of their own even.
This was a breakthrough for the present sporting era in L.A., an East Coast moment in the most West Coast of venues.
On opening night, with the franchise celebrating its 60th season, with a few of the usual stars aligned courtside, the on-court star indeed was maligned, if only by a vocal minority.
Then Bryant scored on a layup and on a jumper. Then he passed to Ronny Turiaf for a dunk and to Kwame Brown for another dunk. Then he stole a pass and hustled his entire body into the front row.
Before Bryant's 13-point first quarter was half-over, he stood at the line, shooting free throws, beneath the faint but distinguishable chant of "M-V-P."
This is only a rough estimate, but the revolution lasted fewer than six minutes. By the time Bryant was dripping his first sweat of the regular season, he had melted the grandstand discontent.
You can exhale, Kobe fans, the 2007-08 season began and your man is still theman among the Lakers. Bryant officially rejoined his old team, though his departure had been in mind only.
During the weekend, coach Phil Jackson expressed concerns about Bryant exchanging his game face for a lame face. The prevailing thought has been Bryant is playing with one eye on the floor and the other on the door.
Jackson said before the game that Fisher would take on more responsibility in pushing the offense because of "the turnover factor," referring to Bryant's slippery preseason. Fisher's increased role would "stabilize" the Lakers, Jackson said.
These aren't exactly the kinds of words usually associated with one the game's best players. But that's where Bryant was when this season arrived.
He promised more once the real games started and backed up his words. Even with his right wrist bothering him, Bryant scored 45 points and played hard enough to be awarded 27 free-throw tries, a career-high.
In one signature fourth-quarter moment, he lost the ball to Houston's Bonzi Wells, then sprinted back defensively to deny Wells an easy basket. In another, with the Lakers crawling back in the final 30 seconds, Bryant drove for a left-handed layup to cut the deficit to two.
Perhaps he doesn't want to play here, perhaps he won't be here much longer, no doubt Bryant's judgment can be questioned. His effort, though, remains genuine.
Just like this team's issues.
In the end, this was another typical night in the lives of the recent Lakers. Bryant shot the ball a bunch (32 attempts) but didn't hit was a great amount of accuracy (41 percent), while his teammates (minus the injured Lamar Odom) failed to add enough.
When it mattered most, a better team from the Western Conference refused to wilt and the home team didn't win. Rockets 95, Lakers 93.
A fresh season, a familiar result.
The soap opera paused for a basketball game, and the Lakers were revealed to be what they still are. Not good enough, Bryant or not.
When everything was added up late Tuesday night – the interesting start, the Lakers' midgame lull, their frantic final-second comeback — it didn't amount to boo.

by Jeff Miller
OCRegister

L.A., Lakers Need Kobe's Star Power

EL SEGUNDO -- Don't do it.
All signals indicate the Lakers are drawing close on a deal to trade Kobe Bryant, and I have one thing to say:
Don't do it.
Not unless you're ready to bore us to death. Not unless you're ready to turn a team that has been star-crossed for the past 12years into the Charlotte Bobcats.
If Kobe is dealt, what will we talk about, write about, complain about, just plain get worked up about?
"I guess if he wasn't here, it would probably be pretty boring," said Derek Fisher.
The Lakers would be exciting as housecleaning.
They'd be the Colts without Peyton Manning, "House" without Huge Laurie, Arizona sans the Grand Canyon.
Kobe's value doesn't end just with what he can do on the court. He's also a lighting rod for conversation and controversy off it.
He's a megastar in the celebrity capital of the world. Without him, the Lakers are just a bunch of drifting planets, aimless and uninteresting.
If L.A. loved watching dreary basketball, the Clippers would be the biggest team in town.
I don't care how unhappy he is. Do not care if prideful Jerry Buss' feelings have been hurt. Am not concerned one iota how it will impact Phil Jackson's decision to sign an extension.
Kobe is easily the brightest star in the Los Angeles universe. Brad Pitt has nothing on him. Love him or hate him, Kobe is inescapable. He radiates interest.
He's been subject No.1 for so long with the Lakers, it's hard to imagine what the Lakers and everyone around them would talk about if he was suddenly traded.
"I don't know," Jackson said. "Let me think. Not a whole lot, right? We wouldn't have a whole lot to talk about.
"But there is basketball. We could talk about that."
Yeah, let's analyze the triangle offense some more.
Discuss the problems with help defense. Talk about the inside-out game.
You freakin' kidding me?
Take Kobe away and you have the 1994-95 Lakers. That would be that faceless squad led by Elden Campbell, Nick Van Exel, Anthony Peeler, Sedale Threatt and Suns pitchman and water enthusiast Cedric Ceballos.
Only, at least that team slipped into the playoffs.
Like these Lakers' chances without Kobe, regardless of who shows up in return?
And don't think it can't happen. That Buss won't pull the trigger.
Trade rumors are flying, and not without reason.
Since Buss' oddly timed camp revelation that the Lakers would listen to offers for Kobe, that's just what they've been doing.
The hot rumor has Kobe going to the Bulls and Jackson didn't exactly shoot it down Monday on the eve of the team's season opener.
"We're listening," Jackson said. "That's part of the deal that we have. We listen. Chicago has been one of the active teams, but there's nothing imminent."
Imminent meaning, "not at this exact second."
Not exactly the ideal situation to launch the Lakers' new season, wondering if your lone superstar will be in the locker room tonight or next week.
The Lakers need resolution on this so they can attempt to figure out exactly how they're going to try and move forward. And time is certainly a factor.
"It's better sooner rather than later in my estimation," Jackson said.
"Let's get settled and figure out what's going to happen. If nothing is going to happen then we'll go from there."
Kobe, of course, could easily end all this intrigue by simply announcing he no longer wanted to be traded.
But again given several opportunities to do so Monday, he retreated into dodge mode. Slippery on and off.
"I'm not talking about it," Kobe said.
"I'm not going to address it. I'm not going to add fuel to the fire. I'm not going to do it."
He wouldn't even say if he wanted to at least play out this season with the Lakers.
"I wanted to play my whole career with the Los Angeles Lakers, but I understand it's a business," he said.
Notice the past tense?
This all seems too imminent, too unpleasant. Like everyone is speaking in code that means, "Any moment now and you can welcome Luol Deng as your new Lakers' star!"
Yeah, that ought to bring in the A-list celebs courtside.
"My understanding is, they're fielding offers,"
Kobe said. "And when that goes, it goes."
Ugh, like it's only a matter of when.
If Kobe goes, what will fill the local airwaves on sports talk, the column inches, the blogs, the TV highlights? They might as well shut down all L.A. sports media.
What, we're going to talk about Kwame Brown's new doo?
It would be the circus without a ringleader, a movie blockbuster without special effects. We're going to get worked up over Luke Walton's fallaway?
This town demands star power and melodrama and debate.
"It's L.A.," Fisher said. "After being outside for three years and now coming back, I know for a fact that it's just L.A. that brings it out. It's the land of the scripts, the land of subplots. It just kind of comes with the package."
Really, try to imagine these Lakers without Kobe.
Try to form a picture. See anything that piques the interest?
Kobe being traded would be a great day for UCLA and USC basketball. At least they have young superstars.
The Lakers need to announce they really tried to meet Kobe's trade request, but nothing made sense and he's staying. That's resolution enough for now. They can't settle for best available offer.
The offers my still come, but the advice should remain the same.
Don't do it.

by Steve Dilbeck
Daily News

Lakers season preview: Kobe, Phil, drama

EL SEGUNDO -- At the height of his super powers, Shaquille O'Neal started record and clothing companies called "TWisM," an acronym for "The World is Mine." Such a level of self-absorption might sound ludicrous if not for some truth at the crux of it — truth that is reinforced by a quick look at a world that is now Kobe Bryant's.
After being feted for his gold-medal international debut with Team USA, Bryant set off for Asia and a series of basketball clinics that were more like rock concerts. Bryant was introduced amid off-the-charts audio and visual flourishes and stirred the fan frenzy further by providing pyrotechnic dunk exhibitions he has avoided in recent years.
Eventually, the star of the show stepped off the pedestal, grabbed the microphone and made the direct connects.
"Taiwan!" Bryant said, for example, "Gwa-I-nee!"
At each stop he learned the language well enough to tell the fans, "I love you!" in a rehearsed, yet affecting, moment. Every time, it was more than enough to leave everything else — Uncoachable? Eagle County? Andrew Bynum? — totally lost in translation.
This is the world that is Bryant's — all the more so come August 2008 and the Olympics in China, where his jersey was the NBA's top seller last season. He has solidified all this the past two years by winning scoring titles and not a lot else. But an 81-point game does make for a pretty effective marketing presentation.
It all feeds into a Bryant mentality that presumes anyone in Dallas or Chicago or shivering on Pluto would welcome his trade there — and presumes Bryant would definitely win there with just a little better support.
Bryant wants to win more than fans, no one doubts that. He wants to win more than anyone since Michael Jordan, probably — a quality no one can appreciate as fully as Phil Jackson, who has coached both. And because Bryant no longer feels the support of the Lakers' organization, this season might be it for a Jackson-Bryant bond that has become a thick, straight line after being part of a lopsided triangle while O'Neal was around.
Derek Fisher, who is back with the Lakers after seeing strain first-hand in the previous installment of the Jackson-Bryant relationship, appreciates those two sharing something unique now.
"They obviously have conversations that are behind closed doors," Fisher said. "They discuss things and they come out on the court, and they kind of have an agreement or a handshake on 'This is what we like to do' or 'We'll handle it this way.' "
One such conversation came over the summer when Jackson's primary task was to find a way to keep hope alive that Bryant could rediscover joy in being a Laker. That didn't stop Jackson from launching a discussion with Bryant about moving him out of the Jordan wing position in the triangle offense, a spot Bryant lusted to assume all through the O'Neal years and an attack position that Bryant used as a springboard to reach Wilt Chamberlain heights: the 81-point game in 2006 and four consecutive 50-point games last season.
In a world with everyone catering to him and at a time when the Lakers were desperately trying placate Bryant, here was Jackson taking something precious awayfrom Bryant.
And Bryant being cool with it.
That's the level of respect Bryant has for Jackson, and why Jackson is the Lakers' only chance of writing more than an epilogue to Bryant's L.A. story. Jackson's strategy isn't so tricky that Bryant can't figure it out: The coach is moving Bryant from the wing back to the guard spot so he is charged with scoring and setting up teammates — the same job title Bryant held in the championship era.
It's a pretty transparent tactic to make Bryant more of a team guy after an offseason that had Bryant standing in isolation far more than any clear-out play on the wing. But triangle-offense innovator Tex Winter and Jackson had debates during training camp about Bryant being able to do this now.
"If he can conform to the way we want him to play the guard spot, he'd really help us," Winter said. "I don't know if he's going to play that way or not. You know Kobe."
Yet there is no simpler way for Bryant to remind everyone who has forgotten who got O'Neal the ball in his favorite spots — or sell everyone who believes O'Neal would've scored without him — that Bryant can make his teammates better. And Jackson understands what makes Bryant tick — how he is more motivated by facing a mountain than a slope, by a road game than a home game, by a skeptic than a supporter.
The daunting challenge now is to pass the ball to the teammates he trashed, even if he doesn't at all feel like being here. It's a hard situation, which is why Jackson is pushing even harder now — testing Bryant's boundaries with the real games about to start, boldly assessing that Bryant has lacked "heart and soul" so far and maximizing the distraction by confirming trade talks with Chicago.
Jackson declared that predicting the Lakers' season is impossible. Why?
"The situation with Kobe," he said.
This is Jackson enjoying a good challenge, digging into the first steps to scale his mountain this season. He's the one who dared return to coach in 2005 when Bryant hated him.
"He's not just going to throw the white flag up and say, 'Because we're having trouble or because these things are happening, we still shouldn't be a good team,' " Fisher said of Jackson. "He has coached and been through some of the weirdest personal dynamics and team dynamics of any coach probably in history. And his track record still shows his ability to manage a team to play at a high level, even in the midst of all that."

by Kevin Ding
OCRegister

Don't Even Entertain It

Whether it's on the silver screen, the mic, in politics, or on the playing field, the city of Los Angeles has always cherished its superstars. So unless the Los Angeles Lakers can find a superstar in the realm of their beloved star Kobe Bryant, which is very hard to do, it would be far better for them to keep their popular, long-running Kobe soap opera alive than it would be for them to make a bad deal.

Say what you want about LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Carmelo Anthony, Gilbert Arenas, or any other star in the league for that matter. While all the aforementioned All-Stars are super offensive talents, Bryant, the NBA’s leading scorer from a season ago, has them beat.

Say what you want about any of the NBA’s best clutch shooters, but when the clock is ticking down, you’d want the ball in Bryant’s hands first. Admit it. Say what you want about James, Wade and Anthony, but when it came to USA Basketball this summer, all eyes were on Bryant. And say what you want about anyone else in the league, but when the spotlight-stealing Bryant talks, more people listen than with anyone else.

Los Angeles residents love to rub elbows with the stars, and their nine-time All-Star has that rare combination of unmatchable talent, worldwide recognition and headlines that keep Tinseltown wanting more. It doesn’t matter that the Lakers have been just sneaking into the playoffs in recent seasons and aren’t a title contender. With Bryant scoring 60 points, dunking over people, nailing 3-pointers at the buzzer, and owning clean-cut Hollywood looks combined with tattoos, the individual-loving Laker fans are very entertained and still come out in droves.

Even so, the legendary Lakers franchise is open to trading Bryant after he stated that he wanted to be dealt over the summer.

There has been talk about moving the two-time All-Star MVP to the Chicago Bulls and to the New York Knicks. But do you think esteemed Lakers fans would get excited about seeing Luol Deng or Andres Nocioni play? No. Do you think Lakers season-ticket holders Jack Nicholson and Denzel Washington would flock to see Stephon Marbury or Eddy Curry play? No. And after the Lakers got bamboozled in trading another mega superstar in Shaquille O’Neal to Miami for good but not Shaq-like players, the Lakers better be careful this time.

So what NBA players would Lakers fans get excited about in place of an 11-year Laker whose popularity rivals Magic Johnson? Well, James, Wade, Duncan, Anthony, Arenas or Garnett are the first names that come to mind, and then maybe Dirk Nowitzki, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming, Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh, injured rookie Greg Oden or rookie Kevin Durant after that.

The problem is that the teams whom those esteemed players play for don’t seem interested at all in trading their beloved superstars for even a superstar like Bryant. One main reason is those teams are happy with what they have. Another is that even as great as Bryant is, they don’t want to deal with the drama and deep-pocket salary he brings.Playing amateur general manager, if I was Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchack I would call the Wizards to see if they were interested in dealing Bryant for Arenas and Antawn Jamison. The numbers work financially. Hollywood fans would love Arenas, since he is almost as great of a scorer as Bryant, he hails from Los Angeles, and he has a loveable, quirky personality. Going to another big market like the nation’s capitol could be attractive to Bryant if the Wizards’ brass can convince him they will get him an adequate supporting cast quickly. But that’s just me.While Bryant and the Lakers might not be a perfect marriage, Kobe and Los Angeles are a perfect fit. Don’t be surprised if, in the end, the Lakers and Bryant stay together even though they may never see eye to eye. While it won’t be easy, one blockbuster move is all it takes to make Bryant happy to be in a Lakers uniform again.

Sorry Lakers. Bryant has the upper hand. Best to just make him happy in Los Angeles rather than to make the City of Los Angeles not interested in coming to the STAPLES Center anymore. The people in Los Angeles love a great soap opera. Hence, they love Kobe.

by Mark Spears

AOL Sports

Give me Kobe over A-Rod any day

Say what you will about Kobe Bryant, but at least he's not a mercenary who wants all of the money, but none of the pressure, and doesn't perform in the playoffs.
In other words, at least he's not Alex Rodriguez.

Both players are generally viewed as selfish, whiny divas. But as we approach the unusual sports phenomenon of having the best player in baseball head to a new team and arguably the best player in basketball also potentially on the move, understand that A-Rod and Kobe are two very different creatures.
A-Rod's decision to opt-out of New York is far more self-absorbed than Kobe's finagling to get out of Los Angeles.
Despite Kobe's flaws, we at least know he is consumed with winning championships. A-Rod is consumed with being A-Rod.
Kobe doesn't always demonstrate his aspirations maturely. It also can't be ignored that a key aspect of his championship ambitions is that he has to be the guy in the lead role. But if the worst you can say about Kobe -- whose competitive streak was cloned from Michael Jordan's -- is he no longer wanted to play alongside a once-dominant, but injury-prone center, it's not exactly a sign of the apocalypse. And considering some of the things that Lakers owner Jerry Buss has said about Kobe in recent weeks, we've seen that Buss is his own man -- if he really wanted to keep Shaq, he would have kept him. Buss' main concern was dumping another $100 million into the fourth Fu-Schniken.
But does anything in A-Rod's history or demeanor suggest he's remotely obsessed with winning the way Kobe is? A-Rod seems more obsessed with being loved than winning. He wants all the perks, but none of the responsibility. He wants 100-plus RBIs, and to eventually be the home run king. Just don't expect him to bring any of the necessary intangibles it takes to win something meaningful.
Sounds like a perfect fit for the Chicago Cubs.
A-Rod isn't a leader, comes off as insecure and teams mysteriously seem better off when he's gone. Kobe? The three-time champion thrives under pressure and the low opinions some people have of him.
Kobe was criticized for brutally assessing the Lakers' lack of progress. But when A-Rod was a Yankee, the only thing that seemed to bother him was his own personal slumps.
Wouldn't you prefer a player who gets upset about losing more than a player who seems fine with it as long as he can stare at his pretty statistics and pay stubs? Can you blame Kobe for complaining about any plan that included passing on a skilled player who could help the Lakers in the present in favor of the long-term coddling of Andrew Bynum? Has A-Rod ever exhibited that kind of passion and determination? Has he ever given answers that didn't sound rehearsed?
Even if A-Rod somehow wound up playing for the world champion Red Sox -- and if you're listening Boston, adding this guy to your clubhouse is akin to putting Britney Spears on "Nanny 911" -- it would be difficult to interpret A-Rod's actions as that of a man driven to win.
A-Rod, of course, has the right to chase as much money as he wants. It's not his fault if the market dictates he earn an astronomical figure. There's no denying there were times he was unfairly brutalized in New York. The stalking by the tabloids was unacceptable, as was the fascination with his personal life. But the problems he had there will follow him into his next clubhouse.
It's fair to accuse A-Rod and Kobe of being types who can't operate in a locker room unless they control it.
The difference is, there've been signs that Kobe has outgrown some of that. A-Rod doesn't seem like he ever will.

By Jemele Hill

Page 2 ESPN.Com

10 Essential Laker Questions

The Lakers are at a crossroads. One troublesome fork with three main paths. On the left is the path of trading Kobe Bryant, keeping Andrew Bynum and the rest of the Laker party intact. On the right is the path of dumping Bynum and his potential future for a chance to win and win now. The middle path is the path of continuing forward, maintaining the current high tension conditions, hoping individual growth or minor additions will significantly improve the team. Which of these roads will lead to Laker treasure? How can we gain the necessary vision to reattain Laker glory? The crossroads we have come to is not a simple one, but here are ten essential questions to break things down and give the Laker situation sight.
1. How good would the Lakers be with a core of Kobe, Odom, and Jermaine O’Neal?
Within the Laker organization there is a push to keep Kobe here and fast forward to the future by obtaining Jermaine O’Neal. Indiana is hot for Bynum. Rumor has them asking for Odom as well, but insiders believe that they may back off that request. Given that Indiana becomes willing to accept Bynum plus Kwame and another player, where does that leave us? How good would a Kobe/O’Neal/Odom trio be? The West is tough. Would those Lakers reach the finals? If not, would Kobe still leave? Where would we be then?
If we’d reach the finals, turn right!
2. Could Jermaine O’Neal become available for a package not including Bynum?
The Lakers are loathe to part with Bynum, who’s potential is yet untapped. Is it possible they manage to get O’Neal without including Bynum? This solution would satisfy Laker factions and solve a lot of problems. But how likely is it?
Straight! Straight!
3. How good is Andrew Bynum going to be?
Herein lies one of the major cruxes of the situation. Will Bynum become a dominant player, or merely a good one? If dominance is not his future, the Lakers are making a terrible miscalculation trying to hold him, but for a 19 year old he sure looks good.
If dominant, do not turn right!
4. Is there some minor acquisition that could push the Lakers over the top while they hold on to both Kobe and Bynum?
What lesser trade could make a major impact on the Lakers’ situation? Ron Artest has been mentioned. Trading Lamar Odom or Kwame Brown remain a possibilities. Is there a scenario where the Lakers could keep most of what they have while they significantly improve?
If so, stay straight!
5. How much free agent help will be available after the season?
Elton Brand, Baron Davis, Corey Maggette, Gilbert Arenas, Shawn Marion and Ron Artest all become potentially available after this season, to name a few. Can the Lakers make an acquisition which alters their fate and keeps Bryant in the fold? The Lakers will have five free agents of their own at that time, a reduction in salary in the neighborhood of $15 million. So there will be some interesting choices.
If the cap allows it, stay straight!
6. Is Kobe’s trade value diminishing?
Will we really get less from trading Kobe next summer than we would from trading him now? How much less?
If much less, increasing danger says turn left!
7. If we keep Kobe hostage for two years, waiting for our pieces to develop, can he really leave for nothing?
Will any major contender have $25 million available under the cap to snatch Kobe up without a sign and trade? How much are the Lakers really hurting their ability to get return by just waiting Kobe out? What might the Lakers be able to do two years from now with that much cap space if Kobe does, indeed, jump ship?
If the options look good, stay straight!
8. How fast is Kobe’s body breaking down?
Will Kobe still be one of the best players in the NBA in four or five years? Jordan was great for many years after age 29. He won an NBA title at 30, took almost two years off, and still led his team in scoring and won three more titles. However, besides playing more seasons than Jordan, Kobe has tendinitis in his knees. How quickly will Kobe’s skills decline?
If those knees are worse than we think, left!
9.If the Lakers trade Kobe and build around a Bynum/Odom/Farmar core, how good will they be?
Let’s suppose that the Lakers acquire Josh Howard and Jason Terry from the Mavericks or manage to pry Luol Deng and Ben Gordon away from the Bulls, where will that leave them? Will they be good? How long would it be before they once again tasted glory?
If it’s a long, boring haul, don’t turn left!
10. What’s the chance Kobe changes his mind and stays with us for more than two years?
What if Bynum improves quickly and the Lakers surprise? Maybe they do make some helpful, minor moves or a major free agent acquisition? Will Kobe still want to leave?
If Kobe is fickle, stay straight!
These questions are merely a beginning. Real answers don’t come quickly, but without the right questions, they don’t come at all. So let’s pose one last little query. If the Lakers fail to take action at the current time, do their options improve or degrade? Remember, there are three paths we can go by, but in the long run, is there still time to change the road we’re on?

By David DA

TheLakerNation.Com

Know Thy Enemy

I didn't like this team before, and now I really don't like their chances after what's gone on with Kobe Bryant and Jerry Buss. The only good thing they have in the whole franchise is Kobe, and he's definitely going to feel like this is another year that he can't win it. And that's all he cares about -- winning it ...
I don't like his poor supporting cast and I don't like what his attitude will be as a result. He'll be ready to jump ship. Both parties realize they can't win it, and that's what both sides are all about, so I think they will -- or should -- decide to part ways ...
I think Lakers fans are going to say, you know what, it's time to start over with a new team, because Kobe doesn't want to be here. They should make the trade now while he has value, before he can opt out in two summers. While he has value, why not get some really good young pieces and draft choices? I would take the chance because I just don't see the value of keeping a guy like Kobe in that environment ...
You look at what the Timberwolves did with [Kevin] Garnett. Could they have gotten more value by trading him a year or two earlier? There's no question that they could have. There's a team out there in Chicago that people have been talking about for Kobe, and they've got some nice pieces -- though the Lakers will be asking for everything under the moon. If they could get [Luol] Deng, [Ben] Gordon and a decent draft pick for Kobe, I really would think about it. Then maybe they also try to build up cap space to bring over LeBron James [when he can opt out in 2010], though let's face it, LeBron wants to win too. If Kobe doesn't want to be there, then why would LeBron want to be there? He might say that if they couldn't win with Kobe, then how could they win with me? So the Lakers are going to have a lot of work to do going forward ...
Is Kobe the best player in the league? He carried a non-playoff team into the playoffs every year, though he's not good enough to advance them. But if you put him in Chicago with good players around him, he's going to be like Michael Jordan. The thing now is that people know how to play him -- they bang the hell out of him knowing that the other Lakers aren't good enough to punish you for focusing solely on stopping Kobe. So I don't blame him for being frustrated ...
It's obvious that he's passionate about winning by the pride he shows in taking care of himself. We all know the problems he's had off the court, but you never hear anything about drinking or drugs that would set him back athletically. I bet he was devastated when they didn't get Kevin Garnett, but the truth is that -- other than Kobe and Andrew Bynum -- the Lakers have nobody that other teams would want. So if they keep him around this year, his attitude is going to be that instead of being a facilitator to help the young players get better, he's going to be frustrated and he's not going to be the kind of leader who would mentor these guys -- other than by the example of how hard to work and compete because he'll always be a good example that way. But I don't think he's going to go outside the lines and try to reach these guys because he doesn't think that's his job. He has no interest because these guys just aren't good enough no matter how much he mentors them ...
I haven't seen Kobe diminish athletically since the days when he was winning titles with Shaq. But his skill level keeps getting better, and he's especially better with the ball. He's lost his edge defensively because he doesn't want to expend energy on that side when it isn't leading to championships, but I think with a good team he can go back to being the defender he was. He's become stronger as his body has matured, and he can physically punish people now when he goes inside or drives to the basket. He hasn't lost very much quickness. He'll remain in his prime for the next three years or so ...
But if he has to stay with that team, I bet you'll see him becoming more and more of an individual player. I'm not naïve enough to think that wasn't the issue before, but now it's going to be even more so the case. I wouldn't be surprised if Kobe's thinking that he'll just go after the scoring title and see if he can score 80 some nights ...
So now you look at the rest of that team, and there isn't much to talk about. I've soured on [Lamar] Odom. There was a time when I really thought he was good, but there's something big missing there. He's just not good enough. He has the body, the tools, but does he have the heart to win? He had that one good year in Miami when he was running the show, and maybe that's what he needs. Maybe you need to play through him with the ball in his hands because in the triangle he gets lost with all of the motion concepts and the undefined rules. It's an offense of space, and maybe that's not him ...
If you're asking me who is their third-best player, that's a great question because I'm not sure they have one. I guess you'd have to say it's Bynum, but he's two or three years away from being a good player -- and I don't know if he'll ever be a great one. He has good hands, instincts, footwork and strength, and he rebounds his position because he's so wide. By the end of this year he should be a guy you can go to and he'll be tough to stop one-on-one, in which case he might demand a double team. But right now against a decent defender, he doesn't demand double coverage. And as Bynum becomes more experienced, Kobe becomes older and more frustrated ...
Their point-guard situation is awful, one of the worst in the league. Even if they'd gotten Jason Kidd last year, they still wouldn't be a championship-caliber team. But you look at that position now and there isn't anyone to stand up to Kobe if he breaks plays and goes for his own offense. None of them has a strong personality, no one has blow-by speed, no one can knock it down, no one is a great on-ball defender. They're all backups. All you have to do with Sasha Vujacic is lock down on him and you can take him out of the game. Rookie Javaris Crittendon has attributes, but he's not ready to contribute. The return of Derek Fisher might have made a difference if there were more good players around him, but as things are now he's not going to make an impact ...
Kwame Brown is a bust. Everywhere he goes he runs into icons who see how much potential he has but can't put up with him. Michael Jordan came down on him in Washington, and Kobe has no patience for him either. He doesn't work hard, he doesn't play hard, he doesn't compete. If his feet are set he can catch the ball, but otherwise he's unreliable. He runs very well and beats opposing centers down the floor, but in transition he's terrible catching the ball so what good is it? ...
Luke Walton isn't quick enough to defend the perimeter and he's not strong enough to defend inside, so people go right at him wherever he is. He's a 50-50 player who won't kill you, but he won't help you win games either. He's a do-nothing-wrong, do-nothing-right player as far as helping his team win. Some nights he may have it going, but other nights you'll see a mediocre opponent have a career night because Walton is guarding him. On a good team, he'd be your No. 8 or 9 player ...
Vladimir Radmanovic is going into his seventh year and who he is is still to be determined. He has great range, he can put it on the floor and he has a feel for the game. Yet those abilities have yet to come forth in a meaningful way, and he obviously doesn't defend ...
Brian Cook is a nice shooter but he can't defend a chair and he can't rebound out of his quadrant at all. Maurice Evans and Jordan Farmar are backups, Chris Mihm is soft and who the hell is Elton Brown? ...
It will be interesting to see how Phil Jackson handles things this year. I think he's getting tired. He's used to being in the NBA Finals and deep in the playoffs, and once you've been there with his ego, I can't see that he's going to like being in this position where he has no chance. I think this will be his last year ...
I don't know if anyone wants to be there right now other than they're all making great money. This is a franchise that has no direction, and that's what they need more than anything.

by SI.Com

Kobe Bryant Doesn't Want Your Love

Don't believe what you've read. The Los Angeles Laker doesn't want to be traded. He doesn't want to be a Laker, either. He just wants to be so good, so great, you have to love him.

Four miles east of Las Vegas Boulevard, well beyond the glitter of the Strip, the Valley High School gym is cool and humid, redolent of floor wax and old socks. The ball pounds on the polished hardwood, the sound echoes off the familiar glazed concrete blocks that form the inner walls. Sneakers squeak. Voices rise and fall, curses and laughter. There is high tragedy and low comedy, often displayed on the same face split seconds apart. There are no fans, no sportswriters. There is no trash talk, no ego, no dispute. There is nothing but this court, this play, these men, this ball -- this peculiar ball, the usual orangey brown, only this one dressed up with the two white rings of international play -- as it traces a high arcing parabola through the air, meanwhile rotating sweetly backward, a shot born of the countless other shots that have preceded it, hundreds of thousands of shots, perhaps millions taken and made over years and years of solitary practice in gyms and driveways and playgrounds from Italy to Philadelphia....
Kobe Bryant bobs in place on the balls of his feet, holding his pose, frozen for a split second in his red-white-and-blue Zoom Kobe II's, his impossibly long and Pilates-sculpted arm, bark brown and moist and smelling of complimentary hotel lotion, still extended overhead like a kid raising his hand in class. The names of his daughters, Natalia Diamante and Gianna Maria-Onore -- which he pronounces with the proper Italian inflections, the t in Natalia more of a hardened th sound, the r rolled in Maria, a bit jarring against the contrast of his usual dialect, a somewhat put-on version of hip-hop (from age six to thirteen, he lived in Italy, where his father was a pro basketball player; later they moved to Wynnewood, an affluent suburb of Philadelphia) -- are tattooed on the meat of his forearm, which is now facing the basket, his wrist still holding its perfect gooseneck follow-through, a gesture at once delicate and strong, like something from ballet, and so essential, adding as it does the ball's backward rotation, the so-called shooter's touch, which acts as a damper around the rim, helping to ensure that the 9.5-inch-diameter ball will fall with greater frequency into the 18-inch-diameter hole.
A few years ago, Kobe fractured the fourth metacarpal bone in his right hand. He missed the first fifteen games of the season; he used the opportunity to learn to shoot jump shots with his left, which he has been known to do in games. While it was healing, the ring finger, the one just adjacent to the break, spent a lot of time taped to his pinkie. In the end, Kobe discovered, his four fingers were no longer evenly spaced; now they were separated, two and two. As a result, his touch on the ball was different, his shooting percentage went down. Studying the film, he noticed that his shots were rotating slightly to the right.
To correct the flaw, Kobe went to the gym over the summer and made one hundred thousand shots. That's one hundred thousand made, not taken. He doesn't practice taking shots, he explains. He practices making them. If you're clear on the difference between the two ideas, you can start drawing a bead on Kobe Bryant, who may well be one of the most misunderstood figures in sports today. It is a tragic misunderstanding, for his sake and for ours. You can blame it on the press. You can blame it on the way the world revolves around fame and money. You can blame it on Kobe himself.
Having just celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday, Kobe is about to begin his twelfth season in the NBA. Lately, somewhat grudgingly, people are beginning to acknowledge him as the greatest all-around player still active in the game, mentioned as a peer of Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan. This year, Kobe will make upwards of $45 million from salary, endorsements, and business ventures. He is constantly in the news, usually on the wrong side of public favor as he continues to play for a once glorious team, the Los Angeles Lakers, that simply doesn't have the manpower right now to will itself into contention. Spending five days with Kobe -- a dozen hours, really, spread over five days -- is to glimpse the life of a highly skilled craftsman. He sees his work as his art, his calling. Like Jason Bourne and James Bond, two of his cinematic heroes, Kobe sees himself as an über-practitioner: a modern warrior able to solve any problem, able to train his way into dominance. He is the self-styled black mamba, known for its striking ability, aggression, and speed. All those sweaty commercials for Sprite and Nike? Those were his idea. Film my workout, he suggested. That is the essence of me: the guy who guts it out on every rep. Kobe's logo, which you will hear more about in the coming years, is called the Sheath. It is drawn to resemble the sheath of a samurai's sword. The sword is the raw talent, Kobe explains. The sheath is the package it's kept in -- everything you go through, your calluses and your baggage, what you learn.
"Scito hoc super omnia....Tempus neminem non manet....Carpe diem," he proclaims in Latin (which he learned in elementary school in Italy) on the home page of his Website, KB24.com. "Know this above all else....Fully use every point, moment, and hour that you have. Time waits for no man....Seize the day." He wakes at 5:30 in the morning to work out. He eats five times a day, a special diet, stressing not just the ingredients but the way they're cooked. He studies tape of past, present, and world players with the curiosity of a scientist in the lab. (As a kid, he used to study bubble-gum basketball cards in order to see which moves the players were showcasing and "which of their muscles were firing to make the move happen.") He can look at a random still photo of himself making a particular shot from a game and tell you exactly when and where and what happened. He has spent hours at a time chasing tennis balls along the floor, running the same patterns again and again on an empty court to get his cuts right for the triangle offense, running steps, running suicides, running distance. After his first season as a pro, when he was the Lakers' sixth man, his summer workouts stressed ways to keep himself mentally involved in the game so he could come off the bench ready to contribute. Before Phil Jackson was ever even mentioned as a possible coach, Kobe contacted Tex Winter, the godfather of the triangle offense, to discuss the intricacies of the play -- just because he was a student of the game and wanted to learn everything. In his first season without Shaq, he added fifteen pounds of muscle to handle the heavier workload he expected. This summer, he lost eighteen pounds, partially due to his need to watch his cholesterol (a family history of diabetes and heart disease) and partially to take some strain off his body in general and his knees in particular, which have been operated on several times, once in Colorado, an ill-fated trip undertaken with life-altering results.
According to his specifications, Kobe's shoes have been designed with a special alloy band inside the arch to cut, he believes, hundredths of a second off his reaction time. For the same reason, he's asked Nike to design a sock-and-shoe system, maybe something like pro soccer players have. That fraction of a second he loses when his foot slides inside the shoe is the time it takes him to blow by a defender, he says. When he ices his knees, he ices the backs as well as the fronts, something that is usually overlooked because it takes longer. He has also asked Nike to design a new kind of warm-up that will wick heat away from his knees and thus enhance recovery time; recovery time, he says with conviction, is the most important element of working out.
With one ball and one rebounder, shooting his usual 80 to 90 percent in practice (with no defender), Kobe can make five hundred shots in about sixty minutes. Last year, as a result of all that practice, all those hundreds of thousands of makes, Kobe scored at least fifty points in four consecutive games and led the league in scoring. Two years ago, he turned in an electrifying eighty-one-point performance at home against Toronto, the second highest total on record, after seven-footer Wilt Chamberlain's hundred-point game, all of which came from within fifteen feet of the basket. The reaction to Kobe and his achievements has been puzzling, as it has been since the beginning of his career, when he was voted into the All-Star game as a second-year player (he was the sixth man on the Lakers at the time), and then criticized for inciting an electric duel with the reigning king, Michael Jordan. Perhaps no figure in NBA history has been at once more loved and more reviled than Kobe Bryant.
Now, in the gym, the ball arcs perfectly through the rim and ripples the bottom of the net with a distinctive, thrilling swish. The moment is unfrozen; time moves on. Kobe nods his head once, almost imperceptibly, as if to say, That's what I'm talkin' about, an expression he uses with exuberance when he's in private, when something catches his fancy, when something he believes is borne out. A picture of Kobe seldom seen: his perfect white teeth bared in the large carefree smile of a young man who loves watermelon and those yummy ice cream Kahlúa drinks he and his wife had the other night for dessert at the restaurant in Las Vegas before seeing the show Kà, and who is lately in love with the Harry Potter series, which he read at a breakneck pace, trying to beat out his wife, the first books he's read since twelfth grade, when he became obsessed with the sci-fi thriller Ender's Game, about a boy who suffers greatly from isolation and rivalry but ultimately saves the planet.

Nigel Parry
The doorbell chimes musically. Kobe and his party have arrived, a contained but complex weather system of youthful energy and expensive perfume.
Leading the way is the bodyguard, Rico, a soft-spoken man of unremarkable size, a former LAPD SWAT-team member with a background in martial arts. It is said that Rico (his first name is Cameron; nobody thinks it fits) is trained to hold off a surging crowd long enough for Kobe to get to safety. In a few days, Kobe will be off on a Nike-sponsored tour of Asia, six cities in seven days, where his apparel sells through at almost twice the normal rate and where surging crowds are actually a threat. Worldwide, Kobe apparel outsells that of all other NBA players: The undisputed fact of his statistical dominance seems to outweigh the perceived negatives of his personal history -- the aloofness and selfishness of his early career, the Colorado sexual-assault case that was dropped by prosecutors and the civil suit that was settled out of court, his pissing match with America's beloved clown-giant Shaquille O'Neal, his on-again, off-again insistence on being traded from the Lakers.
Jerry Sawyer is Kobe's marketing manager, six foot two with Malcolm X–style black-frame glasses and an enviable collection of vintage sneakers. His father managed boxers; one of them was Leon Spinks. Jerry carries two different communications devices in the pockets of his oversized shorts. He's one of the four pillars of Zambezi Ink, Kobe's mixed-media ad agency. Like record labels owned by rappers, Zambezi is Kobe's attempt to harness the means of production. Jerry also does a lot of other things for Kobe, from screening press contacts (like me) to dealing with charitable causes, like the After-School All-Stars, an enrichment program for needy kids in L.A., which we visited together one day with the predictable uproar (snapshot: a large cooking class of middle-school-aged black and Latina girls learning to make potato salad, wearing hairnets and plastic gloves and holding knives, screeching at the top of their lungs). Jerry was also charged with making sure that Kobe's black-and-white polka-dot polyester sport coat, custom-made for him by Gucci (as are many of his clothes -- he sits at the dining-room table with his wife and chooses swatches), was pressed and delivered for this photo shoot, which is finally about to happen in this borrowed suite in the Wynn Tower on the Strip in Las Vegas, where Kobe is playing in a summer tournament with the U.S. National Team, attempting to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. The Wynn is booked solid the entire month with basketball royalty.
Clutching tight to Kobe's hand is the former Vanessa Urbieta Cornejo Laine, twenty-five, she of the infamous $4 million purple makeup diamond. Kobe met Vanessa -- and her mother, who was along as chaperone -- on the set of a video shoot for his rap album, an experiment in cross-marketing that came and went with little fanfare. (Note: Try Googling the lyrics of "K.O.B.E.," performed in duet with the model and TV personality Tyra Banks.) At the time, Vanessa was still a seventeen-year-old high school junior. Kobe himself was only twenty-one, a four-year veteran of the NBA. (You will recall, perhaps, that he took the pop singer Brandy to his own senior prom.) Criticized early in his career for holding himself separate from his teammates -- while they were playing cards, going to clubs, and discussing child-support payments, Kobe was playing pay-per-view Nintendo and ordering room service -- Vanessa seemed more his speed. A sheltered Catholic girl from Orange County, she was as close to her family as he was to his; after residing with his own parents for two years, Kobe had only recently started living on his own. Vanessa had been discovered outside a hip-hop concert by a music producer and had recently begun booking jobs as a dancer and an extra. Kobe tells me unabashedly that when he met her, it was love at first sight. They've been together every possible moment since. The first week, he flooded the administrative office at her high school with flowers for her; he'd pick her up after the bell in his big black Mercedes, causing a stampede of lookie-loos.
Vanessa's dark beauty and silken coal-black hair bring to mind the kind of idealized Mexicana frequently seen in tattoos sported by Latino gangbangers. She is known by some as Kobe's Yoko. I have seen her, purring and demure, at Kobe's side in her four-inch heels, her makeup and wardrobe obviously the work of someone with ample time and money on her hands, bringing to mind the image of a tower-kept princess before her mirror, primped to the last eyelash, the last curl, the last bangle. In public, she patiently endures the endless cell-phone pictures taken by all comers, who seem to be lying in wait around every corner, all the time, graciously thanking each and every person who comments on her looks: You're so very kind, she will say, her smile royal and Splenda sweet, thank you so very much. And I have seen her go off -- off like a mother bear, like a cornered cat, like a streetwalker on D.C.'s notorious Fourteenth Street strip, zero to sixty in a snap of her manicured fingers, hurling a string of expletives outside the Lakers' dressing room at a fat guy who she perceived had been looking at her daughter in an inappropriate fashion. She might well own the record for the most motherfuckers in one sentence.
Kobe calls her Mamacita. He holds her hand everywhere they go. Sometimes he speaks to her in Spanish. Later this afternoon, when his fruit plate finally arrives, Kobe will ask her: "Quieres un poquito de fruta, Mamacita?" Kobe and Vanessa are teaching their kids Spanish and English. Sometimes, Kobe throws in some Italian, too. He'll say mangia, for instance, telling them to eat. Natalia, four, known as Nani, will look at him like he's crazy. "You're not saying the Spanish word, Daddy," she will chide. Nani, of course, is tall for her age. Kobe's older sister, with whom he is very close, is six two. Kobe's mother, Pam, as long as we're doing this, is five ten. His father is six nine. Joseph Washington "Jellybean" Bryant, a product of Philly and La Salle University, left school early for the NBA through the "hardship draft," after showing financial need. He was nicknamed for his love of sweets. (He named his son after the pampered Japanese beef: Kobe Bean Bryant.) The rap on Joe is that Kobe didn't get his work ethic from Joe's side of the family. Joe was known as a showboat. He played eight years in the NBA, four with his hometown Philadelphia 76ers, who stuck him under the basket in their old-school, East Coast offense. Jellybean thought of himself as more of a Magic Johnson–type player who was being held back from greatness. In Italy, he became the player he dreamed of being, high scoring (he had two fifty-plus-point games) and beloved; Kobe remembers the fans singing songs about his dad. When Kobe was a toddler, he'd put on his little Sixers uniform and watch his dad on television. Kobe would pretend to play in the game, mimicking his dad's moves, taking time-outs for water when the team did. As Kobe got older, he would end up playing for the same Italian club team as his dad, only in a younger division, wearing the exact same game uniform for real. Frequently, Joe would bring Kobe to his own practices. At age eleven, a team from Bologna tried to buy him from his parents. By thirteen, Kobe was beating his dad's teammates one-on-one. Kobe's daughter is athletic, he can already tell. Nani is playing soccer, a game Kobe still loves. (He picked his U.S.A.–team number, 10, because it was the number of his favorite soccer players -- Pelé, Maradona, Ronaldinho.) Usually, when he plays games with Nani -- the younger, nicknamed Gigi, is only eighteen months -- Kobe lets her win. Occasionally, he goes ahead and beats her at something. He's noticed she plays a lot harder the next time around. His daughters' all-time favorite game is something called Tickle Man. As you might expect, it involves Daddy.
This weekend, with the Tickle Man in Vegas playing his own big-boy game and Mamacita here to keep him company, the girls are being watched by Vanessa's mom at their big house in guard-gated Ocean Ridge, near Newport Beach, California. The couple has lived there since their marriage in 2001. It is not publicly known whether it is still decorated, as was earlier reported, with his Star Wars memorabilia and her Disneyana. Presumably, it is big, with a lot of kids' stuff everywhere. The Bryants do not employ a nanny.
After much discussion, the photographer, Nigel Parry, an affable Brit known for his stunning black-and-white pictures, has managed to secure this suite for a photo session. Once the date was set, Jerry e-mailed Esquire's photo editor, saying that Kobe needed to have his own stylist for the shoot and that Vanessa Bryant would fill that role. Esquire assented, offering Vanessa its standard $250. Jerry countered with a request for "a more typical" rate somewhat higher. After a bit more back-and-forth, a compromise was happily achieved.
Now, upon arriving in the suite and making everyone's acquaintance, Kobe and his crew set about ordering the aforementioned fruit platter. Vanessa -- who has asked to be identified as Lady V in the photo credits -- dives right in, voicing her concern with Nigel about his choice of black and white for the photos. As it happens, she has picked out a wardrobe of black-and-white clothes -- prints on prints, everything from the Gucci to the size-16 lizard-skin shoes -- all of it to be dramatically offset by the red paisley on a Neiman Marcus one-hundredth-anniversary tie. "The brown seamless has gotta go, too," she tells Nigel, referring to the backdrop that he and his three assistants have so painstakingly raised. She turns and addresses her husband. "Kobe," she demands, "did you know it was going to be black and white?"
For one long moment, the room becomes very still. All eyes are turned toward the big man. At six six and 207, he dwarfs most of us by nearly a foot. On the court, however, with the rest of his U.S.A. teammates, huge specimens like LeBron James and Dwight Howard, he appears small and wiry, almost delicate.
Kobe looks at his wife intently with his exotic, almond-shaped eyes. "I didn't know that," he says. "I did not know that."
"It needs to be color," she says with conviction. "Otherwise, we can't see the red in the tie."
"Can you shoot both?" Kobe asks Nigel.
"We can shoot both," Nigel says.
"You do have color, right?" Lady V asks, not convinced.
"Ain't no big deal," Kobe says, sweet but preemptively, raising his chin, exposing the large escarpment of his Adam's apple just beneath. "It's all good."
And so it is. With help from Vanessa and Jerry, Kobe gets dressed and into a seated position. Nigel and his assistants go to work, the flash popping, followed by the electric whine of the recharger. Lady V chooses a couch off to the side. I stand next to her, so as to be close.
"That looks really sexy," she says.
"I only have two facial expressions," Kobe muses.
Pop. Whine.
"Smiling Kobe and Intense Kobe."
"Look smack-dead onto me," Nigel says. "Bring your eyes down."
Pop. Whine.
"Not so fierce," says Vanessa.
"Fierce is good," says Nigel. "I like fierce."
"He's fierce in every photo! A little softer."
"She don't want me to be intense all the time," Kobe explains.
"Yeah -- it's the same picture in every magazine. And at Nike. I love when he smiles."
"We're changin' it up over at Nike this time around," Kobe says. Yesterday, he had a meeting with Nike designers, his player rep, and his agent, Rob Pelinka, who played college ball with the NCAA Division I–champion Michigan Wolverines -- on the same team as the Fab Five. (He was open on the wing at the moment Chris Webber called the fateful illegal time-out, or so the story goes.) At the meeting, they previewed Kobe's new fall line of apparel. Per his suggestion, it had a retro, old-school theme, circa Yo! MTV Raps.
"You should see these shirts they made," he tells his wife. "One of 'em looks like it comes with a complimentary bong!"
"Yeah?" she says, a little unsure.
"It's got some pink-and-green checkerboard and shit." Big smile.
"That's it," says Nigel. "That's awesome. You do have a great smile."
"This is the Kool-Aid smile," Kobe says, adjusting the jelly-bean-sized ruby he is wearing as a solitaire in his left ear.
"Awwww," Vanessa coos. "That's like the pictures we have at home. I love it when he smiles." The look on her face says that she has just been smitten all over again by her man.
"By the way," Kobe says, "they made me a pink tracksuit."
"Oh no, they did not," exclaims Vanessa, her tone straight out of the O.C., her head swiveling on her neck.
A deep voice, singing: "Oh yes, they did."
"What shade of pink?" she challenges.
"I don't know. Pink. Dusty pink."
"Like mauve? Or like bubble gum?"
"Bubble gum," he declares, enjoying the game. The Nike rep had sold it to him as "a dusty gray-pink." He flashes a huge and untroubled smile.
"That's nice, excellent," Nigel says. Pop. Whine. "Now: No smile. Intense."
"Like when you're looking at Nani and Gigi," Vanessa says.
"But I can't help smiling when I look at them."
"Like when you're fixing one of their boo-boos."
"That's right." says Nigel. Pop. Whine.
"I forgot to tell you," Vanessa says. "Nani spilled some Kool-Aid on the couch today. She told me when I called. She said, 'Mami, I have to tell you something. Grandma gave me Kool-Aid and I spilt it on your couch.' "
"The white couch?"
"My mom says she got it out 'cause she was quick. My mom was like, 'I told her not to' -- you know, she's not allowed to take any juice in there. But give her credit. Nani told me herself what she did, thank God. I'm like, 'I appreciate your honesty, Nani. Don't do it again.' "
"I wish they were here, man," Kobe says wistfully. "They'd be running around this whole place. Nani is such a poser," he tells Nigel proudly.
"Yeah?" Nigel asks, a bit distracted. It's easier to take portraits when people aren't talking so much.
"She'll do a million different poses for you," Kobe says.
"That's nice," Nigel says. Pop. Whine. "Would you mind taking your jacket off?"
"Nope," Kobe says.
"Nope," Lady V reiterates.
"Huh?" Nigel asks, taken aback. He looks from Kobe to Lady V and back again.
"No go," confirms Kobe, command tone. He cuts his eyes to his wife, who nods her head once, almost imperceptibly, as if to say, That's what I'm talkin' about.
And then the doorbell chimes musically. The fruit plate has finally arrived.

Kobe's suite, the thirtieth floor. Mamacita is gone, whether out shopping or gambling or back home with the girls it is not for me to know. He drags a barstool over to the living room, where there are two sofas and a coffee table, so as not to have to bend his knees so acutely when he sits down. "Ain't gettin' any younger," he explains.
Yesterday, a Sunday with no scheduled Team U.S.A. practice, Kobe went to the gym and made five hundred shots. With two balls and two rebounders, he managed to do it in one hour, stopping only long enough to chat with Indiana's legendary coach Bobby Knight. They'd never met before; Kobe was overjoyed -- by all accounts, he looked like a kid meeting Kobe for the first time. Then last night, in another Tower suite, he spent two hours signing nine hundred autographs for Upper Deck -- a feat made all the more difficult by the heavy "camera pen" that documents the execution of each numbered signature. (Among the items offered: a limited edition of 124 Kobe-inscribed laser-engraved basketballs for $699.99 each.) This morning, he was supposed to be up early working out and doing Pilates, but he canceled.
"You get to a point where you learn to listen to your body and make adjustments from there," he explains. He speaks of his physical self in terms of a finely tuned machine, which of course it is.
I sit on the sofa. He is on the barstool. It is awkward; I feel like I'm sitting at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial. I drag another barstool over to the living room. Now I feel like I'm doing a talk show, with Rico the bodyguard as our audience, sitting quietly in a corner. Kobe is warm and chatty. I've been around awhile, he has become accustomed to me -- though I was still not allowed to ride in a car with him or to be with him alone or to spend any unstructured time with him at all. But at least now he's feelin' me, as they say in the L. The other day, at the photo shoot, by way of jocular greeting, Kobe's big open palm suddenly whipped down from on high and slapped me pretty hard in the solar plexus. "What up, Mikey?" he said playfully. Luckily, I flexed in time to avoid getting the wind knocked out of me.
For the next ninety minutes, we talk. About how he loves sharks and would like to go down in a shark cage, how he would like to skydive -- both of which after he retires. How he grew so fast as an adolescent, he had horrible Osgood-Schlatter disease -- so bad, it hurt when someone even breathed on his knees. How he just bought an Akita to go with his two Pomeranians and how having untrained dogs should be a crime, like a form of parental abuse. How Michael Jordan has become a confidante and how his advice "is like getting advice from that Buddha that sits on the top of the mountain, who has everything figured out and passes on some of his knowledge to the next guy who's trying to climb that mountain." How awed he felt one time in Taiwan in this big arena with five thousand screaming kids who had come just to see him run a little clinic. He remembers standing there thinking, This is weird. This is just insane. I'm goofy. I'm silly. I play basketball.
We talk about the philosophy of his logo, the Sheath. We talk a bit about baggage, how it's the place you store your energy. About his image in the league, how he got off to a bad start and never recovered. "When I first came into the NBA," he says, "I was one of the first to come out of high school. I was seventeen years old -- at the time the NBA was much more grown-up. It wasn't like now. I thought that you come into the NBA, you play basketball all day. The thing I was most excited about was coming to the NBA not having to, you know, not having to worry about writing a paper or doing homework. It was basketball all day, this is awesome.
"The aloofness thing, honestly, I didn't really hear about it until later. A lot of it was just naive, because I didn't read the papers. I didn't watch, like, the news. I had no clue what was going on, what people were saying about me. It sounds silly to say, but it's true. And I think because of that, a lot of people looked at it like, 'Woah, he must be arrogant.' But I didn't know what the hell was going on. I had a reporter one day come up to me and ask me about it, you know, 'People think you're arrogant, what's up with that?' And it absolutely just seemed to come out of left field. I was just like, 'What are you talking about?' And he was like, 'Haven't you read the papers?' From that day forward, I started reading the papers."
I ask him about Colorado. He starts to say something and then he stops himself, like maybe he wants to talk but knows he shouldn't. I push him a little bit. He laughs and shakes his head. "I'm not sure I can dive into that one without really diving into that one."
"Can you dive into some of it?" I ask.
There is a long silence.
"I...uh...hum," he says. "I don't know how to touch on that without really sayin' -- you know what I'm sayin'?"
What about the whole thing with Shaq, about the whole thing with wanting to be traded from the Lakers?
"If I had to do it all over again, I just never would have said anything in the press," he says. "Some things need to remain behind closed doors. Do the fans really need to know everything? Do you need to know everything about what goes on in your neighbor's house? Do you even want to?
"I just want to continue to push. To just become as good as I possibly can be, to see what other aspects of the game I can get better at. 'Cuz you know, it's fun. I just enjoy doing it, so when you enjoy doing it, you wanna find out new ways to do it. Like the eighty-one game? I had worked extremely hard the summer before that. That game was a culmination of days and days of hard work.
"The thing about that game -- and I know it's going in the history books and all that -- the best thing about that game is it feels good because we won. It was a tough one. We had lost, like, two or three games in a row; it was just a rough patch. And it was my grandfather's birthday who had passed away not too long ago, and my grandma was at the game, and my wife and daughter were at the game, so it was special, yes, but to me, winning is everything. That's the challenge, the ultimate challenge -- how do you get to that elite level as a group? As a whole? Right now, I don't care about points or any of that stuff -- it's how do you get to that elite level and remain at that elite level as a unit. What are the things you need to do?
"You have to be open-minded and not be rigid. If you're rigid, that's weakness. All you can do is forget about the bad stuff and then move on. You just kind of roll with it, you just kind of learn. I will not make the same mistakes in the future that I have made in the past. I will make new mistakes, I am sure. And I will learn from them, too. You have to be fluid. Your body changes. As that happens, your moves need to change, your training program needs to change, you have to be able to adapt.
"I am going to work extremely hard. I'm not going to cheat the game. I am going to take all the steps and do all the work necessary. It's like, God blessed me with the ability to do this, I'm not going to shortchange that blessing. I'm going to go out there and do the best that I can every single time."
Kobe excuses himself to leave for Vegas's Thomas & Mack arena, a tune-up game for the impending twelve-day international tournament. Over the coming two weeks, Kobe and his U.S.A. team will outclass all comers, winning by an average of more than thirty points, clinching a berth in the Olympics, earning the U.S.A. its first gold medal in international competition since 2000. And while Kobe will go off for twenty-seven points in the grudge match against Argentina, who won the gold in the last Olympics, throughout the rest of the series, he will distinguish himself with his leadership, his tenacious defense, his artful passing. In every game, he will ask to be assigned to play against the opponent's best scorer. He will hold Brazil's NBA standout, Leandro Barbosa, the tournament's leading scorer, to just four points. Kobe will also be among the leaders in minutes and assists.
He will be the heart of Team U.S.A.
That's what I'm talkin' about.

By Mike Sager

Esquire

NO BULL: Time To Get Kobe

Go into a mall, stop a shopper and ask if he or she thinks Kobe Bryant ought to be a Bull.Is Kobe the best active player in basketball? Yes, he is.

Is Kobe the best player since Michael Jordan? Yes, he probably is.

Is Kobe as good as Jordan was? No, he is not. Michael could play defense.

Is Kobe as popular as Jordan was? No way. Pop into a Foot Locker at that mall and try to buy a pair of Air Bryant shoes.

I bring up the Bulls because, as you may know, Kobe and his boss, Jerry Buss, could be looking for a way to get the glitziest Laker out of L.A.I bring up the mall because Kobe was at a California mall in June when he extemporaneously mentioned the Bulls in a positive way and Buss in a negative one.

A brief give-and-take between a few shoppers and Bryant reportedly went like so, according to a camera that captured it:

"Please tell us you're staying."

Kobe: "Get a Bulls uniform, fellas."

"Are you serious?"

Kobe: "Yep."

"Really?"

Kobe: "Yep."

"Kobe, you've got to stay!"

Kobe: "Dr. Buss is an idiot."

It was back in May that the fur first began to fly. Kobe said on Stephen A. Smith's radio show: "I would like to be traded, yeah. Tough as it is to come to that conclusion, there's no other alternative, you know?"

Then he clarified on kb24.com, his Web site: "I have NOT asked to be traded. I don't want to be traded and I have given no ultimatums or demands of being traded."

He and Buss got together in Spain a few weeks later to hash it out. Buss did not say adios.

No idiot, the boss urged Bryant to stay in L.A. because "to leave 10 million sweethearts for unknown territory might not be the right thing to do."

Ah, but it was Buss who let Shaquille O'Neal leave for the unknown territory of Miami, where he won another championship.

It is now mid-October but things in California are no cooler. Buss now says he "would certainly listen" to a trade offer. Bryant claimed this "caught me off guard a little bit."

Bryant began skipping practice. One day, then two, then a third. A rumor spread that he cleaned out his locker. Coach Phil Jackson said, well, yes and no. He cleaned up his locker, yes. But not out.

Intercepted near his Bentley in the parking lot, Bryant was asked point-blank: "Do you think you've played your last game as a Laker?""I don't know," he replied. Talk to my bosses, he advised.At kb24.com, there wasn't much in the way of news Wednesday. A few words of wisdom from former Gen. Colin Powell were there that Bryant said he distributed to every teammate's locker.

There also were e-mails from No. 24's fans. Sent months ago, but still on his site:

"Freshen things up a little, go to Philly or Chi-town, or rock the Big Apple."

"If indeed you are heading to Chi-town, I will be right behind you."

Encouraging words from Kobe's fans, many encouraging Kobe to leave.A number of NBA insiders believe the Dallas Mavericks actually would be Kobe's first choice if he left. But rarely does this subject come up without Chicago being in the mix.

Buss is saying for the first time he would listen to offers.

He is saying specifically: "I could not afford to let him go unless we get comparable talent ... if there is such a thing."

Ask yourself if there is an offer the Bulls could make. Ask yourself what it would take.

Is Kobe worth sacrificing any two players plus a draft pick or two? Yes, he is.

Is Kobe good enough to bring Chicago another championship? Yes, probably.

Is Kobe too expensive? No, he is not. Ben Wallace cost the Bulls a mint but brought them no closer to a championship.

Shoppers, there is a blue-light special on the best player in basketball.

Find out how much L.A. wants for him. I very much doubt Jerry Buss is an idiot, but it would be idiotic not to give him a call. Ask the asking price for No. 24. Take a shot.

He may be no Michael Jordan, but a Kobe Bryant does not come along every day.

Get him into a Bulls uniform, fellas.

by: Mike Downey
CHICAGO SPORTS.COM

Latest From LakerLand

When Kobe Bryant first began speaking out after the Lakers flopped in last year's playoffs, longtime Phil Jackson assistant Tex Winter figured that Bryant had to speak up.
Bryant was the only player with the power and status to make a statement. Plus, Bryant had earned the right to speak. He'd poured his heart into the team for a decade, by all accounts working harder than any other NBA player, and much harder than any other superstar. Who else besides Bryant could challenge the team's obvious personnel shortcomings?
The only problem was, Bryant has been too emotional, too angry about the issue. Each time he has spoken out, the communication hasn't been good. It has been terrible in fact, and he has angered a lot of people, including owner Jerry Buss. Winter agreed that Bryant should speak up, but like many others, the veteran coach was upset at how Kobe went about it.
Jerry Buss' recent comments reveal just how angry the owner is at being publicly challenged by his star player, and Bryant's response of sitting out three days of practice have again proved disastrous. They've irritated his ally, Phil Jackson, and they've confused fans and media alike. It appears to be another childish response, as Bryant's critics have quickly pointed out.
Perhaps Kobe needs to wear one of those WWJD bracelets. You know, What Would Jordan Do?
Facing a similar disconnect with the Chicago Bulls "organization" in 1997-98, Jordan allowed his play to do his talking. The team won, and winning trumped all other answers. In 1998, Jordan had an angry, injured Scottie Pippen as a teammate, and the Bulls struggled until Pippen found some health. Kobe, alas, doesn't have the veteran, accomplished team around him that Jordan did.
But he still has to try to answer with winning.
That's the opinion of Alan Elliott, a good friend of Jeanie Buss' who not surprisingly is a serious long-term Lakers fan. "Kobe is making $19,490,625 from the Lakers this year," Elliott told me Wednesday. "He needs to go to practice and play defense like he did for team USA. THAT is what Phil is pissed about right now. If he did that, this would all pass."
Winning does cover a multitude of sins. The Lakers have long shown that.
But the question does remain: Just what is the problem with the Lakers' front office? There is the case that Laker basketball executive Jim Buss, the owner's favorite son, has no real basketball background, that he and sister Jeanie are caught in a sibling rivalry that has affected the franchise.
Then there's the perception that Jackson has a tendency to savor the internal gamesmanship he indulges in around an organization. (Jackson, who believes Jim Buss was behind his 2004 firing, traded barbs with the owner's son in the media over the summer as Bryant was stewing.)
But what about General Manager Mitch Kupchak and his staff? The fans frequently refer to him as Mitch "Kupcake" and blame him for the poor O'Neal deal.
First, as I wrote in Lindy's Pro Basketball Annual, Jackson has a solid working relationship with Kupchak. He trusts him and communicates easily with him. Kupchak and the Lakers' fine scouting and front office staffs were all groomed by Jerry West. In terms of pedigree, they are the best in the business. Kupchak assistant Ronnie Lester, a former star-quality player who had his career shortened by a knee injury, has spent years paying his dues as an NBA scout for West. He knows the game inside and out. He has his own opinions about players and strategies, but that's what he's paid to do, have opinions.
Lester is not a tremendous fan of Jackson's and Winter's triangle offense. Lester was charged with finding personnel to build a running team (which Jerry Buss has always favored) in 2004 after Jackson was fired. Lester began finding players to fit the running game (Lamar Odom was the first) when suddenly Jackson and the triangle returned to the team in 2005 (I understand it was Jim Buss who hired Rudy Tomjanovich out of the blue, a monumental disaster for the Lakers).
The bottom line is that the Lakers remain at cross purposes. They have a triangle coach with a strong contingency in the organization, including ownership, that has never been enamored of the triangle, even though it won them three championships.
The NBA is a bottom line business. The bottom line is that it's time for this excellent front office to come up with results. "The expectations are awful high around here," as West used to say, almost pridefully.
West, though, also complained about having to do his job despite Buss' demands and interference. Buss' response was always that the organization had to watch its dollars. Now, though, it's about more than dollars. It's about Buss inserting his son several years ago into the front office as a vice president for basketball. It was laughable when Buss did that, except that it was an irritant for West and anyone who respected the game.
Now the irritant has grown immensely. And it's no pearl. From many accounts, Jim Buss is a good person and certainly no dummy about basketball. Still, he ain't no personnel guy, no way, no how, never, never, never. He's the owner's son, the owner in waiting. But it will take eons (and lots of winning) before the Lakers basketball public accepts him as the man - if it ever does.
Jerry Buss is well-known as a gambling man, which makes it stranger that he would put his son in the position of facing such long odds. As a father, Jerry Buss loves his son dearly, so you can chalk it up to the blindness of a father's eye. (Just look at the football coaches who try to make their sons the offensive coordinator. It never works.)
Given the circumstances, prudence suggests that Jim Buss should be cautious as to how he proceeds. If his father is guilty of blind love, it's understandable that Jim Buss seems intent on proving he's his own man, that he is a "basketball guy."
Unfortunately for Lakers fans, the stench of hubris is high in these circumstances, just as it was for former Bulls GM Jerry Krause in 1998 when he wanted to assert that he and his organization were the reason Chicago won all those championships. The fans are absolutely nauseated by the circumstances. (Aren't sports supposed to be the place you can go to forget about the pressures of life?)
So let's do the fans a favor for a minute. Let's forget the sibling rivalry and all the "drama" and focus on the real basketball problem.
The Lakers are a team with huge philosophical differences. In 2004 as the Lakers were getting dunked by the Pistons in the league championship series, Jerry Buss was explaining to anyone within earshot that he was fed up with the triangle. He wanted a running offense.
Now, it seems that Jackson is going to try to give Buss what he wants. The Lakers are going to run more. Tex Winter has been fussing for years that the triangle offense is great for running a controlled break, but Jackson wouldn't do it because he didn't want to piss off Shaq, who was slow moving and wanted the offense to wait for him.
Truth be known, Jackson is a great coach, but he has never been much of an Xs and Os guy. Tex Winter has done all that for him. Which means Jackson, while fighting through health problems, has done a poor job of speeding up the Lakers offense and taking advantage of the talent the front office has brought to the equation.
Now Jackson is feeling better; the pressure of the Hall of Fame is off of him and his reputation is assured. Winter was reluctant to go to Hawaii this year, but it appears Jackson needed him more than ever. The Lakers have have shown they can slow it down and play system basketball toe to toe with San Antonio. Now they are trying to speed up to stay with the fast teams in the West that have given them trouble.
The transition to a faster tempo is going to mean a rough start for the Lakers.
Buss has had a vision since he put together an amazing deal to buy the team and the Forum in 1979. He has displayed amazing instincts. But that doesn't mean he's been perfect. Why did Buss trade Shaquille O'Neal? He was hesitant to sign him to a huge contract extension because of O'Neal's age and conditioning (as O'Neal told me, the two were never close).
Then O'Neal harshly criticized Buss, which sealed the issue. Buss has enjoyed tremendous fortune as owner of the team, but he still has a pretty thin skin. Has Bryant hurt Buss? Will Buss trade Bryant? Can he trade Bryant? Or will Phil and Tex and Kobe and everyone else get the opportunity to reinvent the team and prove once and for all Tex Winter's assertion that his triangle offense is plenty flexible and very capable of running?
Now that's what I call real drama. And it's all about basketball. Mostly.

by: Roland Lazenby

How Kobe Bryant and Dr. Buss Dumbed Down the World’s Smartest Franchise

Like many of you, I’m still trying to adjust to the idea that the owner who presided over something as special as 8 NBA championships in 22 thrilling years is the same owner on the precipice of trading both Shaquille O’Neal AND Kobe Bryant in the space of less than three years.
I’m also getting accustomed to the idea that a man with a PhD in physical chemistry from USC, along with a bright and worldly young superathlete who lived overseas and was bilingual before he got out of elementary school, could morph into Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels.
Jerry Buss, meet Lloyd Christmas. Kobe Bryant, say hello to Harry Dunne.
You thought Daniels getting his tongue stuck on ice in “Dumb and Dumber” was stupid? Trading two otherworldly Hall of Fame superstars, two basketball virtuosos with once (or twice) in a lifetime talent, is so stupid, it makes “Dumb and Dumber” look like a MENSA training film.
So how did the franchise of Kareem and Magic, Big Game James and the Coop a Loop, Shaquille and Kobe and Hollywood and the Laker girls, reach this nadir in Buss’ ownership, which was positively brilliant up until 2004? How have they managed, pray tell, to trash such a terrific, model franchise? Here are some of the mistakes I’ve come across while reading Dr. Buss’ latest book: “Hey, That’s Not My Grandaughter, It’s My Date.”:
KOBE’S BIG YAP
The same hypercompetitiveness that makes Kobe the toughest and most talented hombre in the NBA apparently bleeds over into the Bean running his mouth when he should remember who he is, how a real star is supposed to behave, and just zip it up. Calling Buss a “liar” and an “idiot”, as Kobe did when it was caught on tape in an Orange County parking lot, was an act of extreme disrespect. You don’t rip the guy paying you the budget of a third world country. You especially don’t rip the guy who had your back when your whole life went upside down because of a hotel indiscretion in Eagle, Colorado. Kobester, in case you forgot, Buss chose you over Shaq! And you pay him back by calling him a liar and an idiot? You do that at my company, you pass Human Resources, collect $200 and head to the unemployment line.
BUSS’S FALSE PROMISE
I know the good doctor is a good poker player, but as long as I’ve known Jerry Buss, dating back to the pre-Laker days when he owned something called the World Team Tennis L.A. Strings and his superstar was an Amritraj brother, he has never been a liar. So fair to ask: When he was coercing Kobe to re-up and not opt out to join the crosstown Clippers, why did Buss promise to put better players around Kobe and a better product on the floor? That has not happened. Not even close. His front office hasn’t done anything that I can see, and I won’t even mention Mitch Richmond or Aaron McKie after putting a period on this sentence. Buss was guilty of misleading Kobe, and that wasn’t right, either.KOBE’S SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT
Apparently this keen, appreciative student of NBA history, a young man who has always indicated he at least knows there was a league before he arrived from Pennsylvania, has conveniently forgotten that giant talents like Pete Maravich, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and John Stockton, to name just a handful, played their entire careers without winning an NBA title. Heck, Maravich played on crummy teams and I never heard him complain publicly about the slugs he had to play with, not once. Kobe, you’ve won 3 NBA titles. That’s not as many as Russ or Magic or Mike or, now Tim Duncan, but it’s more than most players get. Where is it written that it is the moral responsibility of the Lakers to put star talent around you? And by the way, just for the record, they tried…more than once. They offered Minnesota Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum, exactly what the T-Wolves wanted, but Kevin Garnett is said to have vetoed the deal. Why, Kobe? Because he read what you said about the Lakers’ front office, that it had become inept, bungling, decietful. So KG got turned off and now he’s a Celtic. Honestly, 24, that was the fault of your big mouth again.
BUSS’S FAMILY TIES
Confession up front: I don’t know Jim Buss from Jim Belushi. All I know is that Jerry’s eldest son wasn’t doing much of anything besides counting his inheritance from daddy before he suddenly and not very surprisingly morphed into another Buss All in the Family executive. What we hear is that he has had a growing and now influential hand in player personnel matters, partnering with GM Mitch Kupchak. If that’s true, I hope it wasn’t Buss fils who had a hand in the drafts where the Lakers passed on, oh, Carlos Boozer in 2002, Josh Howard in 2003 and Chris Duhon in 2004. Boozer and Howard will be perennial All-Stars when Dr. Buss is actually HAVING grandchildren instead of dating them. Don’t look for Laker draft picks Brian Cook and Sasha Vujacic to appear on the resume of Buss fils anytime in the next millenium, either. Von Wafer, we also hardly knew ye. But here’s the catch: as Kobe is finding out when he challenges the competence of Buss’ progeny publicly, and blasts it privately in harsher language, blood is thicker than water, even when the water is an oceanic talent like Kobe Bryant.SO WHAT NOW?
Face it, all this Laker drama is making Britney Spears look like a family therapist. Bryant and Dr. Buss, they’ve both acted foolishly spoken rashly and turned what should have been private business into public dirty laundry. Theirs has been a dangerous, destructive and needless game of verbal oneupsmanship. Presumably, both proud star and proud owner want the same thing, for the famous franchise to be made right again. So this is what has to happen to avoid outright Armageddon on Figueora Street:
–Lakers, do NOT trade Kobe. Do not trade him for 10 cents on the dollar, like you did with Shaq. Do not trade him for Josh Howard, Moe Howard, Curly Howard, Shemp Howard or Howard the Duck. Do not trade him unless you can get Chicago to pony up Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, Kirk Heinrich AND Tyrus Thomas. Only then will you even have something reasonable to consider.
–Kobe, shut up and play. Take something for your Front Office Bashing Tourette’s. The team around you ain’t the ‘72 Lakers, ‘77 Blazers, ‘85 Lakers, ‘86 Celtics or ‘96 Bulls, true that. But they ain’t Charlotte, either. Figure out how to make these guys better. Infuse them with your singular passion. Get them to guard someone. And Kobe, based on last season, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you got the number of the guy you’re supposed to defend, either. Oh and KB: be a man, do the right thing, apologize to Dr. Buss. He isn’t an idiot and everyone’s entitled to become an old fool.
–Finally, Dr. Buss, apologize to Kobe. I’m sure you’ve defended your front office, tried to explain more than once how they have offered L.O. and the kid Bynum and, darnit, came up empty. But explain it again. Tell Kobe they’ll keep trying. Remind him again that the second most important city in America still almost loves him. Remind him, too, that he’s Kobe Bryant, and that Kobe Bryant doesn’t stay in the training room icing fake injuries because he’s moping. And you should apologize, too for making Kobe feel unimportant when you said, stupidly, pointlessly, that you would be open to listening to offers to trade him. What did THAT accomplish? Other than create the fine mess you’re in now, Stanley. I don’t recall Jerry Krause ever saying he would trade Michael Jordan, and Krause could barely get an egg salad sandwich in his mouth without half of it ending up on his tie. Besides, Dr. Buss, you’re too old and too rich and you have accomplished too much to get in a pi**ing contest with an employee less than half your age. But at the same time, like the pater familias you are supposed to be, you have a right to tell Kobe he is paid very handsomely to “strap it up” and lay it on the line every single night, like Kobe Bryant always has.
And then, Dr. J, when he opts out in two years, there’s always option C: Selling the farm.

by: Ted M. Green
SportsHubLA