It’s beginning to feel like Groundhog Day has come early. The Los Angeles Lakers seemed to witness the shadow of Father Time on Thursday, indicating that it will be six more weeks until they see Kobe Bryant again. Having returned
It’s beginning to feel like Groundhog Day has come early. The Los Angeles Lakers seemed to witness the shadow of Father Time on Thursday, indicating that it will be six more weeks until they see Kobe Bryant again.
Having returned for just six games, Bryant learned during an MRI he has a fracture of the lateral tibial plateau in his left knee. The injury is not related to the Achilles tear Bryant suffered last season and from which he had just made his way back, but the track record is not good for 35-year-old basketball players who have piled up leg ailments.
The Lakers had gone 2-4 since Kobe’s return and sit at 12-13 on the season, currently 2.5 games out of a playoff spot in the Western Conference.
Gambling on his ability to recover and remain healthy, the Lakers signed Kobe to a two-year, $48.5 million contract extension just a few weeks ago. At the time, the deal didn’t make much sense to me from a strictly on-court perspective. Kobe is worth way more – WAY more – than $24 million a year to the Lakers organization, but the salary cap consequences will make it tough to add the big names who could turn L.A. into a title contender.
However, I’ve been somewhat turned around by reporters in the know, namely ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, who feel the Lakers have probably determined they weren’t realistic players in the upcoming LeBron James or Carmelo Anthony sweepstakes anyway and are instead focused on the summer of 2016, when players like Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook become free agents. They may also make a run at Kevin Love in the summer of 2015. With that mindset, they wanted to take care of Kobe, not give him any reason to leave and maintain all the goodwill they’ve accrued throughout his career, while keeping their books clear two years from now.
So, to me, this latest injury isn’t a referendum on the contract extension. It probably doesn’t bode well for how the next two years will play out, but signing anyone with Kobe’s mileage is going to be a risk, but a risk worth taking with his talent, drive and charisma.
I will say that one person who will certainly be saying all the right things publicly, but who probably isn’t completely broken up that Kobe will be in street clothes until February is Mike D’Antoni. It hasn’t been the most ideal of pairings since D’Antoni took over for the quickly exiled Mike Brown early last season. D’Antoni loves a ball-movement offense with a pass-first point guard, not a heavy isolation offense with a ball-dominant shooting guard. The team without Kobe was actually fun to watch as it overachieved for the first 19 games of the season. The style turned point guard Steve Blake into a poor man’s (alright, extremely poor man’s) version of Steve Nash, with Blake averaging 7.7 assists per game in just under 32 minutes a night. Unfortunately, Blake will also miss six weeks with an elbow injury. Athletic wings Xavier Henry and Wesley Johnson began to flourish. Center Robert Sacre showed he can do more than chest bump. They weren’t gang busters, but the team had bought into D’Antoni’s style and was giving opponents a tough game each and every night.
Since Kobe’s return, the Lakers had been trying to redefine their identity. It’s not Bryant’s fault. It just always takes a little time to readjust, especially given the type of player Kobe is. While I think the Lakers are definitely better with Kobe at 100 percent, I think this particular head coach doesn’t always mind seeing his star take some time off.
A similar circumstance occurred with D’Antoni in 2010, when the New York Knicks got off to a great start with a young, fast, exciting collection of shooters and Amare Stoudemire playing at an MVP level on the interior. New York finally got to see D’Antoni’s offense in action after numerous seasons of tanking and waiting to shed salary. After the team traded four players midseason for Carmelo Anthony, a ball-dominant scorer, D’Antoni appeared to lose his taste for the situation.
If D’Antoni needed to win one game, I’m sure he’d prefer to have Kobe in the lineup. But I also think D’Antoni likes to feel like a coach, and he feels like more of one without Kobe than with him.
