Tweet of the Night: Kevin Ding calls out Byron Scott for the way he has coached the Lakers

Here is something no one thought would happen on Tuesday night: the Golden State Warriors – the best team in the league – lost to the bottom-feeding Los Angeles Lakers.

Despite the fact that the Warriors were playing on the second night of a back-to-back on the road, the loss was simply inexplicable, given the fact that the Lakers were playing without their star Kobe Bryant.

There had been much talk about Bryant feeling fatigued in recent games, so the shooting guard took a rare night off to give his body a much-needed rest. Little did anyone know that the Lakers were more than capable of functioning like a team without the trigger happy ways of Bryant.

The general belief of some had been that the Lakers didn’t have enough talent on the team, which “forced” Bryant into going into hero mode and taking some of the worst shots you can possibly take in many of the games. The truth of the matter is, the guard had been playing some terrible, stubborn and alienating type of basketball that no teammate would really want to be a part of. His shot selection this year in general has simply been uncalled for, and the numbers support just how bad the team has been with Bryant on the floor, courtesy of Zach Lowe from Grantland:

Still lots of noise, but the sample size keeps getting bigger: pic.twitter.com/OLMNbcxcRo

— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) December 22, 2014

According to basketball-reference.com, Bryant also has the worst plus/minus out of anyone in the league – he ranks 442 in that department. If you look at his statistics in the traditional sense, you would think he’s actually putting up some mighty fine numbers, averaging 24.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, 4.9 assists, and 1.4 steals. Then, you look at the shooting percentages and absolutely cringe: 37.2 percent from the field on 22.4 shot attempts, 27.4 percent from the 3-point line on 5.4 attempts for a combined true shooting percent of 47.5.

To give you an idea of how bad those shooting numbers are, Josh Smith – who has been the subject of terrible criticism for his inability to shoot recently after getting waived by the Detroit Pistons – has been a little better overall (taking free throw shooting out of the equation, of course), and he doesn’t take anywhere near the number of shots that Bryant does.

Obviously, Bryant has to find a way to be more efficient and start sharing the ball with his teammates like any good leader should. The fact that he’s so fatigued should make him realize that he’s 36 years old. The shots that once fell for him prior to the injuries over the years are no longer working in his favor, and that means he needs to adjust his game and accept that he’s no longer who he used to be.

After the impressive win over Golden State, Nick Young was asked why the team played so well without Bryant. Here is what he had to say: “Some guys just played like ‘Django Unchained.’ They were free tonight… Pretty much going to have to tell Kobe to pass me the ball, pass us the ball. Tell him to take the backseat for a little bit.”

Jeremy Lin was asked a similar question about what happens when Bryant returns. His response: “It’s definitely different because when he’s in the game he’s our best player so you want to definitely try to cater to him and get him going and allow him to do what he does. We’ve got to find a balance to get the best of both worlds.”

It’s really not that hard to read between the lines here. Bryant’s teammates are doing what they can to deal with his frustrating style of play because of who he is, rather than truly relying on him for his abilities. It’s never a good thing when you have to “cater” to a teammate because that means there’s a lot of “me” going on on the floor. Young is one of the most trigger-happy players in the league, so you know there’s a serious problem when he’s calling you out for shooting too much.

From an execution standpoint, it’s really all on Bryant to change how the Lakers play. On Tuesday against the Warriors, his teammates proved that playing the right way is a formula to beat anyone in the league, with or without him.

From a leading standpoint, all of this really falls on Byron Scott, who has watched it happen from the sidelines without a single criticism of how Bryant has been playing. Instead, he has pointed fingers at others on the team and benched both Carlos Boozer and Jeremy Lin in favor of Ronnie Price and Ed Davis. Maybe Scott is too close to Bryant to control him the way a functioning coach should. Whatever the reason is, Scott has been content with letting Bryant do anything he wants on the floor all the time – he leads the league in usage rate – and it has produced some of the ugliest basketball in the league on both ends of the court.

Somewhat surprisingly, Bryant’s long-time follower and writer Kevin Ding of Bleacher Report was willing to point out the issue of both Scott and Bryant with one tweet:

Just one victory, but let’s see if it moves Byron to build a team instead of a shrine to Kobe. — KEVIN DING (@KevinDing) December 24, 2014

Somebody had to say it, and it’s good to see Ding step up to the challenge. Either that, or Bryant and Scott knew this season was going to be a bust and are geniuses for letting terrible basketball happen in hopes of a high lottery pick.

As for the Warriors, Stephen Curry summed up the awful, awful loss with one single word: