“Quite honestly, he’s playing how he’s always played throughout his career,” explained Bryant. “He’s in an environment where they celebrate that and encourage him to be who he is. He’s having a sensational season.”
Bryant can talk about this as an expert because he has gone through it once before – and is going through it again. With Pau Gasol, Steve Nash and Steve Blake out, Dwight Howard still feeling his way and an in-season coaching change that has Los Angeles completely and utterly out of rhythm at both ends of the floor, the Lakers feed off of Bryant’s every move right now. He is in the predicament of having to do too many things at once for his team to be successful.
“I think what I’m trying to do is do more by doing less, but doing more,” Bryant said of the way he’s trying to help his team win ball games. “I’m just trying to be a point guard in a sense and try to draw more attention and get guys open looks and hopefully they knock ’em down and hopefully that gets the ball rolling a little bit. Pushing the tempo
a little bit, which is a lot more work. In the second half I pushed the ball, pushed the tempo and tried to get us back into this thing and hopefully that will get us off to better starts.”
He continued in the direction of the coaching change, toward how unfair it is to blame Mike D’Antoni for the team’s ongoing struggles in the early portion of a magnificently exciting 2012-13 season.
“It’s not fair,” said Bryant. “It’s tough. He’s thrown into a situation. … It’s a huge adjustment for all of us and you know, we have some figuring out to do. We have some key pieces out and when they come back we’ll get this thing locked and loaded and make some adjustments.
“It’s just a team that really doesn’t have any stability. There’s no real sense of purpose in what we want to do and I’ll direct a little bit more, in terms of being on the floor in more of a striker position. We’ve had some success, but I’ll take control a little bit more.”
In his 17th season, with miles and miles of basketball wear and tear on his mind and body alike, Bryant inexplicably finds himself right back in the mid-2000’s, albeit with a team that has enough talent for experts to believe they were a title contender heading into the season.
Apparently things don’t always shake out the way people think they will or should, and unless the Lakers can right the ship in a seismic manner, all those experts who had LA in the Finals will all be wondering the same question:
How in the world did the Lakers end up in this position?
Shooting in MSG, Staples and the arenas around the league
Madison Square Garden and the Staples Center are two of the more unique arenas in the NBA. Sure, they’re both home to historic franchises, but there’s something more to the atmosphere that leads shooters from both the Knicks and Lakers to believe that shooting in these gyms helps their shots.
The lighting at both these arenas is referred to as theater lighting, which means it is strong above the action (or stage) and dimmed on the audience (though MSG’s crowd lighting will be increasing as a result of the transformation that’s going on). The effect on shooters is, as they say, real.
“The Staples Center and the Garden are very similar,” explained Knicks sharpshooter Steve Novak. “At the Clippers games, you see the opposite lighting, where the crowd is lit vs. the stage lighting. I think it costs so much more for the Lakers to have those lights, I believe. So I think the Garden and the Staples Center are very similar. I love playing when the Lakers have the lighting like that, too. Every gym has a different feel, for sure, and the lighting is a big part of that. It’s definitely a difference in some gyms – whether there’s a light background or a dark background – but I think mainly just shooters notice that stuff.”