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Tweet of the Night: Darius Morris puts Byron Scott on blast

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KobeParkIt’s no secret that Kobe Bryant has been historically bad in what has been confirmed as his final season in the NBA.

The former superstar shooting guard has been a shell of himself in every aspect of the game (understandably so with all the damage and mileage in his body) and has gone into one arena after another to fire up some of the most inexplicable shots in the history of the league. No really. There have been a countless number of bad shots and airballs that no other player would be allowed to get away with for long stretches. Bryant is shooting 29.6 percent from the field while averaging an incredible 17.9 shots through his first 17 games. He has shot better than 37 percent from the field just three times this season, which somewhat puts into perspective of how consistently bad he has been shooting the ball. That kind of volume with that kind of inaccuracy is simply unheard of. Since Bryant has earned the right to do so, however, it hasn’t been an issue for Byron Scott and Los Angeles Lakers (3-18).

Scott, who has the power to control minutes of the players and the overall style of play, has given Bryant the green light to do anything he wants while limiting playing time for Julius Randle and D’Angelo Russell – the presumed future of the Lakers. It’s difficult to say for sure what has been instructed from management – if any – for Scott to have the team function the way it has, but you’d like to believe that he is following the directions of someone to some extent. Otherwise, allowing Bryant to sabotage the season in this manner while failing to develop their future core would simply be the most inexplicable coaching decision of all-time.

It could be that Scott is tanking (or instructed to do so) while allowing Bryant to do his thing, which in some ways is killing two birds with one stone because there is clearly no better way to tank than allowing Bryant to do his thing. Not allowing the young players to develop is a bad thing no matter how you slice it, though, and Scott took another step in that general direction on Monday by announcing that Randle and Russell would come off the bench for the foreseeable future.

On one hand, bringing them off the bench separates them from playing with Bryant, which right now is generally a good thing (to be completely fair, Bryant has played two respectable games in the month of December against the Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors). On the other hand, it’s not as good if you don’t communicate with them about why the move is being made, which appears to be the case based on Randle and Russell’s reaction about the demotion. Russell really opened up about the overall situation of the Lakers by questioning the ball movement when Bryant is on the floor.

One former Lakers player shared his particular frustration about the move Scott made and went much further than that:

Morris made some tough – and mostly true – assessments about the situation, but his last tweet doesn’t really apply to Randle and Russell because “the GOAT” he’s referring to doesn’t exist anymore. They are not experiencing the same Bryant he experienced.

The irony of all this is that they are trying to honor how great Kobe Bryant has been for the game of basketball (and he has been great), but all he’s doing now is making an absolute mockery of the sport he has loved so dearly.

Morris had a few more things to say about Scott, and things got much worse:

UPDATE: since the tweets, it has been reported that his account was hacked. The tweets were deleted soon after.

Jim Park is a blogger and Tweet of the Night author of Sheridan Hoops. Follow him on twitter @SheridanBlog.

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