Toughest defenders both on the same team? Makes Lakers scarier.
Daily Breeze: Ron Artest and Kobe Bryant were named the toughest defenders in the NBA in a poll of 173 players conducted by Sports Illustrated. Artest earned 42 percent of the votes and Bryant received 13 percent in results announced Tuesday.
More love for Kobe from an ex-Sun. Suns LOVE Kobe!
Inside Bay Area: Warriors guard Raja Bell is perhaps most known for his rivalry with Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant.
During his days with the Phoenix Suns, Bell was Bryant’s personal defender in multiple playoff series. The heated matchup included verbal jabs, elbows and shoves, a couple of physical altercations and zero love lost.
But ask Bell who’s the best player in the game, and he’ll answer without hesitation. He won’t say LeBron James or Dwyane Wade or Carmelo Anthony.
“Kobe,” Bell said. “He’s a winner, man. Not that the LeBrons and D-Wades and ‘Melos aren’t. But he just seems to have a sixth sense about closing and timeliness with his game that I think he’s developed over time. I think they don’t necessarily have it to the degree he has it yet. They’re on his heels. But if you ask me who I’d take to win this year, I’d take Kobe.”
With the Lakers thriller win over the Warriors, Kobe Bryant tied Magic Johnson for number of Lakers wins, 640.
640 wins is 2nd all-time in Lakers history. Kareem owns the record. Congrats to a very successful career for Kobe Bean!
The greatest of all compliments comes from Alvin Gentry. Good to see Kobe getting the respect he deserves.
AZ Central: How much respect does Suns coach Alvin Gentry have for Lakers star Kobe Bryant?
At his team’s morning shootaround, Gentry said that if Friday night’s game at US Airways Center came down to a final possession for the Lakers, Bryant would have to shoot “over three guys.”
But by about an hour before tipoff, Gentry had upgraded, saying Bryant “will have to make a shot over four guys.”
“He’s the best closer in the history of the game if you ask me,” Gentry said. “Yeah, that is including Michael Jordan. I just think what he’s done this year, to have six game-winning shots that come on the last possession of the game, I don’t know if anybody has ever done that.
“If that’s the case, we have to try to make somebody else be that closer. That’s not to say that he’ll give it up. I’ve seen him make it over three guys, too. But as far as we’re concerned, we have to try to get the ball out of his hands some kind of way.”
Gentry noted that Bryant was on the floor at 4:45 p.m. putting up shots – and it turned out he actually had gotten out there about a half-hour earlier.
“I tell our guys, ‘You want to be great?’ That’s how you become great,” Gentry said.
Continue reading ‘Alvin Gentry calls Kobe best closer in NBA history’
A fantastic article on Kobe Bryant and his leadership.
Yahoo! Sports: Privately, people wonder: How many more passes does Kobe Bryant give Pau Gasol for speaking so boldly about him? How long until Bryant’s public and private reprisal comes with a ferocity that could bring a 7-footer to his knees? All season, Gasol has been a relentlessly consistent, if not passively aggressive, critic of the franchise star’s shooting habits, of an offense that doesn’t deliver him the ball with the frequency that he wants.
“I believe in what I believe,” Gasol said.
Hours before Friday night’s victory over the Phoenix Suns, chatting on a chair inside U.S. Airways Center, Bryant let out a laugh and insisted there will be no public rebuttals. “I’m not touching that,” Bryant said with a smile and shrug.
Bryant could come out and say that Gasol had never won a playoff game until arriving to the Lakers. He could tell Gasol that the Lakers still had the NBA’s best record without him for a month to start the season. He could tell him to make a free throw in the last minutes of tough games, tell him to toughen up.
Truth be told, Kobe Bryant could tell Pau Gasol to simply shut the bleep up.
Only, Bryant doesn’t do it. Tempted? Well, of course. Yet, the reason for such restraint is simple: The Lakers desperately need Gasol, and a public chastising of him would almost assuredly reduce his fragile psyche to rubble, costing Bryant the player he needs to catch Michael Jordan and his six championship rings.
Bryant responds with polite, processed reason: He isn’t playing differently this season, he insists.
Perhaps circumstances have changed, but not him.
Kobe not even in the same conversation as Jordan?
Sports Illustrated: Barkley had interesting comments on Kobe Bryant’s penchant for last-second shots. He said that some of Kobe Bryant’s game-winners are lucky. What are you going to do when he hits a 20-foot fade-away jumper? Barkley said that the Raptors played good defense against Bryant earlier this week but he hit the game-winner any way.
Barkley said that Bryant isn’t in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest ever. Barkley said that the Lakers “play with no sense of urgency” and only won the title because they had more talent then everyone else. Barkley said that Bryant’s Lakers wouldn’t have a chance against the great Bulls teams.
– Barkley has been very impressed with the Dallas Mavericks. “They’re in the conversation with the Denver Nuggets against the Lakers,” Barkley said. “Clearly the Lakers are the favorite. But Denver and Dallas are right there.”
Being a fan of Modern Family, this makes me VERY happy.
O.C. Register: The final score of the Lakers-Pacers game might have been laughable, but the real funny stuff came afterward when Kobe Bryant filmed a segment of “Modern Family,” the ABC comedy.
Bryant, who has appeared on, among others, “Sesame Street,” “Moesha,” “In the House” and “Sister, Sister,” will be playing himself on an upcoming episode of the new comedy that centers on three unique families.
“I’m just winging it,” Bryant said of his acting. “I’m playing myself, so I can be myself. I can be a smart (expletive.)”
Modern Family stars Sofia Vergara and Ty Burrell filmed a segment for the upcoming show during the Lakers’ popular in-game “Kiss Cam,” with Vergara planting a kiss on Burrell, whose character has a not-so-subtle crush on Vergara’s Gloria.
Stay tuned.
Post-injury slump continues…
L.A. Times: So, Kobe Bryant, what’s going on with your jump shot these days?
“Well, three for 17, I’d say it’s a little [messed] up,” Bryant said, laughing.
He was referring to his performance Sunday against the Nuggets.
One reason for the concern is that Bryant sat out 18 days — and five games — recovering from a sprained left ankle. Then he came back against the Memphis Grizzlies last week and looked as if he hadn’t missed a game.
Bryant was 13 for 19 from the field, including the game-winning three-pointer with 4.3 seconds left. He also made a three-pointer with 54 seconds left to tie the score.
But since that game, Bryant has shot 19 for 56 (33.9%) from the field. He has missed all six of his three-point attempts.
“I had a lot of time off where I wasn’t able to shoot the basketball, so that’s why it’s inconsistent,” Bryant said. “Now I’ve got a chance to get in and kind of work on it a little bit. I did a little bit today and I’ll do a little more tomorrow and get it back to that level of consistency that it needs to.”
So which animal is Kobe?
L.A. Times: Beyond the usual, “I’m fine,” “It’s OK,” and “It is what it is,” statements Lakers guard Kobe Bryant typically makes regarding his injuries, he recently added an extra wrinkle. “I feel like a gazelle,” he said Monday when he knew for sure he was going to return to the lineup after missing the previous five games because of a left ankle sprain and sore tendon.
He’ll still be known as the Black Mamba in the minds of Lakers fans, but Bryant’s “gazelle” comment raised questions (at least in my mind) as to what other animals could rightfully be associated with Bryant.
I’m by no means an animal expert, and the grades in my biology classes prove it. But I figured I’d contact people who are to lend their insight. Los Angeles Zoo spokesperson Jason Jacobs provided me a rundown on the different behaviors of certain animals and Dana Brown, director of human resources at the L.A. Zoo and a Lakers fan, explained how they are comparable to Bryant’s play.
Tiger: Tigers have to be self sufficient. They have their own territory and they hunt for themselves. They have to be dependent on themselves. They’re camouflaged. No two Tigers striped patterns are alike.
How Bryant is like a tiger: You don’t find a lot of Tigers and you don’t find a lot of Kobes. For the solitary animals that Tigers are, Kobe, while popular and widely recognizable, he’s not really all that social. You don’t see him on the social scene. He’s not the most social person there is. He is sort of predatory. He’s slow and calculating and then he jumps at it.
Mambas: Mambas are venomous species of snakes found in Africa. There’s two types. The green mamba and the black mamba. They are very fast snakes and very deadly. When you deal with them in a zoo situation, you take every safety precaution to transfer them. Black mambas are the largest venomous snakes in Africa and their average length is around eight to nine feet. Some can exceed 12 feet.
How Bryant is like a mamba: He is definitely one of the most deadly players out there. When Kobe is in the game, somebody is going down.
Continue reading ‘Los Angeles Zoo employees compare Kobe’s play to several animal behaviors’
The finger needs to heal up to help Kobe’s shooting woes come to an end.
O.C. Register: “I rested it; it calmed down a lot,” Bryant said. “But it’s broken. So there’s nothing really I can do. The rest helped it, but it kind of is what it is.”
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“The finger gets stronger,” he said. “I work it a lot and try to strengthen the hand again, try to see if I can’t palm a ball again, but it still gets sore.”
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