It was the end of the game and Kobe was talking to Mike Trudell of Lakers.com and TWC Sportsnet. He was describing the team’s win, but also how sore his body was after games and some of what he would do to recover to play the next game.
Kobe had played nearly 36 minutes and led the Lakers down the stretch, scoring nine of his game high 32 points in the final period including two big free throws that pushed the lead to three in the closing seconds. Further, over the final six minutes of the game, Kobe had a hand in every point the Lakers scored tallying three assists on the only points not scored by him over that stretch.
Nights like this have been rare for Kobe. Not necessarily the numbers part, the winning part. The W’s have been few and far between, but the numbers have been there almost nightly. The good and the bad.
A simple scan of his season stats tells you a couple of things. First, Kobe is still a guy giving the Lakers his 25, 5 and 5. These are the numbers that will be engraved on his tombstone, a testament to the all around game that made him one of the league’s best for the better part of two decades. The second, however, is that those numbers are coming at the worst efficiency of his career. Kobe’s not even shooting 40% from the field, not even 30% from behind the arc, and has a True Shooting Percentage below 50%. And all of this on over 22 shots a game and a usage rate that is leading the league and the 2nd highest of his career. It all adds up to some troubling statistics that, when added up, tell a story of Kobe doing more harm than good when he’s on the floor.
If you recited some of these numbers to Kobe, he’d probably tell you that he doesn’t care. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he’d say — or at least some form of it. I mean, at the end of the first quarter of the Kings game, he tried this shot. Any player concerned about his shooting percentage or what outsiders think of his shot selection isn’t coming close to even imagining that shot, much less actually taking it. And while that’s an extreme example, Kobe tries several high difficulty, low percentage shots a game. It’s obvious to say, but that’s how you shoot under 40% on a season on 22 shots per game.
Again, though, it’s unlikely this matters to him. And, to be honest, I don’t even hold this against him. At least not totally. I’m not going to make the “look at his teammates!” card. Nor am I going to make the “a tiger doesn’t change his stripes” card. (Kobe’s done a lot of winning in his career and has done so playing a certain way, but that “certain way” doesn’t mean “one way”. Some of the most important plays in Kobe’s career have been passes and to try to sum him up as a player with a single, broad stroke is a mistake and a disservice to the player and to rational, smart analysis.)
What I see from Kobe is a player trying to win and, at the same time, trying to figure out the process that will accomplish that within the construct of this particular team. So far, that process has been sloppy. On some nights he’s tried passing and it has worked well. On others he’s tried passing and it has not gone as hoped. On some nights he’s come out gunning and he’s been fantastic. On others, well, not so much. Back and forth he’s gone, with this group, and nothing has been working with any consistency. Even determining the process is a work in progress.
The results, however, cannot be argued with. Kobe is putting up some of the worst efficiency numbers of his career even if his traditional boxscore stats seem to be what they’ve historically been. The question is, of course, what to do about it. The answers aren’t really that simple.
I tried to touch on this some on twitter:
Part of the Kobe conundrum is that he needs a coach willing to call him out when he veers too far from team play. Scott enables him though.
— Darius Soriano (@forumbluegold) December 12, 2014
That's not to shift blame from Kobe. It's him out there playing. But he, like every player, needs to be coached too.
— Darius Soriano (@forumbluegold) December 12, 2014
I don’t think I can state this next point clearly enough — Kobe is the player on the floor and he’s the one who can best manage how he plays. If he wants to find a better balance between looking for his own offense and getting his teammates involved, he’s the only one who can do so. If he wants to take fewer contested jumpers or turn down shots where he’s battling multiple defenders that is the choice he will make when on the floor. On the other hand, part of what needs to happen is for Byron Scott to be the coach he was hired to be — the coach whose deep rooted relationship with Kobe could be used to communicate with him in any manner that is needed. That doesn’t just mean fluffing Kobe’s feathers when he does something Scott agrees with — it means providing the direction and instruction needed to get Kobe on the track that generates the best results for the team and the player.
Further, exploring ways to put Kobe in positions to be more successful should be a priority. Kobe’s shooting numbers in different types of plays (spot up, coming off screens, out of the post, as a ball handler out of the pick and roll, etc) are all relatively poor, which should not be a huge surprise — when you’re shooting as poorly as Kobe is the odds that any one area is good are low. But maximizing ways to get him easier looks via the personnel he’s surrounded by is one way to try and improve things.
It’s not a secret that players perform better when they have less defensive attention on them and when they have more room on the floor to operate. With that, getting Kobe in lineups where he’s surrounded by more offensive threats is one way to try and draw out better shooting efficiency. At the end of the Kings game, the Lakers played Kobe at “point guard” next to lineups that featured a combination of Wayne Ellington, Nick Young, Wes Johnson, Boozer, and Hill. All of these players can play out to 20 feet on the floor and provide Kobe a bit more room to operate. Extra space may help him play more freely, take fewer contested shots, and create the types of lanes that will better allow him to get to spots on the floor, in rhythm, to shoot better. At least that’s the hope. Some of his shooting numbers are so bad, however, I honestly do not think they could be much worse.
At times, it’s too easy to be hyper-focused on Kobe. The Lakers (as well as the NBA) as an organization and as a marketing machine play into this. Kobe is going to pass Michael Jordan! Watch Kobe play now while you still have the chance! Kobe’s Lakers will face the Spurs on Friday, on ESPN!! In reality, though, Kobe is the major piece on the Lakers and, whether you look at the construction of this roster or what the front office has said publicly, he is the core player they have built the team around. At this point in his career (and more than ever), what he needs is for people to make the game easier for him rather than relying on him to make it easier for everyone else. Part of this is on Kobe to continue to work on the process and begin to recognize where he is failing. But the other part is on those around him — especially those in a position to influence such things — to steer him in the right direction and aid in the shift through the construction of the roster and the implementation of rotations and schemes.
mud says
yes, well…
this is why stats don’t actually tell the whole story…
but there’s no doubt that Kobe has been shooting poorly and that he has forced up shots that he shouldn’t…
Calvin Chang says
Byron Scott’s spacing on offense is still terrible for the most part. He likes to run this elbow play, where the point guard brings the ball down, hands off to Hill or Booz at top of the key. Then the pg runs to the wing to set a screen for Kobe. Kobe uses the screen to get a little space to receive the ball just inside the 3pt line on the diagonal wing. That’s where he starts to iso and create. If the defense is good, Kobe ends up shooting a contested 18 to 20 footer. Low percentage shot.
Robert says
Nice write up Darius. There is no doubt that the stats and the team’s performance demand an attempt to do some things differently. However, while I would favor the attempt, I do not think results would change significantly. Kobe has worse efficiency, because he is the lead player on a bad team. Kobe does not get a lot of easy shots, because bad teams do not get a lot of easy shots. We are bad and KB is not single handedly able to correct that, but neither is he the cause (as you state). If you morphed Magic’s playing brain into Kobe’s head like many want to do, the results would probably be atrocious.
“Part of the Kobe conundrum is that he needs a coach willing to call him out ” Only one man was able to do this.
“At this point in his career …, what he needs is for people to make the game easier for him rather than relying on him to make it easier for everyone else. ” Yes – and the time to have done anything “significant” about that is behind us. The moves that Scott and Kobe can make now could result in things being a little less arduous, but they will be arduous in all possible paths forward at this point.
Calvin Chang says
Kobe is at his best at midpost, getting the ball with his back to the basket around 17 feet away from the rim. If there are corner and wing 3pt shooters and a good backdoor cutter, defense is spread out. Kobe shooting 15-ft fadeaways over one defender is probably 60% accurate. Kobe shooting contested 20-ft fadeaways is 35% accurate and takes more energy. These little nuances matter.
Hvo says
Kobe is shooting the Lakers out of games, period. If you take away the name on the jersey, the stats indicate a below average player with the usage rate of an elite all-star. Byron Scott is not doing a good job managing the team. He recently made line-up changes because of defensive issues but Kobe Bryant is one of the worst individual and team defender on the Lakers. Yet, it’s Carlos Boozer and Jeremy Lin who are replaced in the starting lineup. Kobe Bryant 2014-2015 version is not good enough to put up 22 plus shots a game.
rr says
This guy makes some good points, but he makes the same mistake that Haberstroh made with the ESPN piece which said the same thing: he didn’t look at MPG or five-man lineups, because he make the same mistake that all these guys make, which is that he forgets that Kobe is one guy on a basketball team.
82games.com breaks down performance by 5-man units:
http://www.82games.com/1415/1415LAL2.HTM
The worst unit, by far, is Byron’s original starting 5:
Lin-Bryant-Johnson-Boozer-Hill have played 324 minutes, with an ORTG of 106 and a DRTG of 121. This produces a a +/- of -104.
But other 5s with Kobe have done OK, in small samples, as anyone who looks at the link will see.
This chart has floor-time stats with individual +/-
http://www.82games.com/1415/1415LAL1.HTM
Here are the bottom 5 guys on the Lakers.
BOOZER -128
HILL -138
LIN -147
JOHNSON -150
BRYANT -155
Other guys, like Davis, Young and Price are all around even. Sacre is +40, best on the team.
Also, if you look at team points per possession on O with different guys on the floor, they are more or less the same. When Kobe is out there, it is 1.08 and everybody else is between 1.07 and 1.11. But the DRTGS of the five guys listed above are all over 1.20. That means that the Lakers are giving up 1.2 points every time the other team has the ball, which is awful. The DRTGs of bench guys are mostly OK.
So, what is going on? Byron is running, or was running, a starting 5 out there that cannot compete defensively at the NBA level, and if you look at the five of them, it is easy to see why. They have no shot blocking, no quickness, no ball hawks. And that group mostly has played against the other team’s starters.
This is why Byron switched to Davis and Price. Yes, I know about those other numbers. But when Price is out there, the team gives up 1.10 points per possession. With Lin, it is 1.20. Boozer is at 1.22; Davis is at 1.15.
And, if you look again at this chart:
http://www.82games.com/1415/1415LAL2.HTM
You will see 5-man units with Kobe that have looked just fine.
It is pretty obvious that Kobe needs to play off the ball more, play fewer minutes, and play more 3. Basically, Kobe is trying to play like he is 26, not 36, and Byron is in fact enabling that. But the picture is a lot more complicated than Kobe is being stubborn and selfish, but no one would click on an article about that.
p453833 says
In every NBA games, each team has about 100 possessions including around 10 TOs (you can count the total possessions at nba.com), if one player shot 30+ and has a FG% less than 40% to score around 25 points, then that only left around 60 shots for the rest of the team, say they made 50% with around 60 – 70 points, the total for the team will be around 85 – 90 points, That’s the reason why Lakers lost 16 games and only won 6. Kobe was the one kept shooting around 30 shots on the first 15 games, and lost most of them, lately when he shot around 20 per game, the winning games picked up.
tankyou says
Using the above math, add Swaggy to the mix who for some reason loves to jack up bad shots as well. Swaggy is 38% shooter, but hitting over 40% from three–go figure. Those two guys are eating up most of the shots, defense and all the rest barely matter if the two guys who shoot the most for your team shoot less than 40%.
Some of those wins came when Lin/Hill/Boozer were all shooting well over 50% for the game. The fixable thing is taking better shots. Turning these players into defensive players is the non-fixable thing. So with different sets, more movement, letting other guys who shoot better shoot more, perhaps don’t bench Lin when he is scoring at will by going to the rim. The offense can get better, the defense isn’t going to really get much better regardless. Davis may make a small difference, but thats it. But as long as you have a poor shooting volume shooter that starts and that shoots the most in the bench unit, they are going to lose alot. It was more fun watching them score a ton and lose than brick a ton and lose. They have at least a shooters chance to win more games when a few guys are on. Kobe could shoot a higher % if he played 10minutes a game less, and quit fixating on scoring so many points. But the Kobe jock strap folks are just going to keep blaming his poor shooting–on all the other guys who magically shoot better than him (well besides Ronnie Price).
TempleOfJamesWorthy says
I have a very good friend who is a much of a Laker fan as I am. He grew tired of Kobe Bryant years ago, and I’m rapidly becoming as sick of Kobe’s act as he has been.
In some ways, hiring Byron Scott as coach was the ***worst*** thing the Lakers could have done, because he and Kobe are both “Damn kids, get off my lawn” hard-asses in a league that has long since rendered their attitudes obsolete.
When B-Scott earlier this year said, “I don’t believe you can win championships shooting 3-pointers”, he ***may*** have been covering for the fact that his team doesn’t have 3-point shooters. But if he wasn’t, then he is empirically WRONG! Three-point shooting has been integral to the success of every recent NBA champion.
Similarly, Kobe’s whining about practice (when he is mostly missing practices) is both hypocritical and dumb. The reality of the modern NBA is that players play MUCH harder than they did years ago (there’s advanced metric data to support this). The best teams in the NBA (cf. Spurs, San Antonio) are all about managing the minutes and effort of their players, not wasting them in stupid displays of machismo during practice time.
In the past, because Kobe’s ways at least nominally lead to championships, we had to tolerate them to some extent. Now that he’s producing at a level virtually indistinguishable from any D-League wing would given the same number of minutes and shots, we can just point to the “scoreboard (i.e. efficiency ratings, +/- stats, etc.) and tell him to shut up.
Unfortunately, because Kobe is the only thing the Lakers have to sell right now, we’re stuck with him until the end of next season (I think Kupchak’s comment about Kobe retiring after his current deal was a thinly-veiled “OK, we’re stuck with you. But once we’re not…go away.”
gene says
Where is my post?….nice blog..smh…
Darius Soriano says
Gene,
No offense, but if you keep trolling, I’ll keep deleting your posts. There are plenty of places where you can troll Lakers’ fans, but this isn’t going to be one of them. So, that should answer your question.
T. Rogers says
I’m not really sure how much the Lakers can improve as a team. I do think Kobe’s efficiency can go up if he moves off the ball. Trying to back defenders down only to turn and jump away from the hoop before shooting is just too much work. It wears him down. Maybe Scott (and Kobe) can try letting Lin orchestrate the offense. Kobe should be catching the ball on the move to the rim. Of course that strategy has been talked by every coach going back to Mike Brown. It still hasn’t really happened yet.
Calvin Chang says
@TRogers – That’s not really Kobe’s game though. In theory, it would make it easier on him to catch and shoot open shots. But Kobe is a shot-creator off the dribble. That’s what he does best. If you have Nash or Rondo or Lin trying to find Kobe on catch-and-shoot with Kobe using screens – that’s not Kobe’s style. He’ll make a few, but you’re better off having a Jodie Meeks or Wayne Ellington do that. Kobe does not like to do that.
T. Rogers says
Calvin,
You are right. It’s not his style. Not to take a shot here, but you cracked the door for me so I’ll just walk through it. Why can’t Kobe adjust and make it his style? Tim Duncan didn’t used to be a pick and roll guy. For a decade Tim’s game was low post ups sprinkled with some 15 foot bank shots off the glass. And this was after he already had adjusted his game when Robinson left. So the high screen and roll Tim is his third incarnation. Remember when Ray Allen used to put the ball on the floor and take guys off the dribble? Now he’s strictly moving off the ball. Both he and Tim evolved their games. Kobe has before. Be he needs to do it again.
One reason Kobe is struggling with his efficiency is he insists on playing the same way he played 6 years ago. But his body has changed on him. His legs can’t give him that lift he needs to consistently knock down the turnaround jumper. Teams are used to seeing him set up on the elbows with his back to the rim. Defenses are prepared for that.
Calvin Chang says
@TRogers – I agree with you that Kobe should adjust his game for his own good. But I don’t see him doing that because of his alpha personality and dogged determination to run through brick walls. Only a strong, disciplined coach can make Kobe change his game.
Ko says
Excellent analysis. Only issue is Scitt telling Kobe or controlling his shots.
At this point it’s Kobe world and the rest are visiting.