A Quick Aside... (NOT!)

Anyone catch that Spurs Lakers game from last night?  It was a fantastic, wonderful game from tip-off to final buzzer.  It came down to the last possession, and there was a certain exchange that I found to be quite delightful that may just come in handy sometime later this year...  

         After hitting a three with less than 15 seconds to go, Kobe Bryant (who at this point was so hot that I'm surprised he didn't melt through the floor) nailed a contested three-pointer to give the Lakers a 111-109 lead, and a timeout was called.  In celebration, Kobe struts down the floor and sets an NBA record for consecutive chest bumps in a regular season game.  Kobe celebrated so exuberantly; you’d have thought he’d won the Spanish National Lottery or something.  Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought for sure the game clock read all zeros. 

         But it didn’t.  It was more like 12 seconds to go and San Antonio ball at mid-court.  And wouldn’t you know, on a broke-as-hell inbounds play, Roger Mason Jr. wound up with the ball and gave Mamba and his Lakers a taste of their own venom, drilling a 20-foot jumper while being fouled by Derek Fisher (the same Derek Fisher that memorably sunk San Antonio in Game 5 of the 2004 Western Conference Finals? Yup.). 

         Oops.  Score tied at 111, plus a free throw makes it 112-111 San Antonio.  But hey, that’s ok, because the Lakers still have about 10 seconds left to steal the win.  Now, you’re not going to believe this part: Kobe actually passes on the last shot (can we check and see if those words have ever been written in that order before?) and defers to teammate Trevor Ariza. 

Why?  Because Ariza is open, as his defender (Manu Ginobili) is aggressively trapping Kobe (along with his defender Roger Mason) along with near the sideline.  Kobe has to pass, there is no other option, and the Spurs effectively get to choose (to a certain degree), who the ball goes to.  And the Spurs chose Ariza, who was 23 feet away from the basket at the top of the three-point arc.  Mind you, Trevor Ariza is no slouch, and he actually made a great drive to the basket and (brace yourselves) got hosed on a bogus traveling call that sealed the win for San Antonio, but that’s not the point.  Well, that is kind of the point, but not just because the Spurs walked away with a win. 

In fairness, on Ariza’s last second drive there was a lot of contact from Ginobili who slid over to the foul line area in the classic NAA hands-up pose, forcing the Lakers forward to change direction and move his feet semi-awkwardly which precipitated the call.  In my opinion, the move was good despite the contact, but the contact was not that severe, and in a late game situation I would expect to be called less that 40% of the time.  The call for steps, on the other hand?  I’d almost never expect to see that called in that situation of an NBA game (it wasn’t exactly a “crab-dribble” against the Wiz). 

         If you put a gun to my head (let’s be honest, I’d tell you even if you didn’t speak English), I would have made the right call, which was none at all.  And Ariza missed, so the game would have ended anyways exactly where it did end, 112-111 San Antonio.  Had the shot fallen, things would certainly be different.  Regardless, this isn’t the crux of the story anyhow (don’t bother why I just jerked you around for two paragraphs, just go with it).

The point is, there are a lot of NBA players would have made that shot (some would have gotten the whistle too, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms, to use the common parlance), and one of them, specifically the one wearing number 24 who should have been driving to the hoop for the game-winner, had to give up the rock. 

Now I see all of this and I begin to wonder something along the lines of “an aggressive double-team, how ingenious.  And it worked?  Why doesn’t everybody do this?”  It was the perfect call, because Kobe was completely unprepared for the double.  I mean, why else would he slowly bring the ball up and paint himself into a corner by dribbling over to the sideline where he was 29 feet from the rim and in a spot with very few exits? 

It was plain to see from a mile away that the blinders went up immediately and Kobe had only one thought: breaking down Roger Mason Jr. (the same guy who just upstaged Kobe’s display of late-game heroics) and sticking it to the Spurs BY HIMSELF for the game-winner and the top play on Sports Center.

But the Spurs did double him (he seemed almost shocked that they’d even dare), and Kobe, having bled the clock from ten seconds down to only five, left almost no time for his teammates to really move the ball and create a good shot.  The timing of the play and the call were perfect, and the Lakers fell victim to an only semi-cleverly disguised trap.  Anyone could see that Kobe was prepared to take on all five Spurs by himself, and the Spurs simply turned that against him and baited him into losing the game for the Lakers (this has happened before, I swear…).  Kobe effectively dribbled himself and his team to death in the corner and was not prepared for the most basic coaching call of this century, an aggressive double team to force one of his teammates to win the game. 

Had Kobe reacted sooner, or perhaps brought the ball up to the middle of the floor where a double team is much more disruptive to defensive spacing and rotation and easier to pass out of instead of trying to isolate by the sideline hash-mark, things may well have turned out differently.  But the bottom line is this: even though Kobe is passing more this season and the Lakers are playing team basketball, Kobe’s Achilles heel is still very present and exposed for exploitation.  Even though he ultimately passed (remember, he had to), when the chips are down Kobe Bryant would still rather win with him taking the last shot and putting the team on his shoulders once again instead of simply making the right play to win the game.

Now one could rightly argue that an isolation play for Kobe is still the Lakers’ best option to win a game and gives them the best chance of success (I mean, he’s Kobe freaking Bryant for crying out loud!).  I’d have to agree with you, but I’d also point out that this allegedly high percentage strategy is apparently quite easy to defend and therefore perhaps might not be the best one.  And if it turns out that this is the best strategy for the Lakers, then I’d certainly expect that somebody whose work ethic is supposedly unequaled and his coach who is wrongly considered by many to be the G.O.A.T to have gone over this basic counter move to their best play more than anything else in practice.  I’m just sayin’…

The Lakers lost tonight because leaving enough time for someone else to win the game wasn’t on Kobe’s mind.  This is just a different manifestation of the same problem that the Celtics exploited in last year’s Finals.  Kobe can still be easily goaded into his me-against-the-world mentality, and because of this the Lakers are very, very beatable.  Not only that, but the end of tonight’s game also shows us that Kobe doesn’t fully trust his teammates to make a play when it counts.  As I said after the Celtics’ Christmas loss to the Lakers, they are who they are, and a good team that plays defense and works as a unit like San Antonio (or Boston or Cleveland) can still beat them.  Hopefully Kobe doesn’t realize this anytime soon and start running his isos from the middle of the floor, because then we might be in trouble, but I stand by my case. 

In other news, Glen Davis hit his first career three-pointer and the Celtics won for the third time in as many games, so all of you out there can quit hyperventilating into a paper bag and stop those dirty thoughts about the Celtics needing to sign Stephon Marbury into the fold.  Also, Chris Paul missed a quadruple-double by 3 steals against the Dallas Mavericks and reminded us all, once again, what a desperation move can do to a championship contender.