Kobe's D is a detriment to the Lakers (check this article)

[LA_Sports]

i know its these guy's are pros, but when your team leader doesn't even try on defense but has no problem taking so many shots, its hard to give it your all yourself.

Bingo...

[LA_Sports]

I don't know if I would go that far... But Kobe has been the one constant through the good and BAD times. Plus Kobe has shown he is also stubborn unwilling to change his game at times with teammates.

[ballaholick]

Kobe is the reason why d12 has played at 70% all season? Kobe is the reason Pau is not atheletic anymore? Kobe is the reason why Nash is 39 years old, with horrid defense? Give me a break dude, the fact is that many people fail to realize we're not as good as people and fans think we really are. To think its Kobe's fault is just crazy

[PandGneverfold]

Kobe is a future hall of famer, a 5 time NBA champion, a league MVP, a scoring champ, a defensive player of the year, but he is also a man with a huge ego and little leadership skills. Kobe will get a pass because he's the face of the franchise and he has all the accolades I already mentioned, but when you look at what's happening with this team, the blame falls on the team leader and the coaches, and in this case I'm putting more blame on Kobe because this is a league where superstars get coaches canned all the time, the superstars take over games, their words hold heavy weight in huddles and on the floor, and Kobe has rarely shown traits of great leadership in his whole career.
He has had beef with Shaq, Bynum says Kobe stunted his development, and now Howard is making his displeasure known. If you will explain away each of these issues Kobe has had and attempt to justify them in anyway on behalf of Kobe, then you are letting your homerism cloud your judgement. Kobe is a great player/scorer, but that's all he is, he needs a stacked team to win because he doesn't have the leadership ability to make his teamates better, instead he gets under hs teamates skin and they dislike him. There is no reason this team should have the record it does, Kobe should've sacrificed his scoring the past two seasons for the betterment of his team, instead he wanted to try to win the league scoring title at his older age to prove to players like Lebron and Durant that he still has what it takes to be considered the best in the league, all the while these other guys are team oriented guys who want to win rings and have no problems sacrificing individual accomplishments for titles.
Don't blame D'antoni, don't blame Howard, don't blame old age, blame the supposed "leader" of this team who has failed to positively rally the troops to play good TEAM ball and be successfull in the process.

I never knew a person could type that many words without saying anything.

[PandGneverfold]

The Kobe apologists have come out I see...

I see his lame haters are drooling at the chance to bash him again.

[PandGneverfold]

thanks for posting ima. wanted someone to take the time to breakdown kobe's breakdown's, glad someone took the time. just eye opening how bad his defense is.

i know its these guy's are pros, but when your team leader doesn't even try on defense but has no problem taking so many shots, its hard to give it your all yourself.

I'm so sick of this cop out excuse,these guys are professionals making millions. Lets not act like guys don't get shots on this team. Magic is the greatest of all times IMO but you never seen his teammates sulk or say magic shouldn't run the show because his defense wasn't great. Kobe is having a great offensive season maybe other guys should crash the boards play some defense.there are other things one can do to help their team win besides shoot. Kobe is our best scorer.

[leeprettyp]

thanks for posting ima. wanted someone to take the time to breakdown kobe's breakdown's, glad someone took the time. just eye opening how bad his defense is.

i know its these guy's are pros, but when your team leader doesn't even try on defense but has no problem taking so many shots, its hard to give it your all yourself.

I'm so sick of this cop out excuse,these guys are professionals making millions. Lets not act like guys don't get shots on this team. Magic is the greatest of all times IMO but you never seen his teammates sulk or say magic shouldn't run the show because his defense wasn't great. Kobe is having a great offensive season maybe other guys should crash the boards play some defense.there are other things one can do to help their team win besides shoot. Kobe is our best scorer.

This

[LA_Sports]

Hahaha I love how if anyone questions or even has anything negative to say about Kobe they become "haters". Even if the things said are not that harsh and pretty obvious to the vast majority of people. Some people seem to care more about Kobe than the team here.

[LA_Sports]

thanks for posting ima. wanted someone to take the time to breakdown kobe's breakdown's, glad someone took the time. just eye opening how bad his defense is.

i know its these guy's are pros, but when your team leader doesn't even try on defense but has no problem taking so many shots, its hard to give it your all yourself.

I'm so sick of this cop out excuse,these guys are professionals making millions. Lets not act like guys don't get shots on this team. Magic is the greatest of all times IMO but you never seen his teammates sulk or say magic shouldn't run the show because his defense wasn't great. Kobe is having a great offensive season maybe other guys should crash the boards play some defense.there are other things one can do to help their team win besides shoot. Kobe is our best scorer.

If this was true then no one could say Kobe is a great leader, because leadership doesn't exist due to the fact they are all professional making millions with no need for any guidance. There is the term "Lead by example"... Great players lead on both ends of the court. It is a team game and you don't win by saying I'm gonna get mine offensively and you clean up my mess.
Magic wasn't the best at defense, but he was far from a liability.

[PandGneverfold]

Hahaha I love how if anyone questions or even has anything negative to say about Kobe they become "haters". Even if the things said are not that harsh and pretty obvious to the vast majority of people. Some people seem to care more about Kobe than the team here.

Take that second grade level reverse psychology elsewhere. Blaming kobe so much is tiresome and played out. Without Kobe's scoring we would probably have 5 wins tips this year. PAu is Terrible,Nash isn't a volume scorer and Howard isn't fully healthy,our bench is trash. Like said without Kobe's scoring we are even worse than we are now record wise.

[LA_Sports]

my overall point is this:

last year the lakers had the 13th ranked defense with kobe playing EXACTLY the same defense hes playing this year

the year before the lakers had the 6th ranked defense with, again, kobe playing nearly exactly the same defense.

nothing has really changd with kobe's individual defense the last 3 years, yet the team defense has gotten consistently worse. is this kobe's fault? obviously not. and let me be clear, im not trying to excuse kobe, there is no excusing poor play. but how much does this really effect the overall team and their defense? not really that much.

No one is saying it is all Kobe's fault. However when the predominate amount of defensive breakdown comes from the perimeter guards of other teams killing us year after year you have to start looking at who is defending them.

[dockingsched]

thanks for posting ima. wanted someone to take the time to breakdown kobe's breakdown's, glad someone took the time. just eye opening how bad his defense is.

i know its these guy's are pros, but when your team leader doesn't even try on defense but has no problem taking so many shots, its hard to give it your all yourself.

I'm so sick of this cop out excuse,these guys are professionals making millions. Lets not act like guys don't get shots on this team. Magic is the greatest of all times IMO but you never seen his teammates sulk or say magic shouldn't run the show because his defense wasn't great. Kobe is having a great offensive season maybe other guys should crash the boards play some defense.there are other things one can do to help their team win besides shoot. Kobe is our best scorer.

well, i wouldn't consider kobe's offensive style all that comparable to magic's.

and my point certainly wasn't about being a bad defender, its about not even trying.

anyway, the point isn't to make an excuse or place blame, just trying to pin point whats going on. in theory its fair to say that these guys are pros and their effort shouldn't be affected by kobe's play., but i think its fair to also say that they're human and its bound to affect them, right or wrong. players have ego's, agendas, etc.

for me, if i see a player go out of his way to call it his team...then to me its fair game to judge how he's leading, and one way of doing that is critiquing how he's leading my example. to me he's failed in that aspect.

[PandGneverfold]

thanks for posting ima. wanted someone to take the time to breakdown kobe's breakdown's, glad someone took the time. just eye opening how bad his defense is.

i know its these guy's are pros, but when your team leader doesn't even try on defense but has no problem taking so many shots, its hard to give it your all yourself.

I'm so sick of this cop out excuse,these guys are professionals making millions. Lets not act like guys don't get shots on this team. Magic is the greatest of all times IMO but you never seen his teammates sulk or say magic shouldn't run the show because his defense wasn't great. Kobe is having a great offensive season maybe other guys should crash the boards play some defense.there are other things one can do to help their team win besides shoot. Kobe is our best scorer.

If this was true then no one could say Kobe is a great leader, because leadership doesn't exist due to the fact they are all professional making millions with no need for any guidance. There is the term "Lead by example"... Great players lead on both ends of the court. It is a team game and you don't win by saying I'm gonna get mine offensively and you clean up my mess.
Magic wasn't the best at defense, but he was far from a liability.

Like I said Kobe's defense is no worse than anyone else's on this team. Could he try harder yes,but Blaming one guy for the entire teams defense is stupid. We have two seven footers who are younger than Kobe giving up layups to opposing guards. This entire team needs to try harder period. Like doormat said Kobe's defense is no worse this year than it was a few years back. Others need to be held accountable because everyone knows if we were clicking right now and steam rolling teams it would be because we have all this talent,but as soon as things go wrong people here get shaq flu and starting pointing fingers at Kobe.

[chefy]

our team would be better if kobe focus more on defense instead of offense. plain and simple. we have other players that can score. but for now our perimeter defense is horrible and our best perimeter defender is kobe.

[dockingsched]

i don't agree that kobe's defense has been as bad in previous yrs. he's just not even trying this yr.

and like i previously said, only one player went out of his way to call this "his" team, so is it not fair to look at his effort first?

[LA_Sports]

Hahaha I love how if anyone questions or even has anything negative to say about Kobe they become "haters". Even if the things said are not that harsh and pretty obvious to the vast majority of people. Some people seem to care more about Kobe than the team here.

Take that second grade level reverse psychology elsewhere. Blaming kobe so much is tiresome and played out. Without Kobe's scoring we would probably have 5 wins tips this year. PAu is Terrible,Nash isn't a volume scorer and Howard isn't fully healthy,our bench is trash. Like said without Kobe's scoring we are even worse than we are now record wise.

Hahaha No reverse psychology needed. How about your try this on for size, the offense has not been the problem this year. We score more than enough points every game... defense is the problem. Hence that being the topic of complaints on this thread. I will say it again for you real simple so you understand KOBE GOOD AT OFFENSE, KOBE BAD AT DEFENSE and DEFENSE MAKES LAKERS LOSE GAME.

[PandGneverfold]

Yes it is Kobe's team per se and he should get blame,but my point is guy like lebron,melo,wade,Jordan or whoever else took more shots and that didn't stop their teammates from playing hard. The same thing can be said of guys like Hakeem and even shaq. Why is it only our team has guys that pout about shots? Kobe's defense might be slipping but show me anyone putting in maximum effort on that end minus hill,who's now injured. Like I said we have two seven footers and yet guards parade to the basket with no opposition.

[LA_Sports]

Yeah but it has to be seen that the defense begins to break down when our guards (all of them) let people penetrate and get our bigs in trouble trying to help constantly being put out of place. So now our bigs have to sit in foul trouble. Plus there is no excuse for allowing guys to spot up open and bomb from the outside throughout the game. That can't be blamed on the bigs either. Dwight is good but not a super human that can do it all.

[PandGneverfold]

Letting guards shoot set shots uncontested is a problem,and for the record I'm not excusing Kobe's defense. I'm just saying his defense is no more a detriment than the other starters.

[LA_Sports]

Letting guards shoot set shots uncontested is a problem,and for the record I'm not excusing Kobe's defense. I'm just saying his defense is no more a detriment than the other starters.

Hahaha No one on this team has had that great D this year. I think for most people this issue is Kobe talks about being "The Man" and the leader while not backing it up. For good or bad that comes with the lion's share of the praise and blame on how the team is doing. That might not be fair, but it comes with the territory excepts that.