ball teacher wrote: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.
Oh and for the record lebron has never sacrificed his stats for the better of his team,it's always other guys doing that. Yet people still say he's all about winning. Kobe changed his game and incorporated pAu beautifully when he got here. Kobe is one of the few guys in the league that can get his and let other guys get theirs too. When Nash was Howard had just as many chances as he did when he was in Orlando,when pAu got here he got the same chances he did in Memphis. Nash is doing the same thing this year that he was in Phoenix last year,so save the bull and next time just post "I hate Kobe and I'm glad he's losing". Saves time and space