If you want to see Kobe Bryant's acrobatic moves to free himself from defenders, his furious explosions to the basket and the theater that always surrounds the greatest basketball soloist in the world, you'd better look quick because he won't be around for much longer. Almost certainly, it's a short engagement Kobe is playing in these NBA playoffs, likely four games, at best the bonus of a fifth.
Not even one of Kobe's celestial scoring stretches is likely to alter the harsh reality of this series. The Los Angeles Lakers need a talent infusion while the Phoenix Suns have the best seven-man rotation in the league, including three NBA all-stars, the reigning two-time most valuable player, the league's best sixth man and a feeling that in order to advance deep in this postseason they need to make quick work of the Lakers.
The fact that the Lakers couldn't cash in on Bryant's 28-point first half in Game 1 on Sunday is a sign of how much trouble they're in. It might be an overstatement to say the Suns have no regard for the Lakers, but they're certainly unfazed by Bryant's scoring outbursts. And immediately after the 95-87 loss, Bryant was annoyed with his teammates, his teammates were annoyed he didn't pass them the ball more, and the Lakers were back in a familiar position in the post-Shaq era: Kobe is a thrill to watch but the oooohs and aaaahs aren't going to translate into postseason basketball success. This will be Kobe's third straight year of not getting out of the first round of the playoffs.
The Suns yawned when Bryant hit 11 of his 17 shots in the first half, and also when he missed 12 of 13 to close the game. "In our case," Steve Nash said, "I feel we can beat them even if Kobe has a huge night. The guy is great, he's explosive. But we're explosive."
The point is, Kobe Bryant isn't going to outscore Nash, Amare Stoudemire, Shawn Marion, Raja Bell, Boris Diaw and newly crowned top sixth-man Leandro Barbosa, who comes off the bench for the Suns but would be the second-best offensive player on the Lakers, behind only Bryant. The Suns don't care if Bryant scores 50 in Game 2 on Tuesday night; in fact, they're convinced that the more he scores the less effective his teammates will be.
"He needs one or two more players with him," Suns reserve Jalen Rose said after Game 1. "He's got a talented kid at guard in Jordan Farmar, but he's a rookie starting his first playoff game. Andrew Bynum is what, 19 years old?
"Look, Kobe's the most complete player in the game, offensively and defensively. People always talk about wanting to see the next Jordan. You're not going to come any closer. He scored 39 points and held Raja Bell to two in a playoff game.
"He's the face of the league. If the Suns had been playing anybody else we wouldn't have been on ABC in the marquee time period. But we literally triple-teamed him. The guy defending their [point guard] and their [small forward] helped. When he goes into a move, it's literally, 'Help!' then surround him with three people."
Kobe lovers say that other than Lamar Odom (17 points, 16 rebounds in Game 1) he has nobody reliable to pass the ball to.
Kobe haters say his one assist in the series opener speaks to how unwilling he is to pass the ball, even when triple-teamed.
This has been the central theme of Kobe's basketball existence since the Lakers traded Shaq to Miami following the 2003-04 season.
True enough, Smush Parker, Brian Cook, Maurice Evans, Sasha Vujacic and Ronny Turiaf are role players. Kwame Brown is still challenged just to catch the ball and get into the proper position. The Lakers' best shooter, Vladimir Radmanovic, put himself into Phil Jackson's doghouse, perhaps for good, by injuring himself snowboarding during the all-star break.
Yet, when Kobe averaged a disciplined 20.3 shots per game, the Lakers jumped to a 30-19 record, which means his teammates must have been playing pretty efficiently. But with Odom and Luke Walton out with injuries Kobe had to score — and Jackson asked him to — just to get the Lakers into the playoffs.
Back to his old ways (averaging 27.3 shots down the stretch) the Lakers dropped to 12-21.
The Lakers don't seem to have any idea of which way to play now that the playoffs are on. An hour before Game 1, Suns Coach Mike D'Antoni said he expected to see both facilitator Kobe and soloist Kobe, "and my guess is they'll stay with whatever works best."
Well, since Kobe's 28 points in the first half staked the Lakers to a 48-39 lead they stayed with what worked early even though the Suns came with triple-teams. Kobe wondered what happened to the screen-setting that freed him for shots in the first half. His teammates wondered what happened to trusting them to produce when he's covered.
Jackson said in a conversation Friday that Kobe would have to pass the ball more, as he did before the injuries, for the Lakers to do anything in the playoffs and it looks so far like the coach knows what he's talking about. One assist isn't exactly looking for teammates.
But coaches are rational; scorers are instinctive. Bryant scored 50 points or more 10 times this season; only Wilt Chamberlain has scored 50 points or higher more times than that (45 in one season, 30 in another).
Somebody misses an open shot, Kobe's instinct is to take the next shot himself. Yet, if the season had lasted one week longer the Lakers would probably have missed the playoffs.
So, the Lakers practiced Monday and tried to figure out what will work Tuesday to tie the series. If Kobe ran out of gas Sunday, as Jackson suggested, it would be insane to expect a 50-point outburst to make a difference. On the other hand, if the rest of the Lakers are inadequate, what's the point of passing them the ball?
"When he gets 50," Jalen Rose said, "you say, 'We let him get his because we wanted to hold everybody else down.' He's the only guy in the league who can have people saying they 'held' him to 40."
Long after the theater of Game 1 was over, the Suns watched as their nemesis in the Western Conference, Dallas and San Antonio, shockingly lost their playoff openers at home. Once upon a time, to start the decade, the Lakers were the ones everybody else worried about. But the Suns, with legitimate designs on a championship, know the best way to set themselves up for a long playoff run is to get rid of Kobe as quickly as possible.
Amazingly, that's what the game's most prolific player may be reduced to over the next three games: preliminary practice for a team on the way to somewhere important.
