Kobe Bryant mentally prepared for Lakers frustration
PHOENIX — The question, much like the brutal experience he endured this week, doesn't faze Kobe Bryant in the least.
The Los Angeles Lakers star who spent most of the past 18 months dying for these days to come, for that Achilles tendon tear and left knee fracture to get the hell out of the way so he could resume his career, is asked if he can survive in a world where this becomes his new norm. Blowouts every night like the ones against the Houston Rockets (by 18 points) and Phoenix Suns (by 20 points) that started their season. Teammates who have been wearing the purple and gold for what seems like a matter of minutes struggling at every turn. Younger stars on opposing teams getting over on the Hall of Fame-bound champion who has never seemed so far from his dream of winning a sixth title.
So what kind of state will his famously determined mind be in if this — as seems so likely — is still his reality a few months from now?
"Go on to the next night," Bryant, 36, told USA TODAY Sports after scoring 31 points against an upstart Suns team that led by as many as 29. "Go to the next night. That's it."
And therein lies the problem.
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The NBA is an unforgiving playground, where none of the 29 teams that are coming the Lakers' way will feel an ounce of sympathy for all that they've been through in the past couple of seasons. Dwight Howard certainly didn't Tuesday, when he shared the floor with Bryant for the first time since deciding to leave for Houston. Their fourth-quarter scuffle was a dramatic reminder of the bitter divorce in the summer of 2012. Eric Bledsoe didn't on the following night, either, especially after a frustrated Bryant dove so furiously for the ball that was in the Suns point guard's grasps and left him with a bloody lip.
Yet from here on out — starting with Friday night's Los Angeles face-off against the championship-contending Clippers — it's this Lakers team that has such a ruthless start to its schedule that will be trying to stop the bleeding.
By the time December rolls around, they will have played a team that had a losing record last season in just four of 17 games. Yet even that is deceiving, as it includes teams like the New Orleans Pelicans (Nov. 12) and Denver Nuggets (Nov. 23) that are expected to be much improved. The prospect of long losing streaks and epic levels of Black Mamba venom, in other words, seem increasingly likely.
It's fair to wonder how Bryant will handle this unwelcome path that lies ahead, and rest assured that coaches, teammates, and team officials alike are all pondering that very question. In the 17 seasons in which Bryant played the majority of the games, only the 2004-05 Lakers had a losing record (34-48) or missed the postseason. Last season, when Bryant's injuries limited him to just six games, the Lakers' 27-55 record was the worst in franchise history.
First-year coach Byron Scott, who mentored Bryant in that 1996-97 Lakers season that was his last and Bryant's first, swears he's not worried about his "rookie" just yet.
"Not really," Scott told USA TODAY Sports after the loss to the Suns, "because I know how tough he is. There's not a whole lot that he can't survive. If he survived last year and the injuries he's had, I think this will be a piece of cake for him. I knew it was going to be tough. I looked at our first month of November, and said it's going to be tough. December is going to be tough. And it's not going to stop. So no, I'm not shell-shocked. I know we've got a lot of work to do. We've just got to keep on playing."
For Bryant's part, this has to be a conflicting time, with the personal joy of his highly-anticipated return being stolen so soon by this torturous time in which his team — at least early on — seems so incredibly overwhelmed. But Bryant, who joked that those years of training from the "Yodas" of his world such as "Zen Master" Phil Jackson will help him keep his head, swears he's not rattled or surprised.
"Not even a little bit," he said. "I've seen it all man. I've seen it all before. I'm good. I've been trained very well.
"Coming back, the beauty was in the process. So the fun part for me, the most fun part, is over. I know where I'm at now. Now it's just everybody's seeing (that he's himself). But the fun part for me is over in terms of the comeback. Now the challenges become turning Jeremy into a championship point guard, a floor general, right? And the rest of the guys having a championship spirit. That's the challenge."
Even getting losing, Bryant made clear, beats not playing. And now, with season-ending injuries to rookie prospect Julius Randle and future Hall of Fame point guard Steve Nash putting the already-undermanned Lakers even deeper in that hole, he has decided that newly-acquired point guard Jeremy Lin will be the one to help him and the Lakers get out.
But the idea that Bryant is now helping Lin get to the next level is evidence enough of how quickly things have changed in Laker Land, and not for the better. It was only Feb. 2012 when Linsanity was unfolding for all the world to see and Bryant, whose Lakers faced Lin's New York Knicks three games into that storied run, said when asked about his out-of-nowhere play, "What the (expletive) is going on? Who is this kid?" Now, Lin — who was traded to the Lakers from the Rockets during the summer — will spend these next six months with Bryant just trying to make the season matter.
"I've been trained really well by the Yodas of the world, and they've always talked about just looking at the game, looking at things you can correct, and then the next day correcting them," Bryant told reporters. "Simple as that. We're not as bad as this first two games. We're not. So it's just about correcting these things."
