30,000 Points From Nowhere: Is Kobe Bryant Hurting The Lakers?

Published Dec 9 2012 - 9:58pm by Bogar Alonso
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And then there were five.

Kobe Bryant

Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant smiles during the fourth quarter of a game against the New Orleans Hornets at the New Orleans Arena. The Lakers defeated the Hornets 103-87. E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Kobe Bean Bryant has scaled the 30,000 career points mountain; Kareem, Wilt, The Mailman, and His Airness now have studded company. He is the youngest, but yet the slowest, to reach the coveted mark, needing a whole three seasons more than Jordan to do it. Still, it certainly adds to the pedigree of his legacy, and to his nomination as a top-10 player, if not teammate, in league history.

The second-best shooting guard of all time is having one of his best years at the age of 34. He has averaged more than 28.4 PPG―his current clip―just 4 other times in his career, and is doing it at a better true shooting percentage than ever before, at 61.1. He is currently clocking in 48.8% from the field, 39.4% from behind the 3-point line, and an impressive 87.1% from the charity stripe. But while his legacy marinates in the shadow of other greats, a more relevant number needs to be discussed: 45.

No, not the second coming of Michael Jordan. 45 percent is the current winning percentage for the star-studded L.A. Lakers. At 9 and 11, they certainly need emergency service considering that they currently trail the Houston Rockets. More alarming is that after the loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Lakers are 1-8 when Kobe scores more than 30 points. To put that into perspective, they are 8-3 when he scores, and so shoots, less. An 8 and 3 record is a 72.7 winning percentage, .5 better than Miami’s at 13-5 and would put them at fourth in the Western Conference―a better reflection of the level of talent playing for the 16-time champions.

While not all of the team’s woes can be pinned to the Black Mamba, the numbers do indicate a trend that should be looked into. People have blamed Pau Gasol, the Princeton offense, a lack of Steve Nash, Jim Buss’ snub of supposed rival Phil Jackson, and now the offense-obsessed D’Antoni system for L.A.’s woes, but have not given any interest to the 1-8 emergency flare. Given Kobe’s recent milestone, a hyper-efficient year, MVP consideration, and the league’s 11-best +/- output at a plus-131, no one has looked at Bryant’s contribution to a disappointing season thus far.

It really is a strange phenomenon as the Lakers rank fifth in OffRtg with 105.5 and eight in DefRtg with 99.3, and are one of four teams to rank in the top 10 on both portions of the court. And despite some apparent words between Dwight Howard and No. 24 regarding defensive rotations, Kobe offers better defensive numbers for the Lakers when on the floor (allowing 97.8 points per 100 possessions) than the big man (99.5).

The Lakers’ state of affairs in correlation to Kobe’s field goal attempts has been studied before by the Wall Street Journal. Those results made it pretty clear that the Los Angeles Lakers usually fare better when the future HOF limits his shots, but others have taken contention to the claim. David Friedman calls field goal attempts a “noisy” statistic considering that they tell nothing of the shots’ or the player’s in-game value. Friedman has also broken down L.A’s winning ratio to be 16-7, when Bryant has scored 50 or more points, which seems to contradict the “lower field attempts” theory.

Still the question remains: is Kobe Bryant hurting his team by scoring so many points? There seems to be a missing link in his points output and his team’s success, and it might have to do with an uncategorized statistic.

When you accuse your teammates of wearing the wrong type of pants, or of kicking your teammates’ asses if they don’t improve, perhaps Kobe Bryant might bring about his own game-changing rule, a la Jordan or Wilt, except his will do more with off-court intimidation of teammates and opposing players, than on-court supremacy.

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About the Author

Bogar Alonso is Editor-in-Chief of On The 7th Day Of Hip Hop, a niche Hip Hop website, as well as a regular contributor to Potholes In My Blog, XXL Magazine and Sports Jerks. Follow Bogar on Twitter @blacktiles

  • boyer

    Hmm, another article about the psychoanalysis of Kobe’s shot attempts. Do you guys even watch the game? Look at each of those games where you think Kobe shot too much, and then analyze what would’ve happened if he didn’t. Oh, probably even more of beatdowns. And why wouldn’t you want arguably the greatest offensive player ever, still playing at an elite level, not too shoot a lot. His job is to score, and he’s one of the top 5 scorers in nba history, at the very least.

    I don’t get this garbage. I could care less if you like or dislike Kobe, this type of analysis/writing is pointless. Even when the lakers were winning in the past, it was still the same old dumb question. Why don’t the other stars of the game have each and every one of their shots analyzed into a long book like Kobe does? It’s actually quite funny. Try writing a non-biased article for once.

  • mo

    Stupid. The man is taking a measly 19 shots per game and shooting a ridiculous 61% TS. How can you possibly blame him? He’s doing what everybody has wanted for years: shooting less and on great efficiency.

    • http://baseballjerks.com/ Tom Laverty

      “Measly” (19.7) is good enough for second in the NBA.

  • http://twitter.com/blacktiles Bogar Alonso

    The Lakers are now 1-10 when Kobe scores 30+ this season. Still 8-3 when he doesn’t. The blame doesn’t even necessarily lie with the Bean, but with coaches making it an “equal opportunity offense,” as Phil Jackson used to say. In their loss to the Jazz, D12 shot 5-10, Metta 5-7, Duhon 4-6, that’s 23 shot attempts at 60.8 %. Kobe went for 24 shot attempts, made 9, that’s 37.5 %. You tell me what’s wrong.

    • boyer

      Did you watch the game? How were these other guys getting their shots? What happened during the game? It’s the same old story. People think they can look at a box score, and that’s that. BTW, the lakers offense was phenomenal in that utah game, it was their defense that lost them in the game. Also, Kobe got to the line 14x and made 4 3′s. He scored 34 pts. on 24FGA, that’s a great ratio.

      • http://twitter.com/blacktiles Bogar Alonso

        Watched the second half. Kobe went to the line 7x, shot 14 free throws you mean. As for the made 3′s, Duhon had just as many, so don’t understand your point. 34 points on 24 FGA is not a great ratio, considering the free throws. Lakers shot 47 percent despite the 9-24 from Kobe.

        • boyer

          You’re not making any sense. And you’re first problem is not understanding good from bad. Duhon and Kobe have vastly different roles. If Duhon played Kobe’s role, he would fail miserably. If Kobe played Duhon’s role, he would actually excel more than Duhon. And not even mentioning what sitations Kobe was in for a lot of his shots. Quite arrogant of you to think that looking at a box score can tell you that Kobe hurt his team, while he actually did very well, and you still didn’t address the fact that the lakers were phenomenal offensively.

          • http://twitter.com/blacktiles Bogar Alonso

            Wrote a whole article to try to make sense of it all. Shucks, even Kobe is confused by it. Just ultimately wanted to start a dialogue on something that is rarely discussed: when are superstars to blame for a team’s failures? And that, in part, comes from people not thinking outside the box (or box score). Throughout Kobe’s career it has always been someone else to take the guillotine to the neck, and that’s not fair. Even if your name is Smush Parker. The offense was not phenomenal, D’Antoni said so himself. Certainly not bad, or mediocre, but not phenomenal. Having one guy shoot 24 times, one more than three of your other starters including a dominant center, is not good or sound offense, especially if they miss 15 times. That’s one more shot than he got free throws.