Kobe Bryant, sug gesting he can put more than one broken finger on the problem, threatened Thursday night in Cleveland to use both hands to “strangle every single one” of his Lakers teammates at their next practice.
That is not, however, why Phil Jackson canceled yesterday’s shoot around after a wee hours New York arrival after a bitter 93-87 loss to a contender for the Lakers’ throne.
“We watched film, minded our Ps and Qs,” the coach said. “I’m very interested in seeing how hard we play tonight.”
Just hard enough, it turned out, to outlast the Knicks, 115-105. Bryant, playing with a twice-cracked finger that he admits has cost him some courage to get hacked in the lane, said there was no use trying for 61 points like the last time here, considering his team’s 10-6 record in its last 16 games.
“I don’t think the way we’re playing we’re ready for that,” he said. “Pau [Gasol] has to get going, Andrew [Bynum] has to get going. We have to find a rhythm.”
This was after Bryant took 24 shots to score 27 points, spending much of the night choking his team’s chances to win as comfortably as they have become accustomed.
Or, as Ron Artest says, too accustomed.
“I don’t know how we’re in first place, we haven’t played a full 48-minute game the whole season,” Artest said.
“It’s too easy for us, we coast and win by 20. Play against a better team, you see the 10 losses.”
No. 11 seemed at least remotely possible until the Lakers started to lob more balls to Gasol, enabling the guy angrily threatened by the star with a loss of breathing to provide the breathing room.
“Pau is too nice, not that I’m a [jerk],” Bryant said. “He’s so intelligent he thinks too much and I told him that.
“In the fourth quarter he put his head down and went to work.”
Gasol, too big for David Lee, finished with 20 points and eight rebounds. The Knicks extraordinary ball maintenance — just six turnovers — proved for naught, not that Jackson thought his bigger team did much more than play down to an overmatched opponent.
“I wasn’t that impressed,” Jackson said. “[We] played to the level of the game, didn’t push themselves and gave up easy baskets.”
Meanwhile, the champions aren’t getting many from Bryant, who needed 31 shots to score 31 in Cleveland and says taking time off to heal would be pointless.
“If I hit it, it’s not going to break anymore, just going to be sore,” he said. “The healing is still the same as if I sat out.
“I just love to play, can’t get enough of the game.”
In Cleveland he had had enough of the softness, which is where Artest is supposed to come in and probably still will.
But a look in the mirror by No. 24 might be instructional, too, Bryant’s 10-time NBA championship coach says.
“He shouldn’t have taken all those shots at the end of the game, should have thrown the ball back inside,” said Jackson.
Thus does the Lakers’ dirty laundry hang outside. You think it’s easy being 33-10?