WAH: When the Laker offense is beautiful

What’s more predictable, crunch time Laker offense, or Henry Abbott’s perception of it?

Last night watching the Pacers game, as the last possessions occurred on the LA side of the court, I thought, “Well the Lakers are losing but surely Abbott would be happy with this.” Because as the game came down to the wire, Kobe was racking up hockey assists through Pau Gasol, and then in a series of plays on the offensive end, he:

• Passed out of a double team to a wide-open Gasol for a missed jumper
• Passed out of a double team to a wide-open Matt Barnes for a missed 3-pointer
• Passed out of a double team to Derek Fisher, who threw up an airball
• Missed a 3-pointer

Hmm, guess which one of these plays Henry decided to focus on?

I also love all of the contortions Abbott goes through to make his points… now he’s trying to sell you Gasol as a legitimate three-point threat on the final play, even though the big 3 Gasol hit a few weeks back was the first one in memory that he had hit, and he is clearly NOT setting up to shoot a 3-pointer on the final play. If Bryant moved the ball over, you’d see Gasol catch the ball 3 feet over the line, awkwardly dribble backwards, and probably step out of bounds.

Also note that the more Henry pushes this ballhog crap even in the face of evidence to the contrary, he has to keep finding (and dropping) alternative options, such as the “Kobe is inefficient” thought or the “Kobe is efficient but old and won’t be able to stack up accumulative stats” idea or the “Bynum is dominant” meme.

So in a game like this, he won’t point out that Kobe shot 46% in the game while the “dominant” post players shot 42% (and allowed Hibbert to drop in baby hooks throughout the fourth quarter). Bynum even undid one of his better plays by giving back a point in the form of a technical foul.

So the alternative storylines Abbott is currently pushing are “Pau is a relevant 3-point threat” and “Wait until the playoffs, if the Lakers don’t win the championship it’s proof that Kobe’s regular-season selfishness undermined them” even though no one legitimately expects them to win the championship with their current roster.

Let’s see how long it takes for Henry to drop these and find new ones as Kobe continues to have a wonderful season.

The Sound of Goalposts Moving

Do you hear that? It’s not very loud. But it’s discernible.

That’s the sound of Henry Abbott moving the goalposts to get a good angle on a different way to criticize Kobe Bryant at the end of the year.

After saying that he’s in decline (when statistically he’s not), saying that he’s not efficient (Kobe’s #2 in the league in PER), that he’s not effective in cumulative stats like win shares (again, he’s #2 in the league), that he doesn’t pass the ball in the clutch (even though he does, and even though tonight down the stretch he created two easy open looks against the Pacers, one for Pau Gasol, and one for Matt Barnes, and then gave up the ball up for Derek Fisher to shoot a running finger lay-up airball), Henry is gradually shifting to another one: that Kobe’s regular season workload will prevent him from being effective in the preseason and that the Lakers will fail to win a championship.

So let’s set some expectations here.

I don’t know any Lakers fans, including me, that think that Los Angeles can win the NBA championship as currently constructed. As far as I’m concerned, a healthy run in the playoffs, a year of working with Mike Brown, no major injuries, and a shot at Dwight Howard in free agency are all I’m expecting to get out of the year. I expect the finals to be Oklahoma City versus Chicago and my guess is that Kevin Durant will walk away as the Finals MVP. Anything extra for the Lakers is gravy.

I could think of some things the roster could use, like an effective point guard. It’s too bad LA couldn’t manage to construct some sort of deal to get a great point guard onto the team. Oh, wait, they did, and then Stern made sure that his legacy will end up a tarnished one at best by canceling the trade.

So remember that level of expectation when we hit the end of the year, and Henry Abbott is writing articles about how playing Kobe so much during the season (and Kobe’s drive, preparation, and professionalism) are somehow a bad thing and that Kobe’s desire to step onto the court through injury and fatigue somehow kept the Lakers from winning a championship.

A Few Quick Ones While He’s Away

Just a few things to think about as the season progresses.

• Back in September I wrote this:
  

  …whatever John Hollinger projects for Kobe’s PER in the 2011-12 season, Kobe will beat it.

  This is your reminder that Hollinger predicted Kobe’s PER to be 21.31 this season (he’s currently at 27.38).

• Fun reading, this past May, Henry Abbott wrote that LeBron James is the Next Michael Jordan, and don’t forget to check out the Limited Playmakers rewrite.
• A reminder that Henry wrote this in a completely skewed post about how Kobe is going to decline and become a burden on the Lakers:
  

  Win Shares is a catch-all stat that can measure a player’s total contribution over a season, and unlike PER is not efficiency-based. Win Shares offers no free pass for time missed. After consistently finishing seasons in the league’s top-five, Bryant has been seventh, 21st and 14th over the last three regular seasons.

  Kobe is currently 3rd in the league in win shares. To support Abbott’s claim that Kobe is declining, we should expect Bryant to finish below 14th in the stat by the end of the season.

Get ready for another Kobe clutch post from Henry tomorrow, no matter what happens against the Clippers tonight.

If Kobe shoots 13-29, it will be about how he breaks plays at a horribly low efficiency and ballhogs (queue Henry’s quote from a book that is 7 years old). Also throw in a helping of “Andrew Bynum is the next Wilt Chamberlain” no matter what his actual play or stats say. (On that note, it’s the second night of a back-to-back, Andrew’s had fatigue issues, and he’s up against an athletic shotblocker with tons of energy in DeAndre Jordan. It’s possible Bynum won’t have the greatest game.)

If Kobe shoots 20-29, it will be about the 9 misses where he could have passed to an open Josh McRoberts and ballhogs.

Eagh, I had to listen to Henry Abbott’s voice to write this post.

Quick points. TLDR: Abbott continues to make the same points over and over even though he contradicts himself, uses small sample sizes, and doesn’t adjust his arguments based on reasoned criticism. He still needs a goddam editor.

• Henry leads off with the idea that this tired story is “the best story in the league”. You see that? He’s saying his own work is the best story in the league.
• Henry starts with a straw man… most of the stories after the Utah win were not about Kobe being clutch, but about his reaching 40 points. I don’t remember reading any stories about how he came through with the clutch, except that he made a key assist, but most stories were about Bynum’s tip-in and block.
• Abbott says any coach at any level would say that the Lakers offense at the end of the Utah game was mindblowingly bad (and also implying that generally static crunchtime offenses are bad). Except that coaches on the NBA level generally accept these plays (including Jeff Van Gundy who said so directly to Henry).
• Henry says more touches should have gone to Andrew Bynum in the Utah game because of what a dominant, efficient scorer he is around the basket. Including Bynum’s tip-in, Andrew ended the game 5-13. Dominant.
• Henry says “you know Kobe isn’t going to pass it” even though Kobe passed the ball to Gasol for what Abbott describes as the most important bucket of the game.
• Abbott again refers to Derrick Rose making the right basketball play in the Christmas Day game. He says Rose “didn’t touch the ball.” Derrick Rose beat the Lakers shooting a floater over a double-team. The wrong basketball play, according to Abbott. A bad shot that just happened to go in.
• Abbott continues to use small sample sizes as anecdotal data sets for these points he’s trying to make. Very strange and intellectually blind.
• To reiterate, although Abbott continues to insist that Kobe doesn’t pass in the crunch, no player that is not a point guard averaged more assists per 48 minutes of crunch time in 2010-2011. And yes, he averaged more assists than LeBron.

Henry goes possession-by-possession from 5 minutes left in the fourth to indict Kobe’s offense in the clutch. I notice that Henry failed to go over the possessions that Chris Paul had against Miami the same night. Unfortunately I don’t have Synergy, but I do have the ESPN play-by-play log.

Starting from 5 minutes, Paul is not involved with the offensive results until 2:49, when he misses a 3-point shot (I do recall around this time thinking how Chauncey Billups was taking too much control of the offense). At 2:30, Paul misses another jumper. At 0:58, he misses again. And it’s not in the play-by-play, but if you remember, at the end of regulation, Chris Paul went iso against LeBron, faked him out of his shoes, and then failed to take a shot before the buzzer went off. Surely that isn’t the “right” basketball play.

In overtime we have at 3:32 a bad pass from Chris Paul. At 1:45, a missed shot. And… that’s it.

In crunch time against the Heat, that’s 6 plays that Paul is on record in the play-by-play. 4 missed shots, a turnover, and a failure to even take a shot in a tie game at the end of regulation.

Henry, you are saying things that are not true, you are withholding data that contradicts your opinion, and you are using small sample sizes based on anecdotal observations to assert statistical theories.

Abbott wants to “correct the rhetoric.” He could start with his own.

Wrong Again Hen: Unshooting Stars

Once again, Henry Abbott trots out the usual arguments, trolling for traffic, ignoring all of the previous debunkings. If I had the energy I would go quote-by-quote as I have in the past, but I’ll just leave you with some thoughts.

But first, a quick note just to mark this before we get too far into the season… John Hollinger’s PER prediction for Kobe this year is 21.51. Let’s just see where he ends up, as Abbott, Hollinger, Simmons, et al casually toss off the “Kobe is aging and in decline” thought without even bothering to examine advanced statistics.

So onto the bullets:

• Abbott cites his own outdated article as evidence that Kobe isn’t clutch. Meanwhile, 82games has the 2010-2011 clutch stats online now, so feel free to look for yourself.
• Hanky claims that Kobe only contributes by making shots. Question: what non-PG averages the most assists in the 82games clutch stats?
• Talk about small sample, using one play from one game to jump off to another calcified post about Kobe’s clutch performance? What about his turnaround jumper before that? What about the other Lakers missing their free throws? What about — gasp — Derrick Rose dribbling into double-coverage (the Thibodeau strong-side screen, no less) to shoot a floater to win the game, when he had two Bulls open for uncontested jump shots?
• Just to reiterate… the Bulls beat the Lakers by making, according to Abbott, the “wrong” basketball play.
• Does any Laker fan in the world want Kobe to pass the ball to Pau Gasol with only 1.5 seconds to gather and shoot a gamewinner, even if it was a dunk?
• Abbott says the Lakers (using that same old “the Hornets are the greatest crunch time offense ever” warhorse) are at the back of the pack in terms of making the shot in crunch time, when his own article that he links to says the Lakers are above-average (82.35 points per 100 possessions in a league that averages 80.03). Just another example of Abbott’s intellectual dishonesty.
• Kevin Martin, who Abbott said he would prefer in crunch time on Ryan Russillo’s podcast, averaged fewer crunch-time points, a worse FGA%, a worse plus-minus, a worse 3-point FG%, fewer steals, and far fewer assists and rebounds. He earned more FTs, blocked more shots, and turned the ball over less. Who would you want?
• Fun fact, Kevin Martin’s PER so far this year is 16.99 to Kobe’s 24.49. Brandon Roy’s PER is the same as mine.

This meme that has somehow become gospel this year, even on Laker blogs, is that Bynum and Gasol deserve more of the offense. When in the history of sports has an alpha dog like Kobe simply given primacy to another player? Bynum is an excellent player and efficient, but he also will back Samuel Dalembert down before clanging a finger roll off the front rim, and he’ll also show up for a game so tired that he gets shut down by Kwame Brown.

I have no doubt that Kobe’s numbers will eventually indicate that he is in sharp decline, and when that happens, his detractors will finally have something to support the claims they are currently making.

But make no mistake, using advanced statistics, Kobe’s current season is more productive than last year’s, which was more efficient and productive than the year before it. I won’t be surprised if his rebounding and assist numbers regress back to the mean, but I also expect his turnovers to settle down as well. At the end of the year we’ll probably have something close to what we’ve had for Kobe’s entire career, a full season of games, maximum effort at all times, stats both basic and advanced that put him in the top tier of the league, and a lot of disingenuous, pudding-minded commentators like Henry Abbott distorting the record, using small sample sizes and arbitrary endpoints to decry small sample sizes and arbitrary endpoints.

Henry Abbott’s latest post is just incomprehensible, but a perfect metaphor for his writing

He has bragged that he writes without an editor, but seriously, get him an editor. Can you make sense of his anecdote about Gerald Green and Kobe and a nail and a dude?

For a fun exercise, after you’ve read it, try telling someone else a shorthand version of the story. Is the over-hammered nail a good thing? A good macho thing? A horrible thing because it wasted the time of a craftsman? Is it something you want to take credit for? Or is it embarrassing?

It does serve perfectly as a metaphor for Henry’s writing, though. He gets a little cocky, strikes an attitude, picks a spot for an argument, and then nails that shit in no matter what the consequences. He beats and beats it until people break themselves trying to undo the damage.

And while he watches other folks deal with his handiwork, he waits in the background, silent, refusing to take responsibility.

WAH #7: Name the Crimes of David Stern

I will start this with a small disclaimer and give Henry Abbott some credit. I thought his sparing posts during the lockout in general were informative. I still think he compulsively takes vague, equivocal positions in some distorted view of what “journalism” is supposed to be.

I admit I held out some hope that when the league returned, that maybe he would just take a break from hiding his biases behind that “objectivity”. Alas, training camps started again today, and so did Henry Abbott’s bullshit.

The night of The Decision, I was blown away at the vitriol surrounding LeBron James. He didn’t play where you wanted him to play. He had a TV show. Bummer. It still amazes me how fired up that makes people. I wrote a post asking people to name the crimes of LeBron James.

This is your hint at the position Henry likes to take. This “naive”, “gee what are people getting so angry about” stance. It’s strange to me that he doesn’t perform the work that a typical feature sports writer might do (like, use some empathy and put your feet in someone else’s shoes at least for a moment before you take their argument apart).

I feel the same way today. When I first heard about this Chris Paul thing, my first thought was “oh please, this is a freaking speed bump compared to canceling almost a quarter of the season, which he just did. Or the Donaghy thing. Or so much more. This is nothing to David Stern.”

That’s pretty surprising. When’s the last time you heard, in any major sport, of the league commissioner-slash-owner of a team veto’ing a trade of one of the sport’s superstars? So Henry’s first reaction was genuinely, “Huh, that’s interesting. Oh well, I guess I’ll keep writing my piece about the Celtics going after Keyon Dooling.”

This is WAY bigger than the lockout. We had a lockout already, years ago, and we just had another one. We’ll have more in the future. One day the cast of Happy Endings is going to hold out to make more money per episode and it’ll be news for a while.

This is a big deal. Either Henry is completely out-of-touch with how many NBA fans (non-Laker fans included) are reacting to this, or he’s being disingenuous. My money’s on the second.

Oh, and you know who thought this was a weird, surprising move? Chris Paul. Isn’t that a story in itself?

But again, the amazing mountain of vitriol. I’m having a hard time finding anybody who thinks he might have just vetoed the trade because he didn’t think it was a good deal.

What a strange reaction to not finding evidence of the viewpoint you’re looking for. No one is thinking this opinion that I have. My conclusion is that I am right and everyone else is wrong.

What we have here is a situation where lots of people can imagine he did something creepy, for reasons I still don’t understand.

Have you ever heard of “conflict of interest”?

(I’ve seen accusations that he did this both to help and to hurt the Lakers. I’m confused.) The idea, though, is that he was not acting strictly as the owner of the Hornets when he vetoed that trade. He was acting, say his accusers, with some other goals.

Maybe David Stern is a more corrupt version of Darth Vader.

This is such bad, stupid, straw man-y, unhelpful, writerly (in the worst way) hyperbole. And it’s only written like this because Henry doesn’t have the guts to say “Hitler.” See, he’s keeping it light while dismissing all of your concerns!

What’s troublesome is the gaping chasm where there should be evidence. I believe you have to do your homework before you make accusations. If you’re going to call somebody a fraud, you owe them the hard work of first ruling out the possibility they might be genuine.

The Gilbert email (sure, talk about the timing if you like, maybe it was indeed written after the deal was killed, or is it possible that Gilbert communicated with Stern in other ways before the decision? Like the phone?). The quotes from NBA executives. The quotes from Kupchak. The reports that Demps wants to resign. The reports that Cuban opposed it the most.

You know, those quotes and reports coming from other sports journalists.

I understand here that it’s difficult for Henry to do the research he’s referring to. After all, a lot of those quotes, and access to the sportswriters that published them, are as far away from Henry as his email program. Life is daunting.

NBA GMs will tell you a huge percentage of the deals they put together are killed by ownership for nonsensical, or even suspicious, reasons. Billionaires are like that! This deal died the way the vast majority of NBA deals die, with an owner saying “that’s not good enough for me” for his own personal reasons.

Actually, someone who was good at research would take this opportunity to look at what other NBA deals were negotiated, confirmed, and announced publicly only for the owner to step in and veto it. I’d love to see that list.

What was weird this time around was that it was all so public. Without the information age, this whole story would never have existed. It would have been like most trade talks — dead before it got to the finish line.

Right, that public nature of trades… the rumors, the speculation… you see, that all started this week. That never existed before! You know, back in the old days… the first half of 2011.

I don’t know what happened here.

The only sensible sentence of this entire piece.

But I do know that if David Stern did something sinister, nobody has presented any evidence of such. I’m not even sure anyone is looking.

Give Henry a break, I mean folks like J.A. Adande, Marc Stein, Mike Wilbon, Stephen A. Smith, Bill Simmons… how the hell would Henry have any idea what information they have about this?

What a ballhog.

On an actual basketball note: why didn’t that post player double him to make him pass? The defender in the white jersey (not James Harden) lets his man cut to the other side of the basket, so he’s already leaving someone on the offense wide open. He’s bouncing on his toes in the worst possible spot, he wouldn’t be able to cover his man’s jumper and he’s not hedging to close the lane for Kobe.

And why didn’t the man that cut through realize his man was away, and immediately cut to the basket?

And is this the first time I’ve seen someone shoot a video on an iPad? And doesn’t that look strange and awkward?

And why am I analyzing this awesome video so much?

WAH #6: When Kobe’s contract becomes a burden (or: Henry Abbott continues to be an intellectually dishonest prat)

I think Henry Abbott is brilliant in a way, in that he has almost convinced me to stop producing this blog because he is simply too incorrigible to ever change his ways (even after taking a psychological test that pointed out many of his flaws). But then I remember that I’m really writing this for the other NBA fans out there that have to deal with someone like him being a prominent voice in the basketball sportswriting world.

Henry wrote another wordy article built on his continuing assertions that Kobe Bryant is in decline and will continue to be in decline. Remember, Henry has bragged about having written the most words on ESPN in the last few years (really something no writer should be claiming as a good thing). This article is long, and boring, and frustrating in that Henry continues to make the same point over and over and over.

To sum up my previous grievances: Henry’s points have been responded to repeatedly in both poetic and statistical form, and what cogent thoughts he does have are totally muddled in with calcified, outdated stupidity.

So I’d just like to quote from Henry’s new piece and file them under John Gruber-style “Claim Chowder.” Let’s pull some assertions Henry is making and we’ll check back to see if he’s right.

Bryant’s productivity, like all banged up 33-year-old athletes’, is likely to decline.

Let’s check this after next season. Kobe’s PER and WP/48 were both up last year.

Meanwhile, Bryant is about to become the highest paid player in the league, with big raises in each of the next three years. The team’s obligations to Bryant — approaching double LeBron James’ income over the next three years — could force the Lakers to ditch the best of the rest of the roster just to keep him.

Emphasis mine. These are the little forensic clues that Henry Abbott is a douche. Next year Kobe will make $25.2 million, LeBron will make $16.0. The year after Kobe makes $27.8, LeBron makes $17.5. Then Kobe makes $30.5 million compared to LeBron’s $19.1 million. Is that double? No. There’s a choice for a writer to be accurate, or there’s a choice for a writer to dissemble to nudge you to a conclusion that isn’t really true.

Then Henry Abbott spends a few paragraphs (he wrote the most words at ESPN without an editor! That explains everything!) trying to paint some John McPhee picture of Kobe’s neck injury from last season and somehow it’s a cautionary tale about the aging process. Because a young player would have popped right up from a neck injury. Another subtle twisting of the truth here, Abbott I’m sure is aware that most likely Kobe actually hit his neck on the edge of a metal courtside seat, and not a fan’s knee, but he chooses to minimize the event to make Kobe look more fragile.

And it is a story of a ticking clock. Young people accused Bryant of faking the injury (A top-rated YouTube comment: “Pierce does it better. He actually got people carry him off the court.”). But watching as a man a few years older than Bryant’s 32, I felt for the guy. I’m sure there’s an accurate story to be told about this or that nerve or tendon or delicate supporting musculature; a month earlier he had injured his neck. But that would all be a distraction from the real story which is: Age. 25-year-old Bryant had no reason to fear a Leiweke knee.

Emphasis mine, again. This is amazing, and shows Henry’s real regard for his readers: he thinks you are a fucking idiot. And that you won’t notice that he’s hedging the fact that there is an accurate, truthful story to tell about Kobe’s neck injury. Actually, he’s throwing it in your face, making a virtue of his weakness. I’m sure there’s a truthful way to depict this situation, but the important thing is the agenda I’m driving. This is really a Fox News approach to opinion journalism.

Oh, and stop trying to act like you’re in any way a Kobe sympathizer, Henry. Yeah, you felt for him when he got injured. He reminded you of yourself, back when you were hands-on-knees at IMG and thinking about how your body couldn’t keep up.

Bryant will be 33 before next season. That’s an age when the vast majority of NBA players are solidly in decline, especially perimeter players who rely on athleticism. Even at the tender age of 32, Bryant is already the 18th oldest guard out of 179 listed in the NBA last season on Basketball-Reference.

Anyone who’s watched Kobe knows that he hasn’t relied on sheer athleticism since his early years in the league. He’s had “old man’s game” for quite a while (much earlier than when Jordan developed similar tactics). I would argue his game has the potential to age very well, considering the amount of refined and deceptive skills that he possesses.

Nobody really knows if age, or minutes played, better predicts future performance (and players who went to college still endured wear-and-tear all those pre-NBA years).

Nobody knows but that won’t stop me from making the point that nobody knows.

But to whatever extent mileage matters, Bryant has logged more playoff minutes than every single player in NBA history, except Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The next active player on that list is Tim Duncan, who is more than a thousand minutes behind.

Tim Duncan, who’s set to make $21.3 million next year — approaching double what LeBron James makes!

The idea that the Lakers will contend next season, despite the league’s second-oldest roster, hinges on the notion that they will greatly improve on a season Bryant called “wasted.” There are limited ways that could happen.

An exercise for the reader: who had the league’s oldest roster last season?

Kevin Pelton has a sophisticated method of identifying players with similar playing styles, position, size and productivity. After the disappointing end to the Lakers’ season, Pelton noted that “of the 50 players whose stats were closest to Bryant’s in 13 categories, including height and weight, 71 percent saw their overall per-minute performance decline the next season.”

Can Bryant be among the 29 percent of players who, in Pelton’s analysis, had seasons like his and then came back better? Jordan did it — as Pelton points out, after a season like Bryant’s, he came back the next year to lead a team to a title.

I’m not paying ten bucks to read last year’s Pro Basketball Prospectus, I have to save that for an alleyway BJ I have planned for later this week, but I’d like to know what the Pelton method projected for Kobe last year, and whether he exceeded expectations.

Somebody could write a feature film about his right knee. Bryant took it to Colorado for surgery in 2003, a visit that famously ended in scandal at a hotel in the town of Eagle.

Henry Abbott, you are either in possession of a giant blind spot in your “objectivity”, or you are a tremendous fuckface.

And the knee is only part of the story. His left ankle, his right index finger, a ligament in his right pinkie … his neck took a beating from Martell Webster in March. The point being, you can say this past season was an aberration in that he was never fully healthy. The idea is that next season he will, at long last, be able to play unhindered. But you have to look back years to find a Bryant season that is not marred by nagging injuries. Even with arguably the league’s finest offseason training regimen, he has carried a whole team’s worth of aches and pains for a half-decade, which speaks admirably of his mental toughness, but not as well of his likelihood of being free and clear of injury worries in the future.

Another reminder here, Kobe carried injuries last season and his advanced statistics were all better than the previous system.

Win Shares is a catch-all stat that can measure a player’s total contribution over a season, and unlike PER is not efficiency-based. Win Shares offers no free pass for time missed. After consistently finishing seasons in the league’s top-five, Bryant has been seventh, 21st and 14th over the last three regular seasons.

Time missed? Kobe played all 82 games last year (when his WS rank went from 21st to 14th, in other words… it improved). He had reduced minutes, if that’s what Henry is referring to. Note here that Abbott is moving from a weighted stat (WS/48 or PER) to prefer an accumulative stat. If we’re moving goalposts, then let’s count the sheer number of gamewinners Kobe has when we’re talking clutch, okay Hank?

How long can you expect a player like that to continue outplaying a brutally athletic crop of improving competing shooting guards?

Who are those up-and-coming young shooting guards? Are we talking about Brandon Roy, here? Brandon Roy — making virtually the same amount as LeBron James until 2015!

If the Lakers are going to get better, the most likely thing by far is that more and more of the heavy lifting will have to come from other Lakers — and of them Andrew Bynum is far and away the best candidate to improve because of his size, position, skill and age. He’s one of the few Lakers who is both productive at an elite level and likely to get even better — just what the team needs. His PER is just a shade behind Bryant’s, while his offensive efficiency, as expressed by true shooting percentage, is already superior. The Lakers could presumably make things easier on Bryant’s body, and better for their offense, simply by running more of the offense through their young big man.

This actually is pretty good comedy writing. It’s Swift-style satire. Henry Abbott is writing a column pushing the idea that Kobe Bryant’s injuries will cause him to decline, and his designated savior for the Lakers is Andrew “I average 55 games played a season” Bynum.

But here Bryant, who has long had a tendency to hurt the Lakers with ballhogging in crunch time

Oh, go soak your head in a tub. Quoting your own outdated, outargued bullshit column?

In other words, was Bryant’s contract extension a mistake?

Nope.

If that’s not enough, though, and you accept that Bryant is entering the inefficient part of his career

Not accepted.

Then it may be time to find out if Bryant might consider waiving his no-trade clause.

This does raise a fascinating question about the NBA: Is Henry Abbott on shrooms?

Then there’s the final, unthinkable option: It has been discussed that the new CBA may have an amnesty clause, that lets teams buy out players and send them on their way. Depending how it’s negotiated, this could include salary cap relief. And if so, would the Lakers use it on Bryant?

No, you dolt.

The reason to consider it seriously is that keeping Bryant, at this age and those prices, virtually guarantees the team’s decline — unless Bryant can manage the magic trick of playing the best ball of his life after turning 33.

It guarantees nothing of the sort. Henry Abbott hasn’t come anywhere near making this point, and then asserts it as if he has. It’s like he’s still holding onto those “topic sentence” days from junior high. Tell ’em what you’re gonna say, tell ’em, then tell ’em what you told them. He’s just leaving out the middle part.

So for future reference: Kobe Bryant is in decline, he will play worse every year as he gets older, the Lakers will decline as long as they have him on the team, and his contract will loom as a “bad contract”, one where a player’s production is grossly out of sync with his compensation. I’m sure Henry Abbott would never be willing to commit to a specific PER that Kobe would fall to, but I’ll go as far as to say this: whatever John Hollinger projects for Kobe’s PER in the 2011-12 season, Kobe will beat it.

Let’s check back in a year.

Typical Selfish Laker Guard Play

I mean, look at how wide open the center is on this play. It’s a shame the guard doesn’t have better court vision. Or perhaps he’s so stubborn that he’s willing to break the offense to take a triple-teamed shot in a playoff game. Does this guy really make his teammates better? Maybe he doesn’t trust them? Maybe he’s trying to prove some kind of point that he’s the man. No doubt his ego is involved here.