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Kobe Bryant’s Higher Standards Are Self Imposed

By Michael Dunlap

Nov 3, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant (24) reacts during 120-109 loss against the Denver Nuggets at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 3, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant (24) reacts during 120-109 loss against the Denver Nuggets at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports /
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Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers organization are giants in the NBA community, for their remarkable successes that pepper Kobe’s 20-year Laker run (16 playoff appearances, seven NBA Finals, five NBA Championships) and the organization’s 68-year history (60 playoff appearances, 31 NBA Finals, 16 NBA Championships). With such a vast period of excellence, expectations are much higher than an organization that hasn’t had that kind of success. Somehow, Kobe doesn’t seem to understand that.

Expectations heading into the 2015-16 season ranged from poor (Ananth Pandian of CBSSports.com projects 29 wins) to horrid (ESPN.com predicted 27 wins) to dumpster fire (Bleacher Report gave them 25 wins). The Lakers are expected to be in or near the cellar all season long, by every major outlet.

As far as Kobe’s individual expectations, nobody in their right mind thinks he’s going to be a 30-point scorer again (at least not without taking 40 shots). Any lofty expectations on Bryant at this point are either self-imposed or are coming from his legion of fans who blindly support him, spitting in the face of logic, numbers, the eye test and anything else that makes sense. Exhibit A:

In an interview with Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports, Bryant quipped:

"“I get held to much higher standards than most of my peers. If I have a bad shooting night, it’s, ‘He’s in the grave. He’s in the coffin.’ Look around the league, and other players have bad shooting nights – and it’s just a bad shooting night.But the expectations that they have for me, they’re actually something that I appreciate. Achilles injury. Fractured knee. Torn shoulder. Twentieth year in the league. Thirty-seven years old. All that, and the expectations are that I average 30 points.But I appreciate those standards, because it’s something that still pushes me, still drives me.”"

Where did those standards come from? Why do people come down harder on Kobe than they do on James Harden or Kevin Durant when they have a terrible stretch of games? It certainly couldn’t have to do with a certain maniacal need to remind all of us of his success whenever challenged, right?

kobe-bryant-counts-rings-for-his-hater-o
kobe-bryant-counts-rings-for-his-hater-o /

Those of us who are on the wrong side of 30 understand. Getting old sucks. Nobody wants to hear about how their best days are behind them and how they’re just grasping at straws to recapture a former, more happy time.

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Deep down, Kobe understands this. The way he’s changed his game shows us that he’s self-aware enough to know he can’t do the same kinds of things he used to. The days of Kobe rising up for a thunderous dunk in traffic are over. An 81-point effort? That’s gonna take at least four games.

With Kobe’s competitive nature and fire, you know that he realizes his last game shooting over 50 percent on 20 shots or more came in April of 2013. You know he realizes that he’s shot better than 50 percent just five times in his last 46 games.

As most older players do, Kobe has pushed himself further and further away from the basket. He’s not embracing the 3-point movement, he’s embracing his limitations. In 2014-15, he set a career-high with an average shooting distance of 15.7 feet. Through the first five games of 2015-16, he’s at 18.9.

Bryant is chucking at a rate that’s legendary — even for the all-time miss leader — he’s taking 48.7 percent of this shots from outside the 3-point line (making 21.1 percent). That comes out to 9.6 attempts per-36 minutes, which is Mirza Teletovic territory.

Part of the higher expectations are because of human nature and the nostalgia factor. We don’t want to see this Kobe. We didn’t want to see an old Michael Jordan, either. We want to remember our superstars as they were when at or near their peak. With every airball, every clumsy misstep and every Kobe quote that screams lunacy, we lose a part of peak Kobe in our minds.

Maybe that’s why you’re held to a greater standard, Kobe — you once were great, you’re literally the third-worst shooter in the league now — and we don’t want to let the latter cloud our memory of the former.

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