Kobe: With or Without You?

I'm going, Without.

Last night Kobe and his Lakers fall 83-95 to the 15-20, 12th place Denver Nuggets! Ouch!!

Tonight Bahb's boy Kobe goes down with an ankle injury.

Now I hate to see anybody get hurt, but with Kobe out of the Laker lineup LaMar Odom led the Lakers to a win over the 21-12 Cleveland Cavaliers.

No big dea! They play in the east, right?

Well, the Cavs are 7-4 against the west. They lost to the 1st place Suns, 2nd place Spurs, the Rockets, and the Clippers. And now the Kobe-less Lakers.

The Lakers looked loose, and worked well together under Odom's leadership. He finished with 28 pts, 8 boards, and 7 assts. Butler finished with 21 points, Mihm 13, and Atkins 11, then you had 5 players add 27 between them.

Now let's talk season averages with Kobe.

Odom 14.2 points per game.
Mihm 10.9 ppg
Atkins 11.4 ppg, so no difference there
the other 5= 23.2 ppg

Now of course this is only one game, and everybody stepped up in Kobes' absence.

But, this is why I say I don't want Kobe.

Sure he averages 28.2 ppg, but when exactly does he get the rest of his team involved? And if they are involved in such a small role, how long does it take to develop them into good players?

The other key factor was the defense tonight. Good team effort.

Kobe adds what to the defense?

He's up to 1.1 block per game
down to 1.4 steals pg, each year gets worse, his career avg. 1.5- '02=2.2 '03=1.7, see a trend?
turnovers are up 2 pg, to 4.6 pg this season
and up 1 rebound pg, to 6.5

Sorry, to say I don't think Kobe was worth the money.

He'll put up some great numbers no matter where he plays, but he's no leader.

He makes the players around him worse, not better.

At least Shaq brings that to the table.