Image courtesy of Neil Kremer via Flickr

When Mike Brown first occupied the movie director’s throne left by Phil Jackson in Los Angeles in the summer of 2011, a bevy of legitimate and nonsensical worries began to crop up about the former Cavaliers coach and Spurs assistant. Some thought he wouldn’t be ready for the magnifying glass (and mischievous child trying to start a fire known as the press accompanying it) that goes with working not only in the nation’s second-biggest market but also with the NBA’s most storied franchise. Others worried that the Lakers’ de facto leader and seeming misanthrope Kobe Bryant would not take too kindly to taking orders from anyone other than the best coach of all-time, who he still battled with on a constant basis. The silliest problem followers of the purple and gold had with the hire stemmed from the fumbling, kid-gloves approach that Brown and he rest of the Cavaliers organization took to handling superstardom in Cleveland, where LeBron James and his camp appeared to run roughshod over anyone in the Midwest who stood between them and what they wanted, which were mostly warmer French fries apparently. That fear looked to be completely lacking in context, altogether unaware of the wildly different situations in LA and The Forest City. The only thing all onlookers were sure of the Brown signing was that it meant more prominent roles in the team’s offense for the Lakers’ bigs, a move ostensibly quite obvious given Bryant’s age, Brown’s conservative playcalling and the immense talents, both literally and figuratively, present in the Lake Show’s interior. This all seemed painfully clear to everyone, everyone except Bryant who is leading the NBA in shots attempted per game and might just be tanking one of this current Lakers teams’ last chance at a ring.

Kobe Bryant’s name remains synonymous with a great deal of things in both casual basketball fan and junkie circles, some of which are unrepeatable here. Two of those labels, though, come into play here, dependent on which color of glasses one looks at the output this year by this generation’s most divisive player. The first tag that comes to mind is that of “warrior”, as Bryant once again plays through another miserable and noticeable injury, on his shooting hand no less. One who see the way Bryant’s been playing this year could easily walk away from watching a game like last night’s against the Suns, an old foe of Bryant’s Lakers on its last legs that the Mamba torched for 48 points (this young season’s leading point total as of yet), and say, “Man, that dude just isn’t going to be beat.” And said observer would have a point: how is this hobbled, rapidly aging superstar able to continue this ridiculous production season-after-season, deep-playoff-run after deep-playoff-run? Are they putting something in these damn Cortisone shots? Can self-contained fury really function this long as motivation for a star that’s basically accomplished everything that any NBA player could ever hope to in his career? How in Jeebus’ name does this fella keep doing this?

But if one falls on that other divide of Mr. Bryant, he or she’s likely to ask a wholly dissimilar question: why in the hell does he keep doing this? That brings the avid follower back around to that other relevant classification of Kobe: “chucker”. Or “gunner” or “ballhog” or just plain “selfish player”. Whatever one thinks of the Kobester’s capability of hitting game-winning shots or “putting a team on his back” (a very old back, by the way), most can agree that an injured 33-year-old taking more than a fourth of a team’s shots (more than 3/8ths in last night’s dominance over the Suns) isn’t likely to be conducive to any extended periods of winning, including in an upcoming postseason. The fact that Bryant leads the league in shots per game on a team featuring two of the game’s best scoring big men (one of whom is a 24-year-old stud who represents the team’s future but still continues to put up the best numbers of his career right now) on a team with one of the league’s slower paces only serves as a glaring symbol of the offensive poison that Bryant’s shooting pours along with the healing elixir he provides with every one of his shots. “Hero shots” are called such for a reason, and that reason is not that the shooter’s always valiant and audacious, simply that he thinks that he is.

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Admittedly, later into his career, Bryant’s become a more efficient scorer in terms of where he gets the ball on the floor, favoring operating out of the post both this year (using about 16% of his possessions of post-up opportunities, per Synergy Sports) and in the latter years of running Jackson’s Triangle Offense. But even these flirtations with smart shooting come hand-in-hand with a nod to Kobe’s more ridiculous tendencies, such as using up 32% of his possessions on isolation plays, something to be expected in Brown’s new, evolving offense but a giant number nonetheless. Why is a player who plays with Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum using his possessions like he’s Carmelo Anthony in the hollowed-out corpse of a D’Antoni offense in New York?

The more ardent Kobe apologists will likely rest on the argument that most do when debating the wisdom of Bryant’s on-court decision-making: what would Mike have done? Anyone taking a close look at the last years of Jordan’s run with the Bulls and Bryant’s numbers so far this year will see a favorable comparison, as Jordan also put up an insane amount of shots given his age (averaging 23 a year in his last three runs with the Bulls, coincidentally the same as Kobe this year) and the amount of wear-and-tear on his body while posting similar all-around numbers and PERs. However, ignoring Jordan’s propensity for being a more focused defensive presence than Bryant (which should almost never be ignored in comparisons of the two), one must remember that while Jordan’s late 90’s Bulls were flushed with offensive talent, he and Pippen represented the offense’s only real initiators on-the-ball(though Toni Kukoc obviously served that role off the bench), with mike being the team’s best post player in his final days in Chicago. While Kobe’s a more than dangerous weapon out of the post, he has the ridiculous luxury that Jordan didn’t of having two soft-handed, quick-footed, endlessly intelligent giants camped out in the paint for his team while still gunning at every availability. Were Mike in his shoes (which he wouldn’t be, because Jordans will always look better than Kobe’s ankle-breakers), I doubt he’d have had the same hesitance to throw the rock inside.

Like most young men who were 16 at one point and love basketball, there was most certainly a time when Kobe Bryant was my favorite basketball player, a renegade superhero akin to Batman firing up the kind of shots most wouldn’t dare take in a game of HORSE in actual NBA games and draining them in so many frustrated, sighing faces. He still defines NBA masculinity, toughness and stubbornness and genius all in one kind-of-an-***hole vessel; he’s still Kobe goddamn Bryant. But he only remains so by virtue of his game, by virtue of his willingness to do whatever it takes to win at all times, and right now, as he heaves up contested jumper after contested jumper, even as he makes more of them than he has in a few years, he kills that Kobe Bryant, the one whose “hero shots” really gave the term new meaning. Of course, maybe that’s the point: maybe the fact that he’d never mind attention like this is exactly what makes him Kobe goddamn Bryant, and if so, bless him for it. Just don’t expect any new banners in Staples Center anytime soon.