LA Daily News HONOLULU - There is much work to be done and not much time to do it, with opening night less than three weeks away and the Lakers looking every bit Wednesday night like the team that finished 34-48 a season ago. They suffered a 112-81 exhibition loss to the Golden State Warriors that would have been forgettable had it not seemed so familiar to those who watched the Lakers lose 19 of their final 21 games last season. The one bright spot? The game wasn't televised back to the Mainland. The one thought to consider? The Lakers are done with training camp and the triangle offense is far from clicking. The Lakers staggered and sputtered Wednesday, turning over the ball 27 times and falling behind by 18 points at halftime. With Kobe Bryant unable to bail them out, the Lakers totaled all of 40 points in the first two quarters. "When it's not moving fluid, when you look at on the floor, it looks like nobody knows the system," guard Aaron McKie said. "That's just a matter of playing with each other a little bit more and getting to know each other a little bit better." They trailed by 35 with a minute left and managed one field goal in the fourth quarter. The Lakers split their two exhibition games with the Warriors but looked every bit like a team that had worked on the triangle for 12 practices. "What do we take out of it?" coach Phil Jackson said, repeating a reporter's question. "We're going to have a lot of trouble in back-to-back games. "That's all I can imagine. I really don't know. It's so difficult to imagine what this will even look like when you're a month into the season. This is so far away that it doesn't even make any sense." It was a game in which Bryant had to contain his frustration in the third quarter, pointing to the spots where his teammates were supposed to be, even while they couldn't feed him the ball in the post. "I could have broke out of the system and just went nuts but it doesn't make sense to do that," Bryant said, "because it doesn't improve us as a ball club. Just stay patient. It will come." Source
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">"I could have broke out of the system and just went nuts but it doesn't make sense to do that," Bryant said, "because it doesn't improve us as a ball club. Just stay patient. It will come." </div> I for one would have loved to see Kobe explode. However, this would have probably killed and buried the relationship with Phil.
Plus, wouldn't the media love that to happen? That would just give them something more to write about--Kobe; the reason why they lost to the Warriors...
