<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">LAS VEGAS -- Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's twilight time for another U.S. basketball team. Suspended between America's dreams and recurring nightmares, this team is living up to the usual great expectations amid the usual casual interest: small crowds, a thin press corps, ESPN announcers doing the games from the studio in Bristol, Conn. Unlike any team that ever competed in the NBA or NCAA, a U.S. team is judged solely by its bad outings. If it destroys all in its path, it goes into the pantheon with Bill Russell's 1956 team, Jerry West's and Oscar Robertson's in 1960, Bob Knight's in 1984 and the 1992 Dream Team, itself. Winning unimpressively, or even letting Mexico score 100 points as it did Monday, is a mild embarrassment. Losing a game, let alone a tournament, is a disaster. Losing year after year. . . as the U.S. has since 2000, failing even to make the finals in one Olympics and two World Championships. . . well, that's where this team comes in. Without fanfare, nine players have turned over from last summer's young U.S. roster to this grown-up one, led by veterans like Jason Kidd and. . . Kobe Bryant? Rising from the ashes of his latest misadventure in his inimitable style, Bryant is not only admired but accepted as a leader by peers who were so leery so recently. "I'll be honest with you," says U.S. director Jerry Colangelo, "when I first started this process, as I spoke with a lot of people I respect a great deal in the game, there were a lot of people who were down on him. . . "I knew what he was as a player. I knew what he was as a competitor and I knew if he was focused on wanting to be part of this, you couldn't ask for a better guy. "So he was one of the first people I spoke with. I didn't listen to peers on Kobe Bryant." The U.S. moves the ball better with Kidd, shoots it better with Michael Redd and plays with Bryant's urgency. If nothing counts short of the victory stand -- at Beijing, not here -- they look more cohesive than any U.S. team in years. "You can have a whole bunch of great players and put them on the floor together, that doesn't mean they're that hard to beat," said Canada Coach Leo Rautins after a 50-point loss to the U.S.</div> Source: LA Times
Maybe this experience will help him in the development of Bynum and Farmar as well as the rest of the Lakers this year. Since management is doing nothing, it's up to Kobe to make the Lakers better by building up the guys around him.
<div class="quote_poster">whatthef? Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Maybe this experience will help him in the development of Bynum and Farmar as well as the rest of the Lakers this year. Since management is doing nothing, it's up to Kobe to make the Lakers better by building up the guys around him.</div> Problem is by the time Bynum and Farmar fully develop, Kobe is declining. That is only my concern with the Kobe situation.
