Albert Camus once wrote, “There is scarcely any passion without struggle." Anyone who has watched Kobe Bryant play basketball might beg to differ.
A success at every level, Bryant has had little experience with struggling on the court, but he has always had passion to spare. This season he is experiencing something new: losing despite giving his best effort.
Any basketball career that includes time in the NBA could be considered charmed, but Bryant’s has stood out as blessed. The Charles Barkleys of the world struggled their entire careers to get an NBA championship ring, but Bryant secured one in his fourth season.
While others struggled with learning to exploit NBA defenses and finding a system that suited them, Bryant scored 30,000 points at a younger age than anyone else.
Bryant’s on-court success was immediate. As a 15-year-old freshman on the varsity basketball team at Lower Merion High School in suburban Philadelphia, he got an early look at a winning team, with the Aces finishing the year at 20-5 (.800 winning percentage).
Over his four years at the school, the team’s combined record was 93-19 (.830) and included a state championship in Bryant’s senior season. He scored more points in high school than Wilt Chamberlain, and he took the R&B star Brandy to prom.
The success followed him to the NBA where, as an 18-year-old rookie, he played limited minutes for a team that went 56-26 (.683). From his arrival until this season, the Lakers’ regular-season record was 833-431 (.659) and the team won five championships, a run that few other than Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics could top. The one glaring exception was 2004-05 when a pouting Bryant, surrounded by a subpar supporting cast, finished 34-48 (.415) and missed the playoffs.
Currently the Lakers are in line to repeat that feat, but they do not have a similar excuse to 2004-05 when the starting lineup included Chris Mihm and Chucky Atkins. Instead, with the addition of Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, he is on a team that has a star at every position. But by losing to Oklahoma City on Friday, the Lakers fell to 15-21 (.417), putting them five games behind the Portland Trail Blazers, who currently hold the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, and 13 games behind the No. 1 Thunder.
So far the team’s ownership has not panicked.
“This team is built to win," Jim Buss, the team’s executive vice president and the owner’s son, said on a radio show last week. “It’s a very, very solid team. In my mind, we would not consider a temporary fix or blow it up. Why blow up something we have a future with?"
While the notion that the team has a bright future is questionable considering the age and health of Bryant and Nash, there is no reason for the team to overreact to its record.
This season’s Lakers are outperforming last season’s squad that went 41-25 in terms of points per 100 possessions (108.3 vs. 106.0) despite having little chance to jell. Bryant is the only player to start all 36 games, and what was projected as the starting lineup at the start of the season has played together for 117 minutes (fewer than three games), mostly because of injuries. Defensively they have underperformed, but defense requires a continuity Los Angeles has not had.
Through it all, Bryant has shown more maturity, at least on the court, than he did in his only other losing season. He is leading the league in scoring at 30 points a game and has his highest player efficiency rating since 2006-07. If he were to be joined in reasonable production by even three of the players who were projected to start, the season would probably turn around.
Should that fail to happen, Bryant would experience his second losing season, but this time with a stronger supporting cast. Seeing how he reacts would probably reveal more about his character than any of the accomplishments he has come to be known for.
