Welcome Back Kobe Bryant!

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">No one else can do that," Odom said.

Andrei Kirilenko had it the worst in the third, when Bryant scored 30 points on a perfect 9-for-9 shooting, when George Gervin's NBA record of 33 in the third could've been crushed had Jackson been willing to let Kobe play the final 36 seconds of the quarter. Pity poor Kirilenko, who as Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said "is our best defensive player." What's more, Kirilenko was an NBA all-defensive first-team selection a season ago and the long arms that held Bryant without a basket in the fourth quarter of a Utah victory over the Lakers last week in Salt Lake City.

When that game was over, Kirilenko began to fear this trip to Los Angeles, supposing that Kobe "will take it personally." Kobe took it so personally that he started inventing shots on Kirilenko.

It was one thing to dribble past him and dunk over the rest of the Jazz front line, and to keep shooting three-pointers over those endless 6-foot-9 Russian's arms. ("He must have shot the ball 15 to 18 feet in the air just to get it over them," Sloan marveled.)

Finally, Kirilenko had him stopped in the third quarter. He had spared himself some measure of dignity by clogging the baseline on a Bryant move. No, Bryant wouldn't throw this garbage to the rim playing so perfectly, wouldn't mire his Picasso with this kind of finger painting move. Only he did.

"You know," Bryant would say with a sly smile later, "I knew I was feeling it when I hit a one-leg runner ? fading away."

That's what he did, a one-legged pirouette with him thrusting his body backward on the baseline. Bryant makes a lot of amazing shots, but this transcended reason. "It's just that I've never taken that shot before ? outside of growing up as a kid playing in the backyard," Kobe said.

Eventually, Kirilenko would give way to Gordan Gircek and Deron Williams on Bryant in the third quarter, and resistance would be futile. Asked the last time that he felt so invincible, so perfect, on the floor, Bryant shrugged and said, "In a video game ? playing PlayStation."

At the end of the night, the torched Kirilenko marched out of the visiting dressing room without a word and with his eyes straight ahead. Sloan was standing there, talking, grumbling, "If I'm guarding him, I would've gone out with six fouls," the coach said. "For crying out loud, I don't think it shows a lot of toughness to let him shoot over you."

As Bryant has gotten his knee back under him, several NBA scouts have been impressed with the way that he's trusted his teammates. It began to manifest itself late in the Lakers' playoff push last season, when Bryant's shots and scoring slowed and the victories started to stack up with team balance.

"Last year, he was so ball hungry in the triangle, he would literally chase it down on offense," one Eastern Conference scout said. "It was Kobe vs. everyone. This year, he's much more accepting of his teammates, of his role in the triangle."

Which is what has impressed the coaching staff and teammates: Kobe's willingness to accept the fact that the rest of the team has closed the learning curve on the triangle offense. This is a three-year plan with Jackson, a belief that the Lakers could be championship contenders by next season. Suddenly, it isn't so preposterous.

So much of that depends on the development of 7-footer teeny bopper Andrew Bynum, who has rapidly developed into a force for the Lakers. In an hour film session the other day, Jackson showed the Lakers how delinquent they were feeding Bynum the ball. Get it to him, he implored. As much as it's about Kobe with the Lakers, it's about surrounding him with the proper parts like Jackson did with Jordan in Chicago. Once Jordan learned to trust his teammates, Isiah Thomas of the old Pistons said, it was over for everyone.

Here and now, Kobe had to wait for the kids to grow up, had to wait for these strangers to the triangle to learn all of its complexities. In the end, this would be one of those nights that remind them of all the rewards that could await someday, the chance to be a championship contender with the best player in the sport on the Lakers? side.

"We were within the offense tonight," Luke Walton said. "We were definitely all looking for Kobe because he was so hot, but the thing about him is that he knows the game so well, knows the triangle so well, that he knows every way to get himself open out of it."

Walton would laugh that he remembered the way Bryant would see the Lakers down 10 points early last season and just "grab the ball and try to go one on four" because there was no way else for them to win a basketball game.

There won't be a lot of these 52-point nights out of Kobe because he doesn't need to do this anymore. Still, it's that old No. 23 in the new 24 that knows there are still going to be these times when his talent can't be held back, when his genius demands that he let the world know the greatest player in basketball still plays for the Lakers and still lurks in the championship shadows. </div>

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<div class="quote_poster">illmatic Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Good article.

Jerry Sloan and Barkeley are right, you gotta foul someone, or foul 'em hard to hurt them mentally when they get hot like Kobe can.</div>

In fairness to Kirilenko, his team got into foul trouble very early in the 3rd quarter, so fouling Kobe would just put him at the charity stripe, and usually that's an automatic 2 points, so it wouldn't accomplish much. I'm really surprised the Jazz didn't try to double team Kobe after he made his initial 5 in a row and got the "I'm going to score everytime and you can't do **** about it" look on his face.

 

<div class="quote_poster">Trench Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">The best thing out of all of this was the hi-fives from Jackson. Good stuff. What a boost of confidence.</div>

The best was watching Turiaf's reaction from the bench everytime Kobe scored. He could dominate Dancing with the Stars with those mooves and energy.