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Reactions To Kobe Bryant’s Plan To Retire

November 29th, 2015 at 8:15pm CST by Will Joseph

Lakers coach Byron Scott told reporters, including Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News (Twitter link), that he was the first person Kobe Bryant told about the superstar’s plan to retire after this season. Scott said Bryant informed him on Saturday. Scott reiterated that Bryant plans to play the rest of the season, Mike Trudell of Lakers.com tweets.

Here’s more news, notes and reactions on Bryant’s announcement:

  • Scott also told reporters that he believes Bryant had at least one more year in him, Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com relays (on Twitter). Bryant, 37, is averaging 15.7 points per game on a career-worst 31.5% shooting percentage (heading into action Sunday).
  • Bryant notified the Lakers of his intentions to retire on Sunday, Bill Oram of the Orange County Register tweets. Bryant’s decision comes across as a strategic one because it turns attention away from the dissection of his statistics, and it comes before a home game and then a game at his native Philadelphia, Oram also notes on Twitter.
  • USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo told Marc Stein of ESPN.com that Bryant remains in contention for a spot with the USA Basketball team in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics (Twitter link). Bryant said earlier this month that he would be thrilled to play for USA Basketball. Bryant won gold medals the past two Olympics.
  • Stein also relays on Twitter that Bryant previously told him he has no plans to play a season overseas.
  • Bryant believes the next chapter of his life will revolve around telling stories in various media forms, he told Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press before making his announcement.
  • Commissioner Adam Silver issued a statement regarding Bryant’s decision. “With 17 NBA All-Star selections, an NBA MVP, five NBA championships with the Lakers, two Olympic gold medals and a relentless work ethic, Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest players in the history of our game,” Silver said. “Whether competing in the Finals or hoisting jump shots after midnight in an empty gym, Kobe has an unconditional love for the game. I join Kobe’s millions of fans around the world in congratulating him on an outstanding NBA career and thank him for so many thrilling memories.”
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Lakers Rumors: Rotation, Bryant, Nance Jr.

November 27th, 2015 at 8:27pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Lakers coach Byron Scott is pondering some rotation changes, though he may wait a few more games to see if things improve, according to Lakers.com’s Joey Ramirez. Scott wouldn’t say whether changes to playing time would affect the starters or bench, though he’s already tinkered with the second unit. Guards D’Angelo Russell and Jordan Clarkson, power forward Julius Randle and center Roy Hibbert have started every game, as has small forward Kobe Bryant when Scott hasn’t given him the night off. “I would love to play the same type of rotation and get productivity from both [units],” Scott said to the assembled media after practice. “But that’s not happening on a consistent basis. And then when it doesn’t, you have to make changes.” But Scott also preached patience, adding he wants “to give it a few more games” before he makes any moves.

In other news regarding the club:

  • Scott has no plans to bench Bryant, ESPN.com’s Baxter Holmes reports. “I would never, never, never do that,” Scott told the media after practice on Friday. “That’s not an option whatsoever. No, that’s not an option.” Bryant is shooting a career-low 31.1% and ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus Ratings place Bryant 379th in the NBA and 73rd for small forwards.
  • A willingness to chase rebounds and accept a limited offensive role has earned Larry Nance Jr. a rotation spot in his rookie season, NBA.com’s Scott Howard-Cooper writes. Nance has the maturity to carry out his role, which has endeared him to Scott, as he told Howard-Cooper. “He doesn’t go outside that box,” Scott said. “He sticks within himself. But he plays hard. That’s the thing I love about Larry.”
  • The team assigned rookie small forward Anthony Brown to the D-League, the D-Fenders announced via Twitter. Brown, a second-round pick out of Stanford, has played nine minutes over three games with the Lakers.
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Pacific Notes: Bryant, Leuer, Johnson

November 26th, 2015 at 8:52am CST by Eddie Scarito

Despite shooting guard Kobe Bryant‘s early season struggles, Lakers coach Byron Scott said that he doesn’t intend to cut down on the veteran’s minutes, Eric Pincus of The Los Angeles Times relays. “I have not considered that yet. It’s too early in the season,” said Scott, who also noted that he doesn’t believe Bryant is suffering from fatigue. “I think he’s averaging about 30 minutes a game. He’s still getting plenty of rest.  I don’t think so — maybe [he] is, but in my opinion watching it, I don’t think so. Obviously he’s struggling right now with his shot. In the last few days, he said he feels great.  I don’t think it’s a matter of him being tired, or his legs behind tired, I think it’s just a matter of his timing being a little off.”

Here’s more from the Pacific Division:

  • Jon Leuer, whom Phoenix acquired in a draft day trade this year from Memphis, has been a hidden gem off the Suns‘ bench this season, writes Ben York of NBA.com. Over his last three appearances, Leuer is averaging 10 points per game while shooting 63% from the floor and an amazing 60% from beyond the 3-point line.
  • Clippers coach Doc Rivers continues to experiment with his rotation in an effort to find the right mix, and swingman Wesley Johnson may be utilized as a starter more often going forward thanks to the energy he brings to the court, notes Ben Bolch of The Los Angeles Times. “I like Wes the most because of his size and his ability to shoot, but there’s nights where you play a great offensive player at that spot and we may go with a defensive guy. We’re going to just keep moving it around,” Rivers said. If Johnson is moved into a more prominent role with the team it may affect his decision regarding exercising his $1,227,286 player option for 2016/17, especially with the salary cap set to increase markedly, though that is merely my speculation.
  • Kings coach George Karl is still acclimating himself to the team’s new players, but Karl does believe that Sacramento’s current roster is far superior to last season’s squad as far as talent goes, Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee writes.
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Pacific Notes: Kobe, Lieberman, Walton, Green

November 25th, 2015 at 9:29am CST by Chuck Myron

The Warriors keep on rolling, but the same can’t be said for Kobe Bryant, whose game has fallen off sharply in what figures to be his final season. Bryant matched the worst shooting performance of his career, going 1 for 14 Tuesday as the Lakers fell to the Warriors, 111-77, sending Golden State to the first 16-0 mark in NBA history. Bryant is shooting just 31.1% this season, a career low, but he leads the Lakers in field goal attempts per game.

“I’m not really worried about it, honestly,” Bryant said, according to Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com (Twitter link). “My shooting will be better. I could’ve scored 80 tonight. It wouldn’t have made a [expletive] difference. We just have bigger problems. I could be out there averaging 35 points a game. We’d be what, 3-11? We’ve got to figure out how to play systematically in a position that’s going to keep us in ballgames.”

The Lakers are 2-12, but coach Byron Scott said he still has “so much confidence” in Bryant, his former teammate, who remains the NBA’s highest-paid player at $25MM this season, as Bill Oram of the Orange County Register relays. See more from the Pacific Division:

  • An agent with ties to the Kings predicts chaos if the team were to make Nancy Lieberman the interim coach in the event of a George Karl firing, reports Chris Mannix of SI.com, who writes in his Open Floor column. Mannix finds it difficult to envision Lieberman getting the nod, despite a report that owner Vivek Ranadive would favor such a move if he dismisses Karl.
  • Warriors interim coach Luke Walton reached out to Phil Jackson before the 2014/15 season to ask whether he should reach out to Steve Kerr, and Jackson, who’d wanted to hire Kerr for the Knicks, told Walton to do so, notes Marcia C. Smith of the Orange County Register. Kerr wound up hiring Walton as an assistant coach, setting in motion the events that would put Walton in charge of the team’s historic run.
  • Draymond Green is one of the six or seven most valuable players in the NBA, as Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group observed Tuesday before Golden State’s game. Green re-signed with the Warriors for $82MM over five years this summer, more than $14MM less than his five-year max.
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Western Rumors: Bryant, Rockets, Nuggets

November 23rd, 2015 at 10:40pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Kobe Bryant is shooting a career-low 33.1% from the field but Lakers coach Byron Scott wants him to stay aggressive offensively, according to Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com. Bryant’s desire to score off isolation plays may be hindering the team’s ball movement but Scott doesn’t plan on telling the aging small forward to stop looking for his shot, Holmes continues. “He’s had 20 years of experience in the league,” Scott told the team’s beat reporters. “We might not have six players that have 20 years in this league combined. He has that privilege, basically. From a coaching standpoint, I want Kobe to be Kobe. Other guys haven’t earned that right yet.”

In other news around the Western Conference:

  • Former first-round pick Jordan Hamilton, who finished last season with the Clippers, has left the Russian club Krasny Oktyabr, aka Volgograd, tweets international journalist David Pick. JaJuan Johnson, another former NBA first-rounder who hasn’t played in the league since 2012, also left the team, Pick adds.
  • The struggling Rockets have slowed down offensively and interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff wants to increase the tempo, Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle reports. Houston was second in pace last season but has slipped to eighth this season. Some of that is due to defensive breakdowns but Bickerstaff also wants to utilize his team’s quickness to a greater extent, especially in the first half, Feigen adds. “That’s one of the things we’re focused on now,” Bickerstaff told the Houston media. “We want to be speedy. We want teams that come in here in the first five minutes of the game … to be overwhelmed by our speed. We have the athletes. We have the skilled players who can get up and down and do those things.”
  • Nuggets first-year coach Michael Malone is generally pleased with his team through the first 14 games, as he relayed to Christopher Dempsey of the Denver Post on Monday afternoon. “We lost eight games, but, c’mon, two of those to Golden State,” Malone said. “We lost to OKC when they were healthy. Phoenix twice, [which] is a good basketball team; at San Antonio. We’ve had some tough games, and hopefully as long as we keep on staying together, learning from the losses and growing, we’re going to be OK.”
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Pacific Notes: Rivers, Butler, Russell, Randle

November 23rd, 2015 at 10:59am CST by Chuck Myron

Doc Rivers said the slow start for the Clippers is “on me” and insisted that the team doesn’t have chemistry problems in spite of heated conversation in the locker room after Sunday’s loss, which dropped the team to 6-7, notes Jovan Buha of Fox Sports (All Twitter links). Rivers’ coaching took some criticism from Hoops Rumors readers in Sunday’s Community Shootaround, as did the roster he assembled as the team’s president of basketball operations. Still, it’s early, and the Clippers have had the poor luck of running into the still-unbeaten Warriors twice so far this season. See more from around the Pacific Division:

  • Caron Butler credits the team meeting the Kings had amid the tumult and rumors after they started 1-7 for sparking the club to a 4-2 record since, reports Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times. “Behind closed doors we addressed some things and we came together. Because of that, we’re playing great basketball right now,” Butler said. “It’s about camaraderie; when things go bad, you figure it out. Whatever it is, you figure it out and you move forward, and that’s what we did.”
  • Butler has been a free agent four times, but he hasn’t returned to the Lakers since the team traded him away in 2005. Still, he considers Kobe Bryant a “brother for life” and remains in contact with his long-ago Lakers teammate, as he details to Pincus for the same piece. “Being up under the wing of Kobe Bryant and the relationship that we built over that time, I learned a lot about the game of basketball,” Butler said. “I took the things that I learned from him, and that’s why I had the success that I had in my career.”
  • Lakers coach Byron Scott is urging patience with top-10 picks D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle, pointing to the end of next season, notes Janis Carr of the Orange County Register. The Lakers are under pressure to win in the near future, as Jeanie Buss is holding brother Jim Buss to three-year timeline for a return to contention. “With D’Angelo, it might be sometime toward the end of next season where he says, ‘Man, I’m starting to get it.’ Same thing with Julius. We’re going to just be patient and keep working them the way we’ve been working them and try to bring them along,” Scott said.
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Pacific Notes: Green, Kobe, Scott, Malone

November 20th, 2015 at 2:45pm CST by Chuck Myron

There was no way of knowing Draymond Green would develop into a player making in excess of $16MM a year on his new five-year, $82MM deal, Warriors GM Bob Myers remarked recently, and Green admits he didn’t know how valuable he would become, either, observes Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com. Green was the 35th overall pick in 2012 and made the minimum salary last season.

“Yeah, I was thinking, like, maybe $7, $8MM,” Green said, according to Strauss. “Who saw this coming?”

The free agent market is never quite predictable, but the Warriors seem to have a handle on it even amid the rapid cost escalation for Green, as I examined earlier this week. See more from the Pacific Division:

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And-Ones: Simmons, Cuban, McHale

November 19th, 2015 at 10:21pm CST by Eddie Scarito

A major reason Kevin McHale was fired by the Rockets on Wednesday was the front office’s belief that he had lost the locker room, Chris Mannix of SI.com relays in response to a reader’s mailbag question. Mannix also notes that McHale’s strength as a coach is not in devising strategies or calling plays, but rather in his ability as a motivator. Houston swingman Corey Brewer has gone on record defending McHale, and emphasized that his former coach did not lose the team, and instead placed the blame for the Rockets’ slow start on the players.

Here’s more from around the league:

  • Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports, with an assist from three NBA scouts, ran down the top 10 hoops prospects for the 2015/16 season, including Ben Simmons (LSU), Skal Labissiere (Kentucky), and Brandon Ingram (Duke). The top of next year’s draft could be filled with more international players than usual, Spears notes. “The top three picks might not be from the United States next year,” an NBA scout told Spears. “Blame AAU basketball in America for that.”
  • Simmons had the opportunity to play overseas this season rather than in college, but the talented forward wanted to get a head start on acclimating to the U.S. as well as the style of basketball played here, Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News writes. “I felt like it helped me develop my game more,” Simmons says. “I was able to get the chance to experience different teams, different playing styles. For me it was just more going to high school and competing against the best players every day. It helped me mature, living by myself in Orlando while my parents were back home. A lot of different things come into it: new team, new coaches, different style, system, and living in a different country.”
  • Mavs team owner Mark Cuban, who isn’t one to mince words, acknowledged that last season’s trade for Rajon Rondo was a risk that didn’t work out as planned for the team, Ben Rohrbach of WEI 93.7 FM relays. “[Expletive] happens, right? There are a lot of risks I’ve taken that have worked out just fine. They’re not all going to work,” Cuban said.
  • Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant, speaking about his potential retirement during a radio appearance on SiriusXM, said, “If something changes I’ll come back and play next season. If something doesn’t change this is it for me,” Frank Isola of the New York Daily News relays (Twitter link).
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Pacific Notes: Brown, Goodwin, Bryant

November 19th, 2015 at 7:40pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Suns shooting guard Archie Goodwin has seen his role in the team’s rotation expand this season, something GM Ryan McDonough credits to Goodwin strengthening himself over the offseason, Matt Petersen of NBA.com writes. During an appearance on the “Burns & Gambo Show,” McDonough said of Goodwin, “I think it’s easy to forget that he’s still one of the younger players in the league. He just recently turned 21 years old. He’s gotten stronger. That allows him to fight through screens, defensively. Offensively, as you guys know he’s got a quick first step and long strides, but when you can’t absorb the contact as well going to the basket, it’s hard to finish in this league, especially through contact.”

Here’s more from the Pacific Division:

  • Lakers coach Byron Scott said that he has high expectations for rookie swingman Anthony Brown, and he hopes the young player can follow the path of Jordan Clarkson, who had a breakout 2014/15 campaign for the team, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders relays (Twitter links). Brown was assigned to the team’s D-League affiliate specifically to work on creating his own shot off the dribble, and the team is interested in seeing if he can learn to play guard in addition to his natural small forward position, Pincus adds.
  • The Clippers intend to leave Branden Dawson and C.J. Wilcox in the D-League through the end of November, Rowan Kavner of NBA.com notes. Dawson is thankful that Wilcox is alongside him because of his previous D-League experience, Kavner adds. “It’s definitely helpful for him to be going through this process with me,” Dawson said. “He was there last year, so having someone to go through this experience with is definitely helpful. He’s told me all about it, about what to expect and what to prepare for.”
  • Kobe Bryant acknowledged that his career is likely to end without him winning another NBA title, but the veteran understands he has a duty to help the Lakers develop their younger talent, Mark Medina of The Los Angeles Daily News writes. “Of course I want love to win another championship. But my responsibility now is to think outside of what I want,” Bryant said. “My responsibility is to these young players.”
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Pacific Rumors: Kings, Bryant, Bogut

November 16th, 2015 at 9:46pm CST by Dana Gauruder

DeMarcus Cousins doesn’t trust coach George Karl, and they simply don’t get along, writes TNT’s David Aldridge in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com. The relationship is beyond repair, Aldridge believes, and while he thinks Cousins is the best center in the game, the Kings should trade him anyway, he posits, offering a suggestion for a deal he thinks would help Sacramento and send a message that GM Vlade Divac and Karl will be around for the long term. The criticism of Karl’s energy level is unfair, and the Kings should empower one of the best coaches ever, Aldridge opines.

In other news around the Pacific Division:

  • Numerous league executives doubt that Kobe Bryant will last the season, Sam Amico of SamAmicoBasketball.com reports. One unnamed GM told Amico that Bryant’s body can no longer hold up to the rigors of an 82-game NBA season. “I hope I’m wrong, because who doesn’t admire an old warrior — but he has nowhere to go but down at this stage of his playing career,” the GM said. “The body doesn’t want to be argued with, and it’s telling him it’s time to go.” Bryant played 36 minutes on Sunday, an indication that Lakers have two priorities regarding their aging superstar: allowing him to do what he wants, and winning during a supposed rebuilding season, Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com argues. By leaving Bryant on the court that long, coach Byron Scott showed that he will let Bryant play as much as he wants when he’s in uniform, Holmes continues. Bryant’s power over the Lakers organization is greater than ever and Scott, being one of his biggest supporters, will let him dictate the terms of his farewell tour, Holmes adds.
  • Andrew Bogut was surprised when interim Warriors coach Luke Walton told the media he would return to the starting lineup as soon as Tuesday, Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group reports. The undefeated Warriors have utilized Festus Ezeli as the starting center while Bogut recovered from a concussion and Bogut has no problem with keeping things status quo, Leung continues. “Like I’ve said from the start, I’ve been starting my whole career, but I understand I missed [six] games there, and we won all of them,” Bogut told Leung. “Maybe the starters are used to having Festus there the first six, seven minutes and get their rhythm that way.”
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