On Dec. 16, we ran a column here under the headline: “Kobe is about to bust out.”
Beginning with the game that night until now, Kobe has busted into the best shooting zone of his career.
Over the past 12 games, Kobe Bryant has shot 53.1 percent from the field, scoring 31.6 points per game.
He hasn’t been getting to the rim any more than usual. He has just been shooting the ball better, backing up a simplistic yet bold statement he made after beating Boston on Christmas: “I’m a better shooter now than I was in the (NBA) Finals. I’m a better jump shooter than I was then.”
The gist of the aforementioned column on Dec. 16 was that Bryant had fine-tuned his shooting form to deliver more arc, and the higher trajectory was going to send his shooting percentage soaring.
Bryant hasn’t been getting as many whistles for opponents fouling him on his jumper as he would like, yet it has hardly mattered. He hit Boston with a 13-for-23 shooting effort to score 27 points even though he didn’t get to the foul line a single time.
The high point was his 14-for-22 shooting – with 6 of 7 from 3-point range – against New Orleans on Tuesday night. The Lakers led that game, 99-94, when Bryant was given a breather, and when he returned he was smothered by double teams behind the 3-point line as soon as he touched the ball. The Lakers lost.
Indiana coach Jim O’Brien tried the opposite approach Friday night, double-teaming Bryant high and hard from the start – and it seemed a lock that Bryant would at least equal his career high of 15 assists. He had 13 assists entering the fourth quarter.
Then O’Brien tried to rattle Bryant by switching to more single coverage – even on the Lakers’ final possession and after Bryant had gotten Indiana’s best defender, Danny Granger, to foul out.
Bryant made foiling that strategy look pretty easy. With the score tied at 119-119, he got the ball and backed in from the top of the key to offer an obvious scoring threat so he could gauge early whether the double team would come. He also backed in just to get closer for the simple jump shot he took over Indiana’s Jarrett Jack, who is 6-foot-3 to Bryant’s 6-6.
Twice before in the final minutes Bryant simply squared up and made jumpers over Jack. The same was true this time, as Bryant’s 18-footer dropped with three seconds left for the winning basket.
“If they don’t come (with a double team),” Bryant said, “I can turn and shoot over the top.”
Bryant now sits at 48.4 percent field-goal shooting on the season, a meteoric rise since he shot just 39 percent in the six games leading into the Dec. 16 game against New York. Lakers coach Phil Jackson had called Bryant’s unsteady production back then “bothersome” at one point and wondered about fatigue in spite of Bryant’s insistence that he felt great. Bryant did play all 82 regular-season games last season, followed by 21 playoff games – a combined total of 103 that stands as a career high. Then he added the full Olympic experience for Team USA’s gold-medal run over the summer on top of that.
But he said Wednesday night that he hasn’t even put it into “third gear” yet this season, and there’s a lot to be said for him conserving energy and maintaining health by killing with non-contact jumpers now, which will also open up sure-thing driving lanes later in the season.
Bryant has technically shot slightly better over one previous 12-game span, though if he had made just one more of the shots he took in this stretch Bryant would’ve eclipsed his 53.4 percentage stretch in November 2001. Even so, it’s not a matter for debate which stretch has been more impressive: Bryant took 52 more shots this time around for a far greater degree of difficulty.
That 2001-02 season – the third consecutive Lakers championship season – was the best shooting season of Bryant’s career: 46.9 percent. But that’s going to be left in the dust this season.
Bryant should take aim at another personal landmark, too: His best 3-point shooting season was 2002-03, when he made 38.3 percent. He should be able to beat that this season, even though he’s off pace right now at 36.4 percent. (Bryant might as well make it a triple crown of shooting highs considering he’s at 86.7 percent on free throws – barely off his career high of 86.9 percent in 2006-07.)
For someone whose shot selection has been a hot-button issue for so long, Bryant deserves some credit for what he’s doing now: He’s busting out, yet not one bit out of control.
