The difference between good and great=Kobe

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

There are people who visit this board only to ride my nuts.

Lol you really value yourself don't you douche?

Yes...Not my fault if you two "Laker fans" don't.



Thanks for helping me prove my point, dumbfucks.

[Don Jacob]

::in david spade voice::

oh no ,he called me a "laker fan".

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

Bryant becomes 'pacesetter' for Team USA-
holding Barbosa to 4 points on 1-7 shooting
 
By Chris Sheridan

LAS VEGAS -- The tone of the Kobe Bryant-Leandro Barbosa matchup was set just a few moments into the first quarter, but you had to look 80 feet away from the action to see it unfold.

As a player from Brazil shot two free throws at one end of the court, Barbosa stood beneath the basket all the way at the opposite baseline, trying to get a clear view.

Barbosa entered the game as the tournament's leading scorer. Thanks to Bryant, he left the floor with only four points.

Every second or so, however, Barbosa had to move a step or two to clear his line of vision from the obstruction that kept moving in his way.

That obstruction was Bryant, who was gluing himself to Barbosa at that very moment and stayed attached to him like white on rice all night in another stellar defensive performance that keyed Team USA's 113-76 drubbing of previously undefeated Brazil on Sunday night.

"He don't guard like that in the NBA, but he did tonight and I was impressed," Barbosa told ESPN.com. "He came to guard me, and that was good practice for me. I learned a lot of things the way he was guarding me."

Barbosa isn't the only one learning a few things from Bryant, whose intensity and commitment level is having a trickle-down effect on his U.S. teammates. To prepare for Sunday night's assignment, Bryant had Team USA video coordinators prepare him a DVD of Barbosa's offensive repertoire, comprised of some 200 plays from tapes of the Phoenix Suns and the Brazilian national team. Some paperwork came with the DVD, too -- an accompanying chart listing Barbosa's efficiency percentage for each of his favorite moves.

"I watched a little bit of the Phoenix stuff, but how they use him in Phoenix is much different than how they use him here with his speed and his agility," Bryant said. "But at the same time, I've dropped 20 pounds, so I'm a little bit quicker than I used to be."

Bryant clearly studied his homework hard, holding Barbosa -- who entered the game as the leading scorer in the tournament at 27 points per game -- to four points on 1-for-7 shooting, with four turnovers and zero assists.

"For [Bryant] it's about playing defense, and he enjoys that challenge. He understands he doesn't need to score 60 points to help us win, so he can use a little more energy on the defensive end than he's done in the past," Jason Kidd said. "He loves the challenge, and since the opening tip-off of that first game against Venezuela, he wants to take that best offensive player on the opposing team and make it as tough as possible. Against Barbosa, he did it again."

Bryant had the crowd chanting his name midway through the first quarter when he harassed Barbosa into losing control of his dribble and dove on the floor to try to secure the loose ball, forcing a scramble that led to a backcourt violation.

Brazil withstood a game-opening 8-0 run by the Americans and was able to stick with the U.S. through the midpoint of the second quarter, keeping its deficit in single digits, until Bryant hit a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer to start a quarter-ending 15-4 run that gave the U.S. a 57-38 halftime lead.

After Brazil scored the first three points of the third quarter, the Americans came back with a 17-0 run that put them ahead 74-41 and ended whatever suspense there was.

The Americans were on top of all aspects of their game, shooting 53 percent on 3-pointers (including Bryant's 3-for-3 and LeBron James' 4-for-5, and including 11-for-22 on catch-and-shoot 3s), scoring 26 fast-break points and holding their own on the boards against one of the taller lineups they'll face in this tournament.

James and Carmelo Anthony led the U.S. team with 21 points each, Bryant had 20 and Michael Redd 16. The only sour note was Tayshaun Prince spraining his left ankle late in the first quarter. He was listed as day-to-day for the Americans, who open second-round play Monday against Mexico.

Bryant logged only 19:59 of playing time, and every American except Prince logged at least 10 minutes as the noncompetitive second half gave coach Mike Krzyzewski a chance to save his starters' legs for the next step of a stretch in which they are playing six games in six nights.

So far, the focus and intensity -- and the blowout final scores -- have been constants.

And when the question turns to who is setting the tone, the answer always comes back to Bryant.

"Kobe has been a pacesetter, for sure," Team USA director Jerry Colangelo said. "Defensively, he's just locking people down. He's so strong and so focused; you just can't say enough about his work ethic and how he has led. He's done a great job."

After facing Mexico, the U.S. team will play Puerto Rico on Tuesday, Uruguay on Wednesday and Argentina on Thursday before finally getting a day off prior to the only game that really matters in this tournament -- Saturday's semifinal match, in which a berth at the Beijing Olympics will be at stake.

"We have to continue to get better," Bryant said.

[jeromechickenbone]

I'm glad Kobe's on Team USA.  But he's still a snitch.

LOL, I don't remember writing that.

[Don Jacob]

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

Jake is so obvious.

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

Kobe scores bigger as US leader

By Mark Heisler, ON THE NBA
August 29, 2007

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.

"They're all going to have to sacrifice their games and do a lot of different things and they're not in their element.

"But when you take a bunch of great players like this and they play together and they work hard at both ends, you've got a problem.

"These guys, the chemistry is tremendous on the floor. Every one of those guys is willing to make an extra pass, swing the ball and they're all getting after it defensively."

On the other hand, what else is new?

A new day seemed at hand last summer too, with Colangelo's hand-picked coach, Mike Krzyzewski, replacing the old ad hoc approach with a carefully designed three-year program.

Watching his team share the ball in training camp, Krzyzewski said, "That's the way the game should be played. These guys get it."

They got it all right, winning their first seven games by an average of 25 points, before Greece upended them in the kind of indignity U.S. officials thought they had gotten past.

Et tu, Greece?

It was the Americans' seventh loss since 2000 (Argentina twice, Yugoslavia, Spain, Puerto Rico, Lithuania, Greece) and another long off-season.

"It sounds like an excuse but it's not -- losing at that time probably was a positive for us," Colangelo said last week.

"I would have preferred not to have to qualify this summer. But that loss hurt so deeply, it kind of created more resolve. And this is all about winning the gold medal in Beijing. . .

"In my opinion, it's not about who we are playing. It's about us. It's about us getting ready for our journey."

It's a journey like no one else's. Foreign teams are more cohesive because they have a few top players, most of whom come year after year.

The U.S. picks 12 out of the top 50. Unfortunately for the Americans, their blinding stardom tends to remove fear from the equation until they find themselves in a close game with an experienced team on a hot-shooting night, like Greece, and the weight of expectations crashes down.

"It is different because other countries can be in cycles and if they lost a game, it's not the end of the world," Krzyzewski says.

"We know that the biggest story is if we lose, or if we don't play well. We have to create a climate then where we're having fun without that type of scrutiny.

"I mean, we know it's there but these guys are just playing. That comes with the territory."

Happily for Krzyzewski, if last year's team got it, this one really gets it, at both ends of the floor. In early games, Krzyzewski put the 6-foot-6 Bryant on opposing point guards, like Venezuela's young Greivis Vasquez in the opener, when Bryant dived on the floor on the game's second play.

"Kobe is a dominant personality," Colangelo says. "Kobe is maybe the best player in the game right now. . . .

"The first play of the game a couple of nights ago [diving on the floor in the opener], that set the tone. Not just for that game. That made a statement."

Against Brazil, Bryant got to guard speedy little Leandro Barbosa, who came in averaging a tournament-leading 27 points and finished with four, looking like a bird in the wash of a jet engine.

Once while the U.S. shot a free throw and Barbosa waited at the other end of the floor, Bryant spent the entire time leaning on him. Barbosa didn't stick around to talk to the press afterward but you could almost read his mind:

"Dude, don't you know it's summer?"

Being Kobe Bryant means not caring whether it's Vasquez or Barbosa in practice or a game.

"He's been nothing but humble, man, coming in trying to lead," teammate Chauncey Billups says of Bryant. "You see what he's doing defensively out there, picking the tempo up every single time and raising the bar for everybody else.

"I'm not surprised about Kobe at all. I sit here and I watch him and I see him getting up super-early every morning and lifting weights. He puts so much into it, I'm not surprised at all."

By now, nobody should be surprised when Bryant's positive attributes make up for his bad times, like his early summer media blitz, since he has done this over and over.

"It's different," Bryant says. "You get to just have fun. You don't have to worry about anything else but just going out and playing and then you just marvel at some of the spectacular plays that guys make. I mean, it's something."

It's different for him and he's different for them. Vive la difference.

[7even]

LAS VEGAS -- LeBron James soared for powerful dunks, pulled up for flawless 3-pointers. And when the halftime buzzer sounded, there was only one way to describe his play.

Perfect.

James was 11-for-11 from the field, making all four of his 3-point attempts, and scored 26 points in the first half Wednesday night to lead the United States to a 118-79 victory over Uruguay in the FIBA Americas tournament.

In a sensational display of speed and power, James raised his tournament-leading shooting percentage to an almost comical 79.7 percent (47-of-59). He is 14-of-20 from 3-point range, a 70 percent mark that also leads the event.

Despite playing only 14 minutes, he fell two points shy of the American record in an Olympic qualifying game shared by Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson.

"That first half was awesome, it was as good as I've seen," said Chauncey Billups, whose Pistons watched James score 48 points against them in the Eastern Conference finals. "That second [quarter] was just phenomenal. I was just happy I was there to see it. The dunks, the 3-point shots, he just wouldn't miss."

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

^^What does this have to do with Kobe?

[Don Jacob]

well it lays to rest your flamboyant claim that kobe is the SOLE leader of this team.

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

How so? Where did the article imply that?