Man, use smaller words. You get me all confused in here.
I'm not sure what you're asking, if it's Kobe's fault we suck this year?
How do we place blame, and where?
Nash breaks his leg in game TWO. That sucks
Blake gets hurt game 5. Double blow, our top 2 PG's in a PG league go down.
Brown out, MDA in.
Dwight, is Dwight, not D12. Surely everyone gets that.
Pau, injured his foot/leg early, in and out of the lineup, etc.
Jordan Hill, done for the year, huge blow.
Nash back, Pau soon goes out.
Blake comes back.
Kobe ankle
Kobe and Pau come back, Jamison wrist
Artest hurts knee
Kobe and Nash both start breaking down last night
That, is an AWFUL lot of stuff to go thru, in one season. Now, you are asking, if Kobe is so great, why can he not carry us, ala 2006? 2006 Kobe was 27ish, and about 500 less games, thousands of hours less practice, and about 20 various less injuries, back then.
34 year old Kobe, has 1,400 games on his odometer, thousands of hours of more practice, injuries, etc.
So, when you ask, maybe he wasn't the reason we won, earlier in his career, cuz he can't win NOW, in his 17th year, my answer would be maybe when he was at peak 100 in (whichever year you want, 08-09-10-11, what have you) and now, today, this current old model is a 90? 88? 85?
Could 27 year old Kobe absorb all this and steal some wins for us? Quite possibly. 34 year old Kobe already stole a few games earlier in the year, stands to reason with 7 less years on his tires he could grab a few more, right?
Certainly he can have a percent on him for our troubles, now what number do you asign? 50? 100 cuz he's the leader/face of the franchise? 10%?
When the season is done, and Kobe plays in 80 games, 27/5/5, highest % of his career for most of the year, at his mileage, and you have 6-7 other guys miss between 12 and 40 games, play soft (Pau, Dwight at times) guys that were ineffective at times (Nash, Ron) guys get pulled by the coaches, Jamison and Meeks, Clark ran out of gas, both coaches sucked. How, and why, would you put the majority of the blame on the guy that came to work every day, most likely going to be an All NBA performer, even tho clearly he isn't what he was 5-6-7 years ago? The one that at least adapted his game as best he could to right the wrongs, who played hurt, tired, etc. Who never ever went off on the team, the coaches, the GM, just said we WILL make the playoffs, and did everything he could (outside of play lockdown defense for more than 1-2 games at a time)
I'll just say 10% for everybody. Mitch, MDA, Kobe, Dwight, Pau, Nash, Blake, Hill, Ron, and lastly Brown. That's 100% total, 10 for everyone. Fair?
