LOS ANGELES — The headline you might’ve seen on my Game 4 preview story was: “Help wanted: Lakers, (Kobe) Bryant need others to step up.”
The first half was pretty much perfect on that front, with Bryant running the show but not starring in it. The second half was an amazing turnaround that Boston’s Kevin Garnett explained extremely well.
Here’s the KG summation on the Lakers:
“If you’ve paid attention to them all year, usually the first half is team ball, second half is usually Kobe takes over the games. Like you said, they weren’t nearly as aggressive as they were the first half. It just looks like they wanted to get the ball to Kobe and him sort of finish it off. That’s what it looked like to me. It didn’t really look cohesive like they did in the first half.
“The second half I thought we took the layups away, made them go to the second and third options. We were giving Kobe every look we’ve got in the book, from different matchups to trapping him, to a guy on the bottom. We were just making other guys make plays. ”
Bryant didn’t. The other guys didn’t. So there you go.
