How Kobe Bryant has become 'Kobe Bryant, Volume Passer'

I'll readily admit that I find it utterly impossible to be objective about Kobe Bryant. I've enjoyed Kobe so much for so long and feel such a weird draw to him both on and off the court that even when his actions are totally unjustifiable I end up supporting him regardless (with a couple obvious decade-old exceptions). There's no question to me that LeBron James is the better basketball player of the two and has been for quite some time, but I'll always root for Kobe and I'll always root against LeBron. I can't explain and I definitely can't defend why, but that's just the way it is.

If I was to attempt to put into words why I find Kobe so compelling, part of the explanation would likely center around the way his career moves in phases. Seemingly every season, we have a new Kobe, like--and this is where his latest self-assigned nickname becomes so apt--different vintages of wine, where you could watch game tape of him from any point of his career and with some attentive use of the nose and palette, determine which year of Kobe's career you were watching. Oh, this was the season where he decided to do most of his work from the post. This was the one where he tried to score 50 literally every night. This was the one where he made a point of showing how he trusted his teammates by barely shooting in the first half. This was the one where he decided he'd be Black Mamba, Defensive Stopper. 

And so on. Sometimes we'd even get multiple vintages from the same season. Last season, we were officially introduced to Kobe Bryant, Point Guard, when Kobe decided that the Lakers' losing ways could be quelled by shifting the balance of his playmaking back in the favor of his passing, and for a spell, he was absolutely right, as he averaged over 11 assists (and just 17 points on 13 field goal attempts) for a five game period in which the previously 17-25 Lakers suddenly went 4-1, including a big win over the West-best Thunder. But eventually, he decided to flip the switch back to Superhero Kobe, unleashing a seven-game stretch in early April in which he scored 29 a game on 21 shots, six of which were Laker Ws. (Though despite making less of a conscientious effort to pass, he did still average eight dimes a contest over that run.) 

Unfortunately, Superhero Kobe proved distinctly human in at least one important way, as his season ended in that seventh game, in which he tore his left Achilles' tendon. After eight long months of rehabbing, he's finally back, and from his first four games upon returning, we appear to be in the midst of yet another new career phase: Kobe Bryant, Volume Passer. 

At first glance, this Kobe vintage would appear to be a rerun of early 2012-'13's Point Guard variety, but this feels different to me, for a couple reasons. Firstly, Kobe Bryant, Point Guard was adapted by Kobe seemingly on a whim. There was no necessity to it, aside from the fact that the team was losing--two-time MVP and all-time point-guard great Steve Nash was still sharing a backcourt with Kobe and was playing reasonably well on offense, which you'd have thought would have disincentivized Kobe to make distributing a priority. (Before the season, Kobe even famously explained how he thought the partnership between the two would work by simplifying the dynamic: "Steve likes to pass. I like to shoot.") 

It appeared Kobe Bryant, Point Guard emerged simply out of Kobe's desire to try something new for a team that wasn't playing at its expected level--and, since few of Kobe's actions are ever 100% selfless, maybe a little to stick it to the critics who always accuse him of shooting too much, and to prove that he was talented enough to be counted among the league's best at both the one or the two. (When asked by a reporter during his KBPG stretch how good he believed he could have been as a point guard, he answered incredulously--and predictably--with a "What, you think I’m gonna sit here and say I wasn't gonna be the best?") 

This season, though, Kobe's not acting as a facilitator just because he figured "What the hell, let's throw it against the wall and see what happens." He's doing it because the Lakers had three point guards on their roster to start the season, and all three of them are currently out of service--Nash is on indefinite hiatus with back and hamstring issues and in fact might never be totally healthy again, Steve Blake's hot start to the season was interrupted by a torn elbow ligament that puts him on the shelf for the next month-plus, and even returnee backup Jordan Farmar is out until question mark with a torn left hammy. Last year, Kobe served as the point guard, but this year so far, that's the position he's actually starting at, to the admission of coach Mike D'Antoni and everybody else who you might ask. 

And more than that, I think Kobe would have started his season on a pass-happy note even if the team's PG depth chart hadn't suddenly vanished into thin air. He saw how the team was playing with him on the sidelines--going a surprise 10-9 to start the roster, a game ahead of last year's pace with Kobe and Dwight Howard on the roster, and with a kind of free, easy-going, and oddly democratic approach that saw career-mediocre shooting guard Jodie Meeks somehow end up as the team's leading scorer for most of November. He knew that haters would instantly accuse him of ruining the team's chemistry if the Lakers lost games in which he shot a lot, and historically speaking, Kobe's always been a guy who has the tendency to listen to his critics and then play a couple games doing the exact opposite of whatever people are criticizing him for, often to a degree that borders on the irresponsible. 

Finally, playing Kobe at point this season isn't just optimal for the team at the moment--it might also be optimal for Kobe. After eight months away from basketball--his longest since his time in the womb, Kobe has pointed out--his rhythm clearly isn't where it was last year yet in terms of shooting, and as he's still feeling out what his body can and can't do post-Achilles surgery, he hasn't been as aggressive in the half-court as he'd need to be to get the easy baskets and draw the free throw attempts that he'd need to score 27 a game like the past couple seasons. Serving instead as lead distributor allows Kobe to continue to run the team's offense, while gradually dipping his toes further and further back into the scoring waters, until he's ready to jump back in full-force and be the kind of default Kobe who looks to score first and pass second.

So, we get Kobe spending his first few games taking a backseat on offense to guys who in other seasons, he might not have even bothered to learn the names of. When you see Kobe early in his first return to game action whipping passes to Robert Sacre in double coverage rather than taking one of his patented fadeaways on the baseline, you can tell pretty easily that there's purpose to it beyond him just making the right read in the half-court.

But this is all about why Kobe Bryant, Volume Passer is different than Kobe Bryant, Point Guard, rather than how. There is a how, though, and it's that stylistically, KBVP sees Kobe passing the ball the way we normally see him shooting it. While doing KBPG, Kobe would look to pass first, but he still got his from the floor, shifting the balance of his passing and scoring to Chris Paul-esque levels but still averaging a healthy 17 a game. This time, though, the balance has swung to jaw-dropping extremes, to the point where Kobe actually finished a game against the Raptors last week with 13 assists and just four points--the first time since the '11-'12 season any player posted that few points with that many assists, and only the second time in Kobe's career he'd put up single digits in points and double digits in assists. (Even then,an '07 matchup with the Nuggets, it was a less-unlikely eight points, ten assists.)

What's more, Kobe is now doing something he mostly managed to avoid doing during his PG phase last year, and that is turning the ball over at what has to be described as a historic rate. It's only four contests, true, but at the moment, Kobe is averaging an unsightly 6.3 TOs a game, a rate that jumps to an unthinkable 8.0 when you take it per 36 minutes. Ball security has never been priority #1 for Kobe, who's finished top ten in the league in total turnovers eight of the last ten seasons and ranks fifth all-time in NBA history, but this season, he's making even notoriously giveaway-prone rookie Victor Oladipo (4.2 TO per 36) look like Jose Calderon by comparison. 

Incredibly (but not shockingly), not only does Kobe seem totally unapologetic about his TO rate, he's actually publicly called out teammate Pau Gasol for turning the ball over too much. After Saturday's skin-of-their-teeth victory over the Bobcats, Kobe joked about "getting into [Pau's] Spaniard behind" in the locker room because he "can't catch the damn ball," later repeating the sentiment to Pau that he "can't throw him the ball if he's got no thumbs!" Now, Pau did turn the ball over six times in Charlotte, and undoubtedly some percentage of Kobe's own TOs can be attributed to Pau's fumbliness, but for a guy coughing the ball up at an eight-per-36 clip to straight-facedly fault a teammate for turnovers without even acknowledging his own contributions to the team woes would be sort of like James Harden "getting into Jeremy Lin's Tainwanese-American behind" for falling asleep on defense too often.

To me, though, this is all explainable by the Volume Passer tag. Most ball-handlers look at turning the ball over as a mistake in almost any context, something one should look to avoid just about whenever possible. But I believe that KBVP simply sees a turnover as something of a *missed pass.* That's because Kobe's assists aren't generally of the "feed the post, stand back and watch as the big guy makes a move on his defender" variety--they're more of the "pass over one defender and around another to get the big guy an open dunk" variety. Their degree-of-difficulty is off the charts, and a lot of the time it doesn't work, but when it does work, it tends to lead pretty inextricably to an easy basket, as good as if Kobe scored the basket himself--an incredible seven of his 13 assists against the Thunder led to dunks and layups at the rim, all of which were at least mostly uncontested:

If this all sort of sounds familiar, it's because, as I previously alluded to, he's passing the ball a lot like he usually shoots it. I've always believed that unlike most of the league's great players, who make what they do seem disturbingly easy--think LeBron and Wade making super-human plays at the basket to get themselves clean looks at layups and dunks without even breaking a sweat, or Shaq just powering through the opposition for a close-to-literally-unstoppable bucket--Kobe sets himself apart by making what he does look incredibly difficult. 

When you picture Kobe scoring in your head, especially in his #24 days, do you think of him breezing to the hoop for a how-was-that-so-easy easy two? No, you think of him laboring on the wing, making about ten different moves to shake his defender and get up a tough fadeaway jumper. You think of him shooting over the backboard as he's falling out of bounds. You think of him deciding to go reverse with a layup at the last second, scraping it high off the backboard and falling to the floor for an and-one. You think of him seemingly going out of his way to take a tougher shot than necessary, and making it just the same.

Now, even though in your memory, he converts on these incredible shots and ridiculous moves an unreal percentage of the time, in real life basketball, a lot of the time they haven't actually worked so well. Often times, they've lead to bad misses and long defensive rebounds that start the offense going the other way, essentially serving as live-ball turnovers. But because he does make a certain sustainable percentage of them, and because the Lakers often needed that kind of bail-out playmaking, he's kept on attempting them, despite whatever his critics, his teammates, and occasionally even his coaches may have had to say about it.

In his return to action 2013-14, Kobe's doing basically the same thing as he's done for most of his career, except as a passer instead of a scorer. He puts up a lot of passes, and some of them end up looking really ill-advised in retrospect (and/or as he's making them) and maybe even lead to transition scores or easy looks at the other end, but enough of them end up hitting their mark in spectacular fashion that it keeps the Lakers' offense moving. You might look at a stat line like the one Kobe had against the Bobcats and think "Well, he had eight assists, but he also had seven turnovers, and that's not such a good ratio." KBVP probably looks at it and thinks "OK, I went 8-15 tonight." As a shooter, that'd be a pretty efficient Kobe night, so why not as a passer?

Of course, in real basketball terms, it's almost definitely not so simple. I'm not smart enough to crunch the advanced math on it, but the difference between a missed shot and a turnover in point-differential terms is probably real and considerable, even when Kobe's made assists are as effective as they tend to be. But the line of thinking on Kobe's end isn't 100% illogical, especially for a team so otherwise depleted of point guard production and general playmaking, and while Kobe is working to get back his capabilities as a primary scorer. And while it hasn't translated to a lot in the wins department--the team lost their first three games under KBVP's guiding hand--it did get them a hard-fought W in Charlotte, albeit one whose ending (Kobe scoring the decisive final four points of the game on a layup and a cleverly-drawn foul) suggests Kobe's Volume Passer days might not last too much longer.

Really, it reminds me of maybe the primary reason I love Kobe as I do--he always gives you something to talk about. Around this time last year, LeBron was killing haters like myself with boredom by being typically, unsurprisingly brilliant, and this season, Kevin Durant seems to have reached a similar level of So Obviously Great He's Not Really Even Worth Discussing-ness. But I doubt that ever has ever been or ever will be the case with Kobe--there's always something about his game worth taking the time out to applaud, criticize, debate or dissect. I wrote a many-thousand-word piece about Kobe's new style around mid-season last year, as well as the year before that, and undoubtedly, I'll do so again around this time next year. He may frustrate, enrage, or occasionally even offend as a basketball player, but he never, ever bores. 

And as for how this vintage racks up with other Kobe vintages of note--well, it's just a matter of taste, isn't it? Some fans may prefer Superhero Kobe or Trusts His Teammates Kobe or Can't Tell Me Nothing Kobe or Spike Lee in the House Kobe, and to others, Kobe Bryant, Volume Passer might be the one that hits all the right notes. All that really matters it's that another rich and totally unique entry into the Kobe catalog, and that over 17 seasons into his pro career, he's got a cellar full of these things to rival just about anyone in NBA history.