Kobe Bryant made his big return to the game last night, but it wasn’t what he had hoped. Kobe’s always been hard on himself & he publicly criticized himself last night after the loss to the Raptors. I’m not a Lakers fan, but it was good to see his return. I’m sure the Black Mamba will be back to his normal self soon.
Check out what he had to say…
Via ESPN:
Bryant was his own biggest critic after the Lakers’ 106-94 loss to the Toronto Raptors. “I’m just insanely critical,” Bryant said after finishing with nine points, eight rebounds, four assists, two steals and eight turnovers in 28 minutes. “There was a bunch of things that I completely messed up on.”
When asked to grade his performance, Bryant gave himself an “F.” And when asked if he had been “reborn in a new form,” he quipped, “Right now my form is a horses— form.” Bryant was particularly down on himself for being responsible for such a hefty portion of the Lakers’ 19 turnovers which led to 22 points for Toronto.
“I failed miserably at that,” Bryant said after revealing his personal expectation for his debut was to avoid turnovers. “That was really the biggest thing for me, just trying to take care of the basketball because I know I’m going to be in charge of making some decisions out there … Basketball wise, I’m not happy.”
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“My rhythm is completely out of sync in terms of being able to read passing lanes and judge the timing of players in between those lanes and so forth,” Bryant said. “But I guess it’s a start. I guess a start is good.”
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Bryant, who described his experience being back in uniform as “weird” and added, “I don’t feel normal at all,” said his own self-assessment won’t end with his nearly 20-minute long postgame news conference.
“I couldn’t wait to start watching the film and start criticizing every little thing,” Bryant said. “That’s the exciting part. The exciting part is you got a challenge, you got improvements to make and you sit and you watch them and you break it down and you get ready for the next game and you carry it from there.”
(Story Continues…)
