Kobe Bryant praises Mike D’Antoni; Justifies the timing of firing Mike Brown – NBA Update
Over the course of last six to seven years, Kobe Bryant has been the part of every major decision that the Los Angeles Lakers took. When the franchise hired Mike Brown as the head coach last off season though, they didn’t consult
the Black Mamba. And although the star shooting guard got along well with Brown, and lent his support for him from time to time, he seems to have moved on pretty quickly after Brown was fired last Friday.
Although Kobe would have preferred working with the legendary Phil Jackson again, the guard was quite accepting of D’Antoni, and called him an ‘offensive genius earlier in the week. D’Antoni arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday
and had his first press conference the very next day, vowing to make the Lakers a champion in his very first season.
For that to happen, he needs to have all the players on board and none of them in as big as Bryant. As the things stand, it seems that D’Antoni has Mamba’s support;
“He has a very calm demeanour about himself," Bryant said about D’Antoni, who has coached him in two gold medal winning Olympic teams. "He simplifies the game to its purest form. It's not overcomplicated for him."
When asked about the timing of firing Mike Brown and if he had any reservations about it, the answer was no.
"It's better than doing it halfway through the season, if you're going to do it," Bryant said. "For us, we've been struggling, so it's not like we're leaving anything because we never really learned what we were doing in the first
place."
After the Lakers managed to rope in Steve Nash and Dwight Howard this summer, Brown came up with a new reaction based offensive system, so that all of his star player could get a piece of action. That system – the Princeton Offense
– however turned out to be too complicated to adapt quickly and a poor 1-4 season start owed much to that, and eventually the firing of Brown.
The Lakers are now set to start a new era under D’Antoni, and gave a clear indication of their aims when they broke the huddle after D'Antoni's first practice on Thursday, by yelling "championship".
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