You know the drill with Friday. You're looking to pass the time during your day so you can get to the weekend. During this weekend, you'll probably watch a lot of college football. That will turn into watching the NFL and you may even go see a Nic Cage movie or three during the down times. But you've got to get to the theater first and you can't get to the theater until you get through this work or school day.
Let's take a journey down the rabbit hole by exploring where the Los Angeles Lakers' futility from the 3-point line and refusal to take better shots can lead us. Get inside that 3-point arc and let's go:
FIRST STOP: THE LAKERS REALLY HAVE ABANDONED THE 3-POINT LINE
You never want to read too much into preseason because it's a watered down version of the eight months of NBA basketball we're about to inject into our bodies. The results of preseason are meaningless, save from someone getting cut from the team or someone getting injured in the process for preparing for the season. The real "discovery" in preseason comes from the process teams employ. What's going on with Byron Scott coaching the Lakers is one of the most baffling and yet fascinating processes we've seen in quite some time.
It's a lot like watching a Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy. You know it's going to be a horrendous product, but the shock and awe factor of "somebody really thought this was going to be a good idea" is saturating the viewing experience. Kobe Bryant is a lot like J-Lo in this situation. He's a superstar that was much more effective and a force to be reckoned with years ago, and now he's a great name. The aging process and new stars coming up in the business are always bound to push the older stars out of the spotlight. They can still bring it but the luster of what they bring wears off a bit.
You can't put Kobe into the movie Monster-in-Law and expect a masterpiece. He can perform, but you're not giving him anything to work with here. The days of Out of Sight, Selena, and Money Train aren't coming back. Gigli was the last straw with the Shaquille O'Neal days in which we truly realized how vulnerable his career could be if not in a favorable situation, which isn't a knock on Kobe as much as it's a tip of the cap to the history of it being nearly impossible to do things on your own in this league.
Or maybe Gigli is the Achilles' tendon rupture. Actually, Gigli is definitely the Achilles' injury. But you can overcome that and come back from it. It may take a while, but it's possible to do. The problem is you're being saddled with a director who simply doesn't know how to make a good product in today's world. That's Byron Scott right now.
Scott's abandonment of the 3-point shot in 2014 is baffling. It's not just that we're watching an NBA team that is trying to make the playoffs to placate the legend on their roster (not Carlos Boozer, the other legend) by abandoning one of the most popular, efficient shots in basketball; it's that they've gone so far against taking 3-pointers during their preseason games that it makes you wonder how Scott even got to a second or third interview and then still got hired. Let's take a look at the carnage on the Lakers' side of the Staples Center.
Here are the four shooting charts from the Lakers' preseason games thus far:
It's not just that the Lakers have only made six 3-point field goals in four games. It's not just that they're shooting 20.6 percent from 3-point range in their four games. Five of those makes came in the first game and they've only take eight attempts in the past two games! They have gone two straight games without making a 3-pointer, which hasn't happened since the Philadelphia 76ers did it in December of 2008.
The Sixers lost both of those games. This is such a rare occurrence that it's only happened three times in the past 10 seasons. If they go next game without hitting a 3-pointer, three straight games with that kind of outside futility hasn't happened since the Utah Jazz in November of 2002. Four straight games without a 3-pointer hasn't happened since the Denver Nuggets in November of 1993. Considering the Lakers haven't even taken a corner 3-pointer in two games and have only taken three overall this preseason, you have to start liking their chances for historic abandonment of outside shooting, even if it is only preseason.
Again, it's about the process. Why would Byron Scott decide this is the strategy for his team? That's hard to say. It's possible the game has passed him by. His teams were devoid of much talent in Cleveland, but he also didn't do a great job of coaching them up. There was almost zero tangible improvement in his three seasons with Cleveland. Prior to that, his two coaching stints saw some reasonable success, especially in New Jersey. He also had two of the best point guards of the last 20 years in Jason Kidd and Chris Paul running the show on the court.
Scott wants the Lakers to attack the rim but the team has been shying away from the paint and the 3-point line while getting sandwiched into the midrange zone of sadness and despair in these four games. This is not how Kobe is supposed to go out these next two seasons. He's not supposed to be relegated as some singing show judge while we let a lack of talent fill the screen. And yet, we're going to have to glean as much as we can from the end of this career because he's not being put in proper situations to have a chance at success.
Let's not get distracted from the main point though. We were talking about J-Lo...
JENNIFER LOPEZ AND BASKETBALL GO HAND IN HAND
When you search for "Kobe Bryant and Jennifer Lopez," not a lot comes up. You do get to this fantastic photo of Kobe wearing a fur coat, which should also remind you of the time when he had his own album "K.O.B.E." The reason Bryant wearing a fur coat in that picture reminds you of the rap album is because this is the photo on the inside of the CD jacket.
(For those wondering what a CD jacket is, a CD or "compact disc" are these flat discs you that used to house music. It looks the exact same as the Blu Ray movies you'll watch from time to time when you can manage to get up and insert the disc into the Blu Ray player. They didn't used to have movies on them. They had albums on them and you'd play them in a "CD player." It was all very wild technology. Inside the case for the CD, they'd have photo inserts that were basically album cover art in paper form.)
Kobe's rapping career was... let's just say brief. Probably the biggest hit of it all was him grabbing a verse on Brian McKnight's song "Hold Me," which has a video feature Brian, Kobe, and Chris Mills. It's pretty spectacular and I'm going to go out on a limb and say those motorcycle riding scenes were filmed in front of a green screen and not on the rode.
There are three things I take away from this Brian McKnight video that I will cherish with me for as long as I live. First, there is this .gif I made of Bill Bellamy riding up to the house on a motorcycle.
Secondly, it's Kobe's verse on the track. It's pretty phenomenal. I've got the lyrics for you below and we've got an isolated video of just his verse so we can relive this magic:
Your love's a sword slicing gently through my body
Burn so sweet, blood boils when you speak (yeah)
Makes me weak but I refuse to weep
Yet when I sleep I feel tears tricklin' down my cheek (c'mon)
Stay strong, pride telling me move on
My heart's fightin' me, forcin' me to hold on
Yours forever, fell for you beyond measure
Pure as ever, fazed by sins of treasure
The third thing is I love that during a basketball game -- pickup basketball or whatever -- we've got an overpopulated team of referees taking off their officiating shirts and breaking into a choreographed dance. I can't imagine a referee breaking into dance in the middle of the game.
Or can I... (initiate TV sitcom dream sequence graphics)
Kobe's rap career also included a song called "K.O.B.E." that featured supermodel and future talk show host Tyra Banks singing the hook. He performed it an All-Star weekend and it was about as entertaining as you'd expect from two non-musical artists making a song together.
It's really cool that Kobe broke into rapping in Italian during the end of this performance but it would have been better if he had mastered rapping in English before he switched it up on us with the language. One of the more entertaining parts of Kobe's rapping career is the Wikipedia entry about it on his page. It basically blames Sony for Kobe not having a successful rap career:
In high school, Bryant was a member of a rap group called CHEIZAW, named after the Chi Sah gang in the martial arts film Kid with the Golden Arm. The group was signed by Sony Entertainment, but the company's ultimate goal was to eliminate the group and have Bryant record on his own. The label wanted to capitalize on Bryant's youth and NBA fame. He performed at a 1997 concert by Sway & King Tech and recorded a verse for a remix of Brian McKnight's "Hold Me". Bryant even appeared on Lakers teammate O'Neal's Respect, starting the track "3 X's Dope", though Bryant's name was not listed on the credits.[6]
Sony pushed Bryant from his roots of underground hip hop into a more radio-friendly sound. His debut album, Visions, was scheduled to release in the spring of 2000. The first single, "K.O.B.E'", featured supermodel Tyra Banks singing the hook. The single debuted in January 2000, and was performed at NBA All-Star Weekend that month; the song was not well received. Sony abandoned plans for the album, which was never released, and dropped Bryant later that year. The Sony president who originally signed Bryant had already left, and Bryant's other backers had mostly abandoned him. Afterwards, Bryant co-founded an independent record label, Heads High Entertainment, but it folded within a year.[6]
I'm sorry. I keep going away from Jennifer Lopez. We've got to get back to business here. Let's talk J-Lo and basketball.
SERIOUSLY, JENNIFER LOPEZ AND BASKETBALL GO HAND IN HAND
Drop the search "Jennifer Lopez Basketball" into the old YouTube machine and you're going to get a classic music video/song. The song "I'm Real" by J-Lo featuring Ja Rule isn't just a catchy song, but it's also your one stop shop for Ja Rule playing basketball moments. In fact, when you watch the video, you should ask yourself a question:
"Who looks more comfortable holding a basketball? J-Lo or Ja Rule?"
Maybe making it through the entire video distracted you from really focusing on the basketball parts with these two musical talents. Let's break it down like that J-Lo dance on the court.
The first shot of basketball in this video is Ja Rule dribbling a ball while wearing jorts on a sidewalk.
I can imagine seeing how labored that action seemed for Ja Rule and the director of the video trying to figure out something that looked smoother on the video. Then you have to coach up the star of the video to make it seem like it's a better artistic direction for them to do less in order to have the video do more. After all, you're trying to make a video about Jennifer Lopez being real and not just one about Ja Rule trying to be a guy that plays basketball.
"Ja, what if we just have you doing a cool toss to yourself as you walk and rap?"
This is much better, but you're in danger of Ja hitting himself in the face with the ball. Look at how close he comes to smacking himself in the face. He could just be strutting down the sidewalk and everything is in rhythm or he could also have almost hit himself in the glasses and just managed to dodge the ball in the process. You've got to dumb it down even more for Ja because we're not even to the basketball court scenes yet.
"Ja, what if you just hold the ball in a cool way?"
Oh man, that two-handed grasp at the end looks all kinds of uncomfortable. It's like an awkward player photo shoot from the 60's. This won't do. You've got to simplify it even more to make sure you walk away from this video feeling like Ja belongs on the court and next to J-Lo. How do you simplify it past just holding a basketball?
"Ja, let's just see how you do in a headband and t-shirt. It's going to be a great shot this way."
Well, he only managed to put one arm through the sleeve of the shirt, so this really isn't going well. If he can't even involve both shoulders in a t-shirt, we certainly can't have him doing anything else with a basketball.
"Let's see Jennifer throw a basketball. Maybe she's our star on the court doing basketball stuff?"
She's just tossing that thing like it's no big deal. We're definitely going to have to use her in these final cut scenes instead of having Ja play ball. What else can she do? Any chance she can throw an outlet pass while people randomly run in different directions on the court and Ja just dances?
Eat your heart out, Kevin Love! She's a natural. And Ja still hasn't figured out this shirtsleeve thing. That's probably how we got to that final version of the music video. You have to work with what you've got and what you've got is J-Lo owning the court and the basketball scenes between these two stars. It's not an indictment on Ja as much as it's telling to how talented Jennifer Lopez is out there.
I'm sure Ja eventually picked up this basketball thing. He probably just need to put on a little muscle and then his game would flourish.
Because I'm real...
