Poor-shooting Bryant at center of Lakers' thud

[kris]

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- So, whatever happened to the basketball season of legend and lore in which Kobe Bryant was the Lakers' savior and they were his solace?

It's goodbye to all that now.

His court-to-court flights, his triumphs over fatigue and his game-saving 3-pointer only last Tuesday are ripped-up pages in a history's rough draft after his performance at The Palace on Sunday night, when Bryant shot the Lakers to the 88-80 loss to Detroit that puts them at the bottom of a 3-1 hole in the NBA Finals.

"We all pretty much sucked the last two games," Bryant said, but some were worse than others.

Though too much went wrong with the Lakers in the past week to blame one man, it began with Bryant as surely as the team's past 10 months have revolved around him.

He missed the team's first two shots. He missed seven of his first eight. He finished the half 3 for 14 with zero rebounds, zero assists and zero steals. And by the time the Lakers' dynastic dreams reached the verge of collapse, Bryant had put perhaps the worst big game of his life in the books. He finished 8 for 25, for 20 points, with zero rebounds, two assists and one steal.

Three nights earlier, Bryant had shot 4 for 13 for 11 points to join Shaquille O'Neal (14 points) in a superstars funk.

This time, Bryant stood alone under the dunce cap. Bryant shot four more times than O'Neal. Even though O'Neal was making 16 of 21 for a 2004 playoffs-high 36 points.

When a columnist asked O'Neal late Sunday night if he's disappointed not to have received the ball for long stretches despite his effectiveness against the smaller Pistons centers, he replied that he was "disappointed" the man didn't write "what you see."

Read between the lines: This was Shaq saying it should be obvious that Bryant was shooting too much.

Of course, if Bryant was making them, it would be different, as it always has been, every time he has pulled a game out of the fire.

But now he's frustrated by Tayshaun Prince's perimeter defense, stifled by Ben Wallace's under-the-rim defense and suddenly a .391 shooter in the NBA Finals.

A lay-in, off a Rick Fox pass, is all that saved Bryant from an 0-for-8 beginning to the game that spelled a virtual end to the Lakers' championship possibilities.

He misfired from left of the circle with the Lakers' first shot, then missed jumpers from the lane, the right corner, the left, the lane again, right of the lane and the right baseline. Some were good shots, many were ill-considered. They went up from all over, a comprehensive disaster.

"We asked him to be a playmaker early in the ballgame," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said, kind of an indictment considering it was the third quarter before Bryant's first assist. "He rushed some shots early in the game. ... Prince is doing a good job, and they are collapsing well on his penetration.

"You know, he made some shots a little later in the ballgame, but he's not shooting the ball well right now."

Kobe was surprisingly, even disconcertingly cheerful afterward, laughing when a journalist opened the questioning by noting that "your shooting percentage looks like my shooting percentage."

"I've just got to shoot through it," he said, which might be the last thing Shaq wants to hear, among other people. "My shot selection -- some of them were good and some of them stunk," Bryant said, adding honestly enough, "That's pretty much every game with me."

Bryant credited Prince's long arms.

Then he promised that in Tuesday's do-or-die Game 5 here, he'll concentrate less on trying to draw fouls and more on the basket.

Then he challenged the journalist to a round of HORSE, the gamer looking for one he can win before a hard summer begins.

In July he can become a free agent and begin looking to leave the Lakers after eight seasons. Sometime later he is to face trial on sexual-assault charges in Colorado. He and the Lakers may have one game left before all of that.

I'll say of Bryant's game what I said of the Lakers after Game 3.

It can only get better.

Maybe this time I'll be right.