Written by Zach Harper | 03 June 2009

Kobe Bryant versus Mickael Pietrus


I'm cheating a little with this one because you and I both know that Courtney Lee is the starting shooting guard of the Orlando Magic. But realistically, we both know that Pietrus will get the bulk of the minutes in trying to slow down Kobe Bryant, Destroyer of Worlds.

Mickael Pietrus was instrumental in making LeBron James work for his eventually outstanding numbers. Pietrus did what he could on defense against the self-anointed King to make him work for his numbers. And against the superstars of the league like Dwyane Wade, LeBron, and now Kobe Bryant, that's really all you can ask of the defensive stopper on a team like Orlando. Aside from the Defensive Player of the Year, Orlando is made up of a bunch of mediocre but long defenders. Courtney Lee is great against guys like Eddie House who can be taken completely out of a series by playing basic denial defense and never helping off of your man. And he's a pretty solid defender against good scoring guards. Where Orlando's collection of mildly effective defenders get you into succumbing to what turns out to be the number one defense in all of basketball is that they give you two options. 1) You can take the ball inside against the strongest and best shot-blocker in the NBA. Or 2) you can try your luck shooting threes to keep up with the meteor shower that rains from Orlando shooters on the other side of the court. And when you get opposing teams to fall into making either of those two decisions, you don't really need great individual defenders. The odds will more than likely work in your favor.

But Kobe Bryant is a different poison. Kobe Bryant is the equivalent of the smell that Lieutenant Colonol Bill Kilgore loved to inhale before noon. Kobe Bryant is the NBA's version of napalm. He's a damn biological weapon that even Jack Bauer doesn't want a piece of. He can literally score in every way imaginable. He's a former dunk champion who can finish with the best of them. He's a guy that also shares the record for most threes in a game because he's such a deadly outside shooter. He closes like Kyra Sedgwick and performs at the free throw line like Jerry West. The best thing that you can do to battle Kobe Bryant is hope that his team lets him down early and trick him into thinking that he has to win the game on 12 fadeaway 20-footers off the dribble.

And that's what Mickael Pietrus has to pray for. He needs slow starts from the funneling genius of the Orlando defense. He needs every player without the number 24 on his jersey to wilt under the bright lights and turn their offensive sets into a recreation of an Oops I Crapped My Pants commercial.  When that happens, Pietrus will then be able to channel is inner Doug Christie, Bruce Bowen and Shane Battier to force Kobe to work for what he gets. If that happens, Kobe will treat Mickael like his name is Ruben Patterson.

I don't even want to go over the career numbers because it's completely one-sided. Kobe hovers above 32 points per game while Mickael goes for around 10. Kobe has had a lot of high-30s, low-40s efforts but that's mainly because he was going against a Golden State Warriors squad that didn't promote defense as an extracurricular activity and he was primarily going against Jason Richardson in these match-ups and J-Rich has never been real interested in sliding his feet without the ball.

Conclusion
So it all comes down to two questions:

1) Can Pietrus benefit from his team's remarkable defense as a unit and turn Kobe into someone's who is trying to be the hero?

2) Can Kobe Bryant win an NBA title through trusting his teammates?

We've already looked into the first question. But the second question is where the fate of the Lakers offensive attack rests. When Kobe trusts his teammates, instills confidence in them through fake Italian conversations with Spike Lee's camera crew pointed towards him, and runs the triangle offense without breaking off into his own symphony, the Lakers are impossible to beat. The Lakers best games are when Kobe scores under 30 points and gets seven assists or more.

Pietrus has to stop that from happening. But there's one more thing worth mentioning. Mickael Pietrus made a point of telling the media that he was changing shoes from Kobe's shoes to Jordan's shoes. It was something insignificant on most planets but not in the world of the NBA. Kobe Bryant is a well-focused and determined individual. When you give someone like that an extra reason to be even more motivated and focused, you've shot yourself in the junk like Cheddar Bob in 8 Mile. Pietrus should have switched shoes without letting anybody know. Instead, he informed the media and at the same time, got the Mamba to take notice of something he'll turn into a slight. That's a big mistake.
Advantage: Lakers

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