The Los Angeles Lakers had a clear-the-air meeting Wednesday morning with the hopes to find some type of resolve to their disappointing season thus far. As of Wednesday night it was clear-they're still terrible.
Kobe Bryant stepped in front of his teammates and acknowledged that he could be difficult to play with, and wondered aloud whether center Dwight Howard had any issues with him on the court. Howard didn't engage Bryant in nearly as vocal a manner as Bryant did him.
"He didn't go back at Kobe," said the person with knowledge of the meeting.
It's clear that the tell all meeting was unsuccessful as evident in their latest 106-93 loss by the Memphis Grizzlies. To add more insult to injury, the Lakers loss center Dwight Howard in the second quarter after re-aggravating his right shoulder.
He was injured while trying to get through a screen set by Rudy Gay and planned to have the shoulder examined Thursday by a specialist. He missed all four of his shots, and had two points and two rebounds in 14 minutes.
The Lakers are now 17-25 and hold the 12th place in the Western Conference, four games behind eighth-place Portland Trail Blazers and three games ahead of western conference bottom dwellers Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans.
Bryant considers this season to being one of the hardest seasons he's had to endure in his 17 seasons playing in the NBA.
"Certainly getting there," he said. "That Rudy T. one was a pretty hard one."
The 2004-05 season featured a midseason coaching change (Frank Hamblen for Rudy Tomjanovich), a 2-19 slide to end the season and a Lakers playoff absence for only the second time since 1976.
Coach Mike D'Antoni offered a unique outlook to the Laker's season woes.
"Have you ever watched an All-Star game? It's god-awful," he said. "Everybody gets the ball and goes one on one and then they play no defense. That's our team. That's us. We're an All-Star team.
"And we haven't learned that there's a pecking order. There's the one guy, the two guy, the three guy and the four guy. It might not be the same guy every night, but somebody's got to accept being the fourth guy. And if you've been the first guy all your life, that's hard to accept. And that's what happens in All-Stars and that's what happened with us. And we haven't overcome it."
D'Antoni initiated Wednesday's morning meeting and stressed to his team to keep offense out of their thoughts and concentrate more on developing a stronger and more improved defense. The Lakers were fifth in scoring (102.6 points a game) but 26th in defense (101.4 points a game) before Wednesday.
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