Kobe Bryant scores 48 points against a ghastly Phoenix Suns squad; LeBron James once again trickles away late in the game, as the Heat fall to Mark Jackson's Golden State Warriors. For the zillionth time, Kobe made a statement because he had to. The NBA's premier campaigner--take that, GOP hopefuls--took a stand against time, age, and the prevailing wisdom that he and his Lakers are too old to matter. Never mind that 24-year-old Andrew Bynum is healthy and in his prime, giving this team a surprisingly painless transition if they make a couple moves right, or are allowed to by David Stern. As long as Kobe lives and breathes, the Lakers are judged by his performance, and he's as guilty of this as anyone else. His knee may carry on thanks to renegade German doctors, and his wrist is dangling from a torn ligament, but Kobe Bryant is still here. And how.
Bryant has to be a little grittier, and more chaotic, than usual. That haunting sense of control, the ability to make bad shots into good ones, is flimsier than in the past. There may even be something miraculous, or at least fortuitous, to Kobe going for 48 last night.
I want to think there's a little bit of a smirk to Bryant's recent Tim Tebow admiration; when is there not with the Lakers star? But there's a newfound kinship there between Kobe, long the master technician, and Tebow's metaphysical claptrap. Tebow, for those of us who don't buy the whole sanctified thing, is both stringent and whimsical. He's a figurehead who, given the right opportunity, will stomp out a defense. There's more than a bit of that to Kobe these days. He doesn't score like this anymore as a matter of course. He needs a little extra something--call it luck, inspiration, or naked enthusiasm--for all those skills, and what's left of his body, to line up right. Kobe may blow through town hoping to put the league on notice, but when he does, it can't just be that Bad Lieutentant ish that's made him who he is over the years.
If the second championship reign was Kobe learning to acknowledge the existence of other human beings, these last few great seasons are Bryant realizing that there is a basketball god (gods?) That inner destroyer of his, the one with all the finely-calibrated components and hair-trigger snares, has to look beyond itself. What he finds there, no one knows. It certainly isn't becoming a more deferential teammate; Kobe has been gunning more than ever. But whether or not it's ideal for the Lakers, it reveals a lot about Bryant's current state of mind. And like it or not, faith may be be the best-case scenario for him and the Lakers.