The Los Angeles Lakers kick off their 2015-16 season on Wednesday night at home against the Minnesota Timberwolves, but you couldn’t tell from Kobe’s interview from practice the day before. He’s already tired of being poked with questions about the direction of the team, gambits to get him to complain about coaching or management decisions. The first question of the above interview, courtesy of Lakers Nation, went like this:
Reporter: “Do you think D’Angelo [Russell] showed enough to be a starter?”
Kobe: “What kind of question is that?”
Reporter: “Do you think he should start tomorrow? Do you like what you see from the kid?”
Kobe: “You should ask [head coach] Byron [Scott]. What are you asking me for?”
When the gathered media changed tack, Kobe loosened up and talked about his mentoring relationship with Russell, and his different role in the offense.
Kobe is slated to start at small forward rather than shooting guard this year, with Jordan Clarkson at the off-guard and, presumably, Russell at point guard. Byron Scott says he hasn’t committed to starting Russell, but the other option is 32-year-old Brazilian rookie Marcelo Huertas, who’s got more than a decade of Euroleague experience. Scott could go with the more experienced Huertas, but he’s still a rookie in a sense, and everybody knows where the future is.
But Kobe says he’ll be off the ball much more than in years past, regardless of who runs the point.
“I can count on one hand the amount of screen-and-rolls that I’ve run,” he said, and acknowledged that “90 percent” of the ballhandling will be between Clarkson and the point guard. The new-look Lakers should be nearly as interesting on the court as Kobe is off it.
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