Kobe Bryant Is Helpless During Most Frustrating Season of His Legendary Career

The following is an abridged list of words that adequately describe the 2012-13 Los Angeles Lakers: overblown, underwhelming, soft and artificial. The list goes on, but perhaps nothing describes this band of misfits better than an age-old adage known as Murphy's Law:

"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

How else can you explain a team that added Dwight Howard and Steve Nash to an already solid core checking in at 24-28? How else can you account for a theoretical starting five with 35 All-Star Games and three MVPs between them sitting 3.5 games out of the playoffs? And most saliently, how else can you justify all of this happening when Kobe Bryant is playing so well?

The Black Mamba has pulled each and every stop out of his bag of tricks this season. He's scored in bunches when the occasion called for it, but more alarmingly, he's defied his entire career by starting to pass the ball.

The newfound sharer, sardonically deemed "Kobe Johnson" or "Magic Bryant," racked up double-digit assists in three straight January games and nine-plus in two of the next seven. His team's record in those contests: a paltry 3-2.

"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

The cast of characters Mitch Kupchak surrounded Bryant with this offseason was supposed to be the strongest of his career. He had always worked well with Pau Gasol, and he played with Dwight Howard during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Steve Nash was brought in to run the show, which was supposed to be a blessing for both parties.

Fifty-two games in, the results couldn't be much less promising. Kobe's three primary supporting players have all suffered massive PER regressions this season:

Player 2012-13 PER 5-Year PER Average Difference Dwight Howard 19.19 24.51 -5.32 Steve Nash 16.60 20.67 -4.07 Pau Gasol 15.90 22.11 -6.21 Just to clarify for those who aren't familiar with PER, falling off a production cliff th...

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