Rules No Longer Apply to Kobe Bryant and Los Angeles Lakers

Down by 30 points late in the third quarter of an eventual 136-115 loss to the Golden State Warriors, it hits you: Kobe Bryant has no business being in the game.

This is a scenario that has played out in virtually every Los Angeles Lakers game this season—one that, according to conventional NBA rules of logic and precedent, isn't supposed to happen. But there Bryant is, and there he'll continue to be—still playing, still shooting and still trying to make the Lakers matter in his own rage-against-reality way.

A 36-year-old with nearly 46,000 regular-season minutes, a rebuilt Achilles tendon and absolutely no hope of leading his team to 30 wins (let alone a postseason berth) shouldn't be killing himself to shrink a deficit from 30 to 20 in a meaningless game. There's no point.

For this historically fascinating, convention-flouting Lakers team, there are also no rules.

There were early hints it would be a subversive season in L.A.

Byron Scott spoke out against the three-point shot, insisting it wasn't part of the recipe for serious success. Never mind that the league at large has increasingly embraced the value of the triple in recent years, prizing its obvious one point of extra worth and subtler use as a space-creator that opens up other avenues for scoring.



True to his word, Scott has the Lakers playing a style of offense that features very few three-point shots; they rank in the bottom five for long-range attempts this year, per Basketball-Reference.com.

The disdain for generally accepted norms continued, with Scott also pledging to ignore the league-wide emphasis on rest for star players. As the San Antonio Spurs and forward-thinking teams everywhere have been limiting minutes and skipping games altogether, Scott determined before the season that he'd use his 19-year veteran for 30 to 40 minutes per contest, according to Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com.
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers