No, not psychiatry, Metta World Peace. Not the sort that can hand out prescriptions.
Though, as Matt Moore of ProBasketballTalk recently discussed, the answers to at least some of the questions bound to plague Kobe Bryant and the newly-star-studded Los Angeles Lakers as they pursue the Larry O'Brien Trophy this season may well be found in the tenets of self-actualization.
And furthermore, in the nebulous void that so often exists between individual brilliance and cooperative excellence in basketball.
Moore notes that, as a result of GM Mitch Kupchak's brilliant wheeling-and-dealing to bring Dwight Howard and Steve Nash to LA, the Black Mamba now finds himself in a position not unlike that of Dwyane Wade when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010. Like Wade, Kobe is one of the league's elite wings, a player who tends to dominate the ball, but whose skills are diminishing as Father Time and Mother Nature continue to exact their collective toll.
Both players have demonstrated singular greatness, occasionally at the expense of team success, and vice versa. Both have seen the mountaintop from Shaquille O'Neal's shoulders, and it was (mostly) good.
And now, Kobe, like D-Wade, must learn to either subvert his own autonomy, spontaneity and peak experiences, or incorporate them with the more team-oriented aspects of self-actualization—fellowship with humanity, comfortable acceptance of self and others, and profound interpersonal relationships, to name a few.
Which is a fancy way of saying that Kobe needs to ease off a bit if the Lakers are going to hoist hardware and shower each other in beer and champagne at season's end.
The first season-and-a-half or so that Wade and LeBron spent together in Miami more closely resembled the basketball equivalent of "Dueling Banjos" than a true ch...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers
