Dave McMenamin's post on LA Lakers | Latest updates on Sulia

Kobe and D'Antoni both issued directives for the Lakers' offense going forward ...

For Kobe, it was all about involving Gasol. "When Pau gets back, we’re going to play through him a great deal," Bryant said. "Probably at the start of the shot clock, we’ll move around the perimeter, this that and the other. Last 10 seconds of the shot clock, when we don’t have anything, we’ll post him up then he can make plays and make guys better, which he’s fantastic at." For D'Antoni, it was all about resisting Howard's desire to do everything by himself on the block: "If we run our offense right, he will get plenty of opportunities and he should get them," D'Antoni said. "He should be involved in every play. But when you start pinpointing things and you go to it, I think that’s when you get in trouble. "We need that flow. We need to have a tempo on offense. You need, we told them today, ‘You need to play the 16-18 seconds of Laker Basketball. Laker Basketball is this: A,B, C …’ Then after that, yeah, we got guys on the team that when we need a shot, throw it to them and they produce a shot. "But we cannot pinpoint, ‘OK, this time we’re going to go here and do this and next time we’re going to …’. It’s a flow. And every good offense, it’s a rhythm. Our rhythm is off-beat right now. It’s like we got two left shoes trying to dance. It’s not good. It’s hurting our defense. It’s hurting our overall spirit and it’s something that we got to solve hopefully tonight, but soon." Now, the only major discrepancy I can see between the two is Bryant is only willing to play "Laker Basketball" for 14 seconds, while D'Antoni is asking for 16-18 seconds before dumping it down low. Also, Bryant is empowering Pau to be that guy at the end of the shot clock, and not Dwight. Something to monitor, for sure.