One of the rules about greatness is that nobody should question the parts of it that make absolutely no sense.
Bill Russell had an aversion to practice, which seemed opposed to his values of teamwork and hard work, but neither Red Auerbach nor his Celtics teammates really kicked up much of a fuss because they were too busy collecting championships. Michael Jordan projected one of the most politically correct facades of any human being ever, even though many of the people writing his hagiographies were well aware of his less-wholesome private habits. Shaquille O'Neal, perhaps the most blatant example, has said very little in his public life that did not directly contradict something else he already said.
Kobe Bryant gets away with the same sort of puzzling whims because he has five championship rings. If not for the public controversy of Eagle, Colo., Bryant's image still may be as pristine as Jordan's was. Bryant, and later Tiger Woods, learned that extramarital indiscretions are the one type of scandal the sex-obsessed tabloids will not let slip by.
Not surprisingly, Bryant's basketball notions seem to be entirely arbitrary. He chastises Andrew Bynum for taking a quality shot in the fourth quarter, yet chides Pau Gasol, one of the best passing big men the NBA has ever seen, for being passive when the forward turns down an open shot. Bryant won three titles with O'Neal, but could not wait to get The Diesel off the team — only to state a short time later the obvious fact that O'Neal is the greatest player he ever played with.
And yet, it was still jarring to read about Bryant's apparent embrace of the Princeton offense, specifically as taught by Eddie Jordan. Forget for a moment that the Princeton offense goes against everything Bryant has stood for in his 16-year career and specifically things he has been highly critical of whenever a coach or teammate tried to implement them: off-ball movement, minimal ballhandling, passing to the weak side, lots of touches for the big men, etc.
"From my experience, those types of principles — ball movement, changing sides of the floor, everybody being involved — those are championship principles," Bryant told Yahoo! Sports. "That's championship DNA."
Once you get done wrapping your head around Kobe Bean Bryant espousing the value of keeping everybody involved, return your focus to the fact that the man slated to teach the Princeton offense to the Lakers is "Fast" Eddie Jordan. A coach with a career win-loss record of 257-343. A coach with one playoff series victory and eight playoff wins total in more than seven years as an NBA head coach. A coach who guided a young, yet talented, Sixers team to 27 wins in his last season as a head coach, before Doug Collins led basically the same group to a .500 record and the playoffs the very next year. Jordan is known as the current guru of the Princeton game, but his record also qualifies him as a candidate for the title of Worst Coach in the NBA. That is not to say that he is the worst coach, only that the circumstantial evidence leans strongly to that conclusion.
Bryant clashed at times with Lakers head coach Mike Brown last season, when the team lacked a noticeable offensive identity and Bryant often needed to shift into hero mode to save the Lakers in crunchtime. But Brown is still a competent and hard-working coach who has gotten results. Brown has a Coach of the Year Award to his credit and coached the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals. He learned under Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, indisputably the best active coach in the NBA. Brown may have been blessed with two of the greatest players of their generation in Bryant and LeBron James, but the evidence suggests he knows what he is doing.
This is the coach Bryant has chosen to find irksome while eagerly seeking Jordan's tutelage. It makes no sense, but such is the life of Bryant, who is one of the greats, and therefore questioning it is futile.
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