Two days after the NBA draft, during which the Los Angeles Lakers selected three players, Kobe Bryant said he has one thing he wants them to do.
“Ask why -- why did things happen?” Bryant said Saturday night at the BET Experience held at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles during a sit-down interview with ESPN's Jemele Hill.
“I think players nowadays have become conditioned to do x, y and z. So you have coaches at the high-school level, college level, then the professional level, they tell you, ‘Do this, do that, do this, do that,’ as opposed to teaching players what questions to ask.
“So when you’re watching the game or playing the game, and he runs a pick-and-roll and all of the sudden the man is open in the corner and he hits the man in the corner and he knocks down a shot, you don’t want to just have that thing happen on accident. You want to know why that happened.
“So you want to be able to read defensive packages and say, ‘OK, when I come off the screen-and-roll, the big did this, the weak side did that, therefore that’s open. And if I come here, now they make an adjustment; now that’s not open and that’s why that’s open, but now that’s not open and that means this one is open.’ It’s to get them thinking why things happen. I think that’s the most important thing for young players to understand."
The Lakers drafted Ohio State guard D’Angelo Russell second overall, University of Wyoming forward Larry Nance Jr. 27th overall and Stanford wing Anthony Brown 34th overall.
