Tension mounts as Lakers seek first win

Even resurgent superstar Kobe Bryant seems unable to stop the slide of the once mighty Los Angeles Lakers, who are hurtling through a historically horrible start to the season.

The Lakers' 0-5 start is their worst since 1957, when the team then based in Minneapolis started 0-7 en route to a 19-53 record that still represents the franchise's worst ever winning percentage.

Los Angeles will try to halt the skid on Sunday when it plays host to the Charlotte Hornets.

Two of the Lakers' defeats have come against two of the NBA's unbeaten teams - Houston and Golden State - and after the showdown with Charlotte they face challenging road games at Memphis and New Orleans before hosting reigning champions San Antonio and the Warriors.

The Lakers' lackluster performances so far and the difficulty of their schedule even had one Los Angeles Times pundit predicting the team could be on course to break the NBA record for most defeats in a season - a dubious honor that belongs to the 9-73 Philadelphia 76ers in1972-73.

Bryant is doing all he can to prevent that. The 36-year-old five-time NBA champion - returning after injuries limited him to just six games last season - is averaging 27.6 points per game.

He scored 39 points against Phoenix on Tuesday but the Lakers still came up short against the Suns.

Bryant's 37 shots attempted in that game were two more than the rest of LA's starters combined, and that, said coach Byron Scott, is a big part of the problem.

"I think there was a timeout last game where I pointed at Kobe and said, 'I know how great this guy is, but you guys have got to play basketball,'" Scott said.

While Bryant has been criticized in the past for failing to get his teammates involved, Scott says Bryant has "done his share" in that regard, but his teammates aren't stepping up.

"I see times where we're doing it the way that we want to do it and then I see times where we're not," Scott said.

Scott has already had to make do and mend, with the loss for the season of veteran point guard Steve Nash as well as rookie forward Julius Randle.

Nash, 40, is out with a nagging back injury while Randle broke his right leg in the first game of the season.

In a sign of how restive Lakers fans have become, a video Nash posted on Instagram of himself hitting a golf ball prompted some scathing comments on social media this week from fans questioning his injury.

Scott and Bryant, however, are trying to tune out that kind of noise and stay focused on the job at hand - getting a win.

"The biggest thing is getting the first one," Scott said. "Get the monkey off your back and hopefully get rolling."

(China Daily 11/09/2014 page9)