The LA Lakers are off to a bad start as they have only won one game since the season opener. But, Kobe Bryant is also struggling to get his shots and it looks like he will need to pass the torch soon.
However, he can keep his elite status and superstar tenacity by taking a different approach.
According to Yahoo Sports Brian Scalabrine, Kobe can take the Paul Pierce approach wherein he doesn't need to have the ball all the time, but make a couple of big shots in the fourth quarter as well as his stats still looking good.
It is understandable that the 37 year-old guard is showing signs of slowing down. For Kobe, the standards set on him is very high and once people see his not performing as well as before, they believe he is at the twilight zone of his career.
"I get held to much higher standards than most of my peers," Bryant told Yahoo Sports after winning against the Brooklyn Nets. "If I have a bad shooting night, it's, 'He's in the grave. He's in the coffin.' Look around the league, and other players have bad shooting nights - and it's just a bad shooting night."
But for Kobe, he takes that as his motivation to continue aiming for greatness and he is not giving up anytime soon on making people believe in him again.
"But the expectations that they have for me, they're actually something that I appreciate. Achilles injury. Fractured knee. Torn shoulder. Twentieth year in the league. Thirty-seven years old. All that, and the expectations are that I average 30 points.
"But I appreciate those standards, because it's something that still pushes me, still drives me. Let's see what I can do," Bryant said.
