LONDON — Before basketball pool play began, Anthony Davis, the 19-year-old rookie on Team USA, talked about how much advice he had gotten from the veterans and singled out one in particular.
“Kobe,” he said. “Kobe has talked to me a lot.”
“About what?” he was asked.
“Oh, I can’t say that,” he said smiling.
When meeting the press Bryant has been charmingly engaging and intelligent, throwing out his solid francais and his not-bad espanol from time to time, letting loose with pearls of wisdom that only come from a life lived fully, publicly and sometimes downright operatically. And he has probably been the basketball team’s top Olympic ambassadors, showing up at several venues and meeting athletes from other sports and other lands.
But going into Wednesday night’s quarterfinal game against Australia, the on-court Kobe had been alarmingly silent. He seemed “squeezed” out of relevance. Among the superstars on the team, LeBron James often controlled the game from the mid-post, Kevin Durant was handling the perimeter and Carmelo Anthony was taking care of the volume shooting — all roles ably played by Bryant, a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
But, suddenly, Bryant came alive on Wednesday, burying six three-pointers, all in the second half, and finishing with 20 points in Team USA’s 119-86 victory. Bryant’s sudden appearance, after another MIA first half, charged some energy into an arena that had been devoid of it through most of the game. Had the name of the medal-round basketball venue not already been changed from the O2 to North Greenwich Arena, in fact, it would’ve been a wise move to do it on Wednesday night, for any oxygen was pretty much sucked out of the building by the ponderous level of play.
“I went to Coach K and said, ‘Let’s get Kobe going,’” said Team USA point guard Chris Paul. “So we went right to him in the third quarter. They blew that play up, but we kept looking for him, we found him and he did the rest.”
Bryant is a rhythm shooter and he was having a difficult time finding it in a substitution pattern that involves 11 players. That’s not a criticism of Krzyzewski, who has to get people into the game, but it is a fact that Bryant likes heavy minutes … and a heavy volume of shots.
Bryant had said before the game that he “wasn’t worried” and that he was “sure to break out.” He said jokingly that he was “looking for something to activate the Black Mamba,” referring to his nickname. That activation came at a great time, for himself, for his team and for the entertainment value at the arena.
Jack McCallum, who is covering the games for NBCOlympics.com, is the author of Dream Team.
© 2012 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Any use, reproduction, modification, distribution, display or performance of this material without NBCUniversal’s prior written consent is prohibited.
