A losing proposition for Kobe in his final seasons

During his July basketball camp at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Kobe Bryant took a break from teaching the triangle offense to all those open-mouthed kids for a consequential conversation with his old coach and confidant, Gregg Downer.

Bryant was turning 36 in less than two months, and last November he had signed a two-year extension with the Los Angeles Lakers that was worth $48.5 million and that ran through the 2015-16 season. Downer, the head coach at Lower Merion High School, had flown to the West Coast to volunteer as a counselor at the camp, and maybe it took the presence of a trusted mentor and friend for Bryant to confess the truth: Come the expiration of that contract, he told Downer, there would be no hanging on, no reconsidering, no seeking a trade to another team. Kobe Bryant would retire.

"He told me he's playing two more years - end of story," Downer said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "He's very grateful for what the Lakers have meant to him and especially what they did with that contract. I don't think he's going to play beyond two years, and I don't think he'd play anywhere else. He wants to be the type of person who says, 'I played my whole career with one franchise.' "

That loyalty to the Lakers apparently will come at the expense of their present and, perhaps, his legacy. Five games into this season, Bryant has the distinction of being the best player on the NBA's worst team. Forget the 76ers, their 0-5 start, and their overt intention to sacrifice the here and now for the sake of a better future. The Lakers are 0-5, too, but they're last in the league in defense and in point differential. And for all the box-office power that Bryant might pack, his league-high salary and the perception (or the reality, depending on one's relationship with him) that he undermines and intimidates his teammates have become anvils hanging over Hollywood's favorite sports franchise.

ESPN The Magazine, in fact, devoted more than 4,100 words in its NBA preview issue to arguing that Bryant was the reason - not a reason, the reason - that the Lakers had sunk so low and would struggle to rise from these depths. But Downer views Bryant's situation as the Lakers apparently did: The five championship rings, the 16 All-Star Game selections, and the 31,838 points justify giving Kobe what Kobe wants.

"All of a sudden, they're caught with a pretty fragile, borderline-untalented team," Downer said. "All the allegations and stone-throwing at him, I don't know how much of that is accurate. It's probably a combination of a lot of moving parts. They made some substantial offers to keep Pau Gasol, and they made an offer to get Carmelo Anthony.

"For whatever reason, it just didn't work out. Kobe taking the $48 million contract has made him a kind of a villain, but I really don't think he needs to take some kind of a discount based on what he's given that franchise."

The question now is what, if anything, Bryant is taking from it. The Lakers are a ragtag collection of veterans with little upside - Carlos Boozer, Wesley Johnson, Jordan Hill, Jeremy Lin - which only emboldens Bryant to try to be the same player he's always been, to be the center of everything. He has taken 122 shots through five games, more than twice as many as any other player on the roster, and his .402 shooting percentage would be the lowest of his 19-year career.

It's a hell of a lot easier to rebuild around Nerlens Noel and Michael Carter-Williams than it is around an aging, expensive superstar who refuses to ride off toward the horizon.

"It's probably very difficult for him," Downer said. "He's had trouble sharing the spotlight with others in the past. He's smart enough to know how to mold his game as he gets older, and I don't think he's opposed to doing that. . . . But he's got the Kobe Bryant DNA, and when all is said and done, regardless of his age, maybe it will never fully change."

That cutting competitiveness hasn't lessened over the two decades since Bryant first suited up at Lower Merion. Downer chuckled as he recounted a familiar story from those days: At one practice, Rob Schwartz, a 5-foot-7 backup guard, missed a layup that cost Bryant's team a victory in an intrasquad scrimmage, and Bryant reacted by chasing Schwartz through the halls of the high school.

Downer thought the scene was all in jest until he realized he needed to send his assistant coaches into the hallway to make sure Bryant didn't go over the edge with a smaller, terrified teammate. "He has never," Downer said, "had a tolerance for losing."

Nevertheless, from the looks of things, Kobe Bryant plans to give himself every opportunity to develop one before he says goodbye to the game forever.