Following the Los Angeles Lakers’ shock loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday night, Kobe Bryant shared an honest moment with the media to discussing the loss and talk about age.
Bryant stated, "We didn’t seem to have the energy."
A lack of sustained energy has plagued the aging Lakers all season long with Bryant being one of the few players who cannot be blamed for lacking in that department.
When pressed on why energy was continuing to be an issue 31 games into the season, Bryant responded, "We’re old."
He received laughs for his simplified explanation, but he did not entirely seem to be joking.
Bryant continued, "We just have to figure out how to play when we don’t have that energy."
Bryant was not censoring his thoughts, but he was not altogether trashing his team. He went onto say that getting older required more preparation from each individual, and he still thought that his team was improving and possessed the capacity to make the necessary adjustments. However, he did chalk up Tuesday’s loss to age versus youth.
"We're just slow and you saw a team over there [Philadelphia] that was younger and just had fresher legs, played with more energy," Bryant told the cameras.
Metta World Peace, a veteran on the Lakers’ roster, was not as welcoming of broadly blaming age. When asked if the Lakers were getting beaten by youth, World Peace asked reporters if the Lakers had the oldest team in the league.
When someone informed World Peace that the New York Knicks, currently second in the Eastern conference, were older than the Lakers, World Peace quickly refused to blame a lack of youth for the loss.
World Peace responded, :The Knicks? So, that’s not excuse. The Knicks are playing with energy…You can’t use that as an excuse for us."
Whether or not age is to blame, the Lakers need to remedy their chronic lack of energy because they still have a losing record and remain outside the playoff picture more than a third of the way through the season.
