Happy Birthday Kobe: Most important season of Bryant's career

Kobe got his birthday gift early this year: the best center in basketball, gift wrapped with one of the best point guards in the league. This will be the most important season in Kobe Bryant‘s career. Kobe has played with Shaq and won three rings. He’s played with Gasol and Bynum and won two rings. This season, anything short of a championship will be seen as complete and utter failure for the Lakers.

Kobe said, “I’ll play two or three more years, and then the team is Howard’s”

Legacies are made while we don’t even realize it. When James, Wade and Bosh came together it was with pomp and ceremony and the speech about “Not one, not two, not three; seven rings” helped to skyrocket expectations to stratospheric heights. Along with setting the bar high for themselves, the Heat also raised the bar for any who tried to match their exuberance, brashness and cockiness as a super-team.

The Lakers have pulled off a major coup this season by getting Dwight Howard for a erratic and immature Bynum – add Steve Nash to the mix – and you have a starting lineup that reads:

Dwight Howard- the best center on the planet; can put a team at the top of defensive efficiency by himself.
Pau Gasol- one of the most polished post players and a underrated passer; can do damage from a distance unlike Dwight who likes to get down low deep.
Ron Artest- one of the best wing defenders in the league.
Kobe Bryant- Happy Birthday Kobe! Nothing needs to be said about the Black Mamba. He likes to shoot, he has Dwight in the paint to chase down those misses. He loves to shoot, he has Steve Nash to pass to him. Kobe got his birthday gift early this season.
Steve Nash- hard to tell which of the two are happier about this. Steve finally got out of Phoenix, remains to be seen if he can still produce without the magic staff over at the Suns.

Kobe Bryant is surrounded by the most complete starting lineup a shooting guard could hope for. This is even better for him than having Shaq was. One team wasn’t big enough to contain the collective egos of the original Superman and Kobe Bryant. With the roster Kobe has now, he is the sole alpha dog on offense.

I can’t stress this enough. Kobe has the best center on the planet, the perfect point guard who will make plays and knock down jumpers with unreal accuracy, a wing defender who will lock anyone down and a stretch four who will spread the floor with his expansive touch. Oh and he has a coach who is used to letting the superstar carry the load.

The Howard to Lakers deal was on the cards earlier this year too. But Kobe and Howard had a phone call where Howard wanted more prominence on offense and Kobe insisted that he comes first, followed by Gasol and then Howard. It seemed like that would be the end of this dream lineup. But as it happened, the Howard to Lakers deal came through. Here’s what Howard had to say about his willingness to take a back seat to Kobe: “That’s behind us now. For me, I want to be a great leader and have the opportunity to learn from the best from Kobe on how to lead a team. To be a great leader you have to learn how to follow. I’m looking forward to following in the steps of Kobe Bryant and how he leads a team and Steve Nash and Pau and just the guys who have been here. I’m looking forward to learning a lot from those guys. One day I want to be the guy who leads a team to a championship. This is a perfect time to start.”

Kobe added that he expects Howard to be more focused and tunnel visioned this season, and to forego some of his light-hearted attitude: “I think that changes just by the pressure that he’s under now. That pressure is on us all. We have to win championships. The focus will be higher, the intensity will be higher.”

This is the perfect scenario for Kobe. Anything short of a championship, and the haters will crawl out in full force to smother him. The only area where the Lakers seem vulnerable is their bench. That and the question mark over Howard’s back. He had a herniated disc repaired and he is still rehabbing. The Lakers with the addition of Steve Nash are well equipped to hold down the fort and make for a high seed in the playoffs until Howard flies in. Jordan Hill and Antwan Jamison are two players with size who can supplement Pau Gasol down low.

Come playoff time and Kobe Bryant will have one of the best starting lineups in basketball on the Lakers. LA Lakers is a franchise with the richest history in the NBA. They have 17 championships till date. Dwight Howard will be following the footsteps of George Mikan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaq. Steve Nash will be compared to Magic Johnson, and Kobe Bryant will have the best chance to match the six rings of Michael Jordan this year.

This year will be the most important and pivotal of Kobe’s career. As he turns 34, he has the opportunity to forever cement his legacy in this league, if he can win one more ring than Jordan, that will go a long way in validating all that he’s been striving for. To be remembered as the greatest player to ever play the game.

And it all starts this season.