Kobe apparently decided to rest his injured ankle tonight against the Hawks, probably in part because the Hawks are weak, partly because he needs to heal it, and the rest because his injured play last game led the whole team to take far too many jumpers.
And boy, did the Hawks make this Kobe-less team look good. Lamar Odom did the grunt work, with 15 rebounds and 7 assists to go with his 6 points. Kwame was efficient, too, with 13 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists. The beneficiaries of these assists: Luke Walton, 25 points; Maurice Evans, 22 points in the rare start; Jordan Farmar, 15 points off the bench. The team as a whole shot 56% from the field to the Hawks’ 43%.
The Suns won again, though, on their East coast trip, so the Lakers will remain in first place only by a single game in the win column: 13-6 versus 12-6. And yes, I’m still nervous about whenever the Lakers will have their first big Eastern swing.