The Los Angeles Lakers (10-11) have lost two straight games since Kobe Bryant has returned, and will have a rough opponent tonight at 8:00 when they face the Oklahoma City Thunder (17-4) on ESPN. Live stream the game for free here; Lakers fans can listen to the game on 710 ESPN, while Oklahoma City fans can hear the action on WWLS 98.1.
Kobe hasn't lit up the stat sheet since coming back from his torn Achilles, but isn't worrying that his presence has wrecked the chemistry the team developed trying to cope with his absence.
"It's a process," Bryant said. "You just continue to figure out what you can and can't do. Every game, you try to step up and do a little bit more and just go from there." They may be in for even more change in the coming weeks, as Bryant will be tasked with manning the point.
Steve Nash and Jordan Farmar have been out for a while with various injuries, and now Steve Blake will miss the next six weeks with a torn ligament in his elbow. He injured his elbow in late November, but was unable to keep on dealing with the pain.
"I'm just really heartbroken for him," Bryant said. "He's put in a lot of hard work and played phenomenally."
With players out, scoring may not come easy vs. Oklahoma City, which has played with ferocity on both sides of the ball.
"We put our mind set every time we set out on defense first and on the team first," Kevin Durant said. "That's what we have been doing. We have putting everything aside. We put our individual stats, shots, rebounds, and assists aside. We are grinding our system offensively and defensively.
"We have to just keep it up. We just have to have that mindset where we can't let anything distract us from what we want to do in the game." Offensively he isn't so shabby either, checking in at 28.4 points a night.
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