Yeah, I have a page of them from P1, but oh well.
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Back to that play. On a serious note, I looked at it again on DVR without all the adrenaline and excitement of live game time.
If you look at the play solely from time and game clock, then it's a stupid, dumb ass play. If the clock is running out and the team has to foul you, then you hold the ball and let 'em foul you. Yet, the play wasn't that straightforward.
Kobe got down the floor soon while his teammates didn't and you can visibly see him waiving at Ron and Pau to not just trot up the court. He had two guys in Nash and Dudley shadowing him from the right side and the sideline on the left side. If he stops at that point, he's trapped by 3 guys since the sideline acts as the third guy, very much similar to Nash getting trapped by Lamar and Luke in game 4 of 2006 where he assumed they would foul but tied him up for a jump ball after he gave up his dribble.
So, instead of slowing down, he kicked it into a higher gear to leave the 2 defenders in their tracks, which he did. By the time he made it to the free throw line, Nash and Dudley were both lost off his trail.
At that point, no one's fouling him, he sees the bucket wide open, with only Frye standing in no man's land between inside the FT line and charge circle, so he jumped straight up, gathered, and attacked with a controlled floater that he has hit many times in his career and even earlier twice in the very 3rd quarter of that game. Frye was able to get back, but Kobe still has what is an easy layup and two since the scouting report, synergy, and game tape all say Frye isn't going to bother jumping to block a shot. It was not Gortat challenging him, in fact it was the fact that Gortat, the lone shot blocker was under the goal after hustling back that made Kobe decide to stop, pull up, and hit the floater.
You can certainly fault him for not stopping at an earlier point and making the cross court pass to Ron, because, given the direction he was going, speed, & momentum his only viable skip pass at all to avoid a trap and possible turnover early on when he stops is right there, unless if he purely stops on a dime before getting to Frye and Frye fouls later. But, he was already pretty much committed the moment he turned the corner and saw the paint wide open.
The play was awkward, foolish, ballsy, risky, dumb, and every other adjective you can use to describe it, BUT he made the best of it by getting a shot that is as easy a lay in for him and knowing the spacing of the floor and who he was attacking. On paper and ideally in a theoretical situation, not a good play, hell it was a horrible play. But, they don't play the game on paper, and that was seen by the end result.
: We're gonna have to send him to the principal's office.
