With an aging supporting cast that couldn’t consistently knock down perimeter jumpers or stay in front of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s trio of perimeter stars, the Los Angeles Lakers were a heavy underdog coming into their second-round series. But while their lack of perimeter athleticism ended up costing them for the second straight year, Kobe Bryant is, as always, the big story out of Los Angeles.

After disappointing fourth quarter performances in Games 2 and 4, Kobe came into Game 5 on a mission. He was dialed in on every possession, fighting for offensive position on the low block and repeatedly taking the ball to the rim. He did everything in his power to will his team to victory, but it wasn’t even close to enough.

At the age of 33, with over 1,300 NBA regular season and playoff games under his belt, there’s only so much he can do on the court. Bryant scored 42 points in Game 5, but he needed 33 shots to do it. Even more revealing were the rest of his numbers: 5 rebounds, 0 assists and 2 turnovers. That’s what happens when a volume scorer who can’t impact the paint on either side of the ball tries to take over a playoff game.

As Kobe himself admitted afterwards, at this point in his career, the end is a lot closer than the beginning. He cited the Spurs continued relevance as a reason why the Lakers shouldn’t be written off, but San Antonio wouldn’t be where they are today if Tim Duncan insisted on having the offense run through him and not Tony Parker. For the Lakers to get back to the Western Conference Finals, Kobe is going to have to make a similar transition.

Mike Brown called the Lakers offense an “equal opportunity system”, but even a cursory glance at the stat sheet and game film would show that’s not the case. Kobe took a prodigious amount of shots this season, leading the league with a 35.67 usage rating. One player hoisting up that many shots isn’t just bad for team chemistry off-the-court, it makes it hard for the rest of the roster to stay in a rhythm offensively.

While Andrew Bynum’s immature behavior has drawn most of the headlines this season, the root cause is fairly obvious. In the regular season, Bynum took 13 shots a game and shot 56% from the floor; Kobe took 23 and shot 43%. Just like Kobe in 2004, he sees an older player holding him back from how good he could be and he’s tired of waiting.

It would be hard for Kobe to cede control to a big man whose effort level and intensity is noticeably inconsistent, but that’s where he needs to mentor and support Bynum and not use his struggles as an excuse to fire up fade-away jumpers.

There’s no shame in a future Hall of Famer becoming a role player. Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Kidd have made that transition work on elite teams, and it’s one Dirk Nowitzki wishes he could make in Dallas. No player, no matter his accomplishments, is bigger than the game and no amount of hard work, dedication and willpower can defeat Father Time.

The cupboard certainly isn’t bare for the Lakers: in a league getting smaller by the year, they have two of the last seven-footers who can score with their back to the basket. There isn’t a frontline in the NBA as big or as talented as Bynum and Gasol, something Scott Brooks and Kevin Durant were quick to mention in their post-game comments.

If Kobe were surrounded by a cast of athletic shooters, he could seamlessly fit into the role of a playmaker with a powerful left and right 7’0 punch at the front of the rim. And even if he took a step back in the first 46 minutes, the last two would still be his. It’s hard to run offense through the low post in crunch time, as teams can double from all over the floor and dictate who they want shooting the ball.

But while Michael Jordan’s six championships are still in range, they aren’t the only mark Kobe, a consummate student of the game, is chasing. He is 9,000 points behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the all-time scoring list, which would be four more seasons at 25 points a game. But with his shooting percentages continuing to slip, the number of shots he would need to reach that mark would doom the Lakers to four more years of first and second-round exits, regardless of what other pieces they might acquire.

With the final stretch of his career in front of him, Kobe can chase either Jordan or Kareem, but not both.

Over the past year, Luol Deng has been adamant about playing for the Great Britain national team in this summer’s Olympics. It has been a dead-set confidence that has not wavered despite the likelihood of eventually having surgery to repair the torn ligament in his left wrist.

Deng suffered the injury on Jan. 21, forcing him to miss a total of 12 games over the course of the season. Still, he played through the pain, sported a heavily-padded glove on his left wrist and was the Bulls’ model of consistency on both ends of the court throughout the season.

After Chicago’s season-ending Game 6 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on May 10, Deng repeatedly emphasized the impact England has had on his life and on his family. The nation sealed him from the struggles that took place in his native Sudan, and it was in London that he participated in his first organized basketball program.

“Since I was a kid growing up [the Olympics are] something I wanted an opportunity to be a part of,” Deng told reporters. “The fact that it’s in my hometown that I grew up in, in a country that even gave me an opportunity to be here, I’m looking forward to it.”

Yes, it is easy to point the finger at Deng to skip the Olympics because of the $39.9 million over three years that remain on the $71 million deal he signed in 2008. On top of that, the 27-year-old will likely sit out the first month or two of next season due to the inevitable surgery, a scenario that would leave the Bulls without their two best players in Derrick Rose (torn ACL) and Deng. Yet, some observers are oblivious to the meaning Deng holds behind representing Great Britain this summer in London, failing to be cognizant of the mark he plans to leave as the flag-bearer in a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

In the grand scheme of things, it is much more meaningful than one or two months of regular season action.

For Deng, donning a Great Britain jersey at the Olympics is the lifelong goal he has strived to attain. He has spent time giving back to the community throughout his entire career, receiving various service awards from the NBA, and now he aspires to give back once more – this time to a country that has put him in his current position, a nation that is set to make its first-ever basketball appearance in the Olympics. Deng has the league’s collective bargaining agreement in his favor, as well: Nowhere does it give teams the power to bar players from playing in the Olympics.

Nevertheless, Deng’s stance has opened him up to some backlash, while Bulls general manager Gar Forman did not sound as supportive as Deng probably would have liked during his comments last week. Forman said the team would speak to Deng about the injury in the next week and he pinned the primary focus on health, not the Olympics.

“Our biggest concern with Luol is his health, and I know that’s our fans’ biggest concern and I know that’s his biggest concern,” Forman told the assembled media. “That’s the next step, to get with Luol, see where he’s at and then come up with a plan going forward.”

Deng’s agent, Herb Rudoy, confirmed Sunday night that both parties will meet sometime this coming week.

At this point, the Bulls’ best-case scenario for Deng is that the torn ligament will cure on its own. Kobe Bryant suffered a similar injury during the preseason, and his version of the ailment healed in seven weeks as he played. Clearly, every player’s body is different, and Deng has not ruled out bypassing surgery, depending on how his wrist responds to some rest and the Olympics.

Ultimately, the message that the Bulls’ management will deliver to Deng won’t matter. Deng is 100 percent committed, and one source with knowledge of the small forward’s thinking maintained on Sunday that he will “for sure [play]” for Great Britain – and rightfully so.

Deng spent four months gutting out the gruesome wrist injury for the betterment of the team, for the sake of buying into the belief that the Bulls truly had a special team ready to take the next step. Now, he wants his dream to come to fruition, yet another giveback to the adopted nation that provided him a cover, an outlet, many years ago.

And you thought the Lakers stunning Game 2 loss to the Thunder was a heartbreaker? Game 4 loss might have been worse.

For the second time in three games, the Lakers blew a fourth quarter lead and failed to execute at crunch time.  Somehow, the team with five championships in eleven years and three NBA Finals appearances in the last five has inexplicably lost their poise when the game matters most.  Somehow Kobe Bryant, the NBA’s greatest closer, has forgotten how to close out a game.

Asked why, a tight-lipped Bryant shook his head.

“They’re surrounding me, they’re surrounding Andrew {Bynum]. Simple as that.”

A night after bailing the Lakers out at the end of Game 3, Bryant missed 8 of 10 shots in the fourth quarter of Game 4, then blamed his teammates for not being aggressive enough.

“The shots that I took were tough shots,” Bryant said. “They didn’t fall for me tonight. Either we got to free me up to get better looks in the fourth quarter, or other guys got to be aggressive, one or the other.”

In the latter part of the regular season, Bryant seemed to turn a corner, admitting that he couldn’t do it by himself, that he needed his teammates. He facilitated while bolstering his teammates’ confidence. He let Andrew Bynum and Steve Blake win critical games with fourth quarter shots usually reserved for himself. When he sat out seven games with an injury, he reveled in his new role as unofficial assistant coach, giving out pointers, smiling, looking for all the world like the consummate teammate.

The good feelings and stellar play carried over through the first four games of the Denver series, when the Lakers took a 3-1 lead. Then they lost their mojo, let the Nuggets back into the series, survived a shaky Game 7, then found themselves in deep water against a Thunder team that is younger and athletically superior. Bryant has gone back to questioning his teammates – he sounded disappointed that Metta World Peace decided to trust Blake with the game-winning shot at the end of Game 2, despite the fact that Blake was clearly open and Bryant clearly was not. And when the game tightens, Bryant – like the rest of the Lakers – stop trying to pound the ball down low and resort to perimeter shots, which often lead to long rebounds and play right into OKC’s fastbreaks.

At this point, it’s tough to tell which is coming first: is Bryant taking over the game because his teammates are deferring to him, or are they deferring to him because they’re waiting for him to take over?

Whatever the answer, there’s a strange disconnect that’s enveloped this team for the past year.  Maybe things would’ve been different is Derek Fisher had still been around, but Fisher was no help a year ago when the Mavericks swept the Lakers out of the second round – which is where all the problems seem to have started.  Or maybe they started when David Stern vetoed the Chris Paul trade, Lamar Odom was shipped out, and Pay Gasol, nearly a Houston Rocket, slid into a season-long funk.

It’s also become clear that Bynum and Gasol do not play well together. This was not an issue during the back-to-back championship run, because Bynum often sat the fourth quarter (or large portions of it) and the Lakers had the slashing Lamar Odom to help keep defenses from collapsing the paint. Now, Gasol looks tentative and passive, and Oklahoma City is swarming Bynum down low.

All this aside, the Lakers almost rewrote the script that everyone had written for them after Game 3. The script suggested that the Lakers had spent all their energy pulling out a must-win, and that the Thunder’s younger legs would carry them in the second game of a back-to-back, the Lakers gradually succumbing to age and fatigue. 

But this is Hollywood, where scripts are constantly rewritten. Before the game, Mike Brown assured the media horde that the Lakers were fresh and ready for Game 4, and then they came out and proved it. Bynum was a beast, hitting 7 of his first 8 shots and having his way with whomever OKC threw at him. Bryant was at his playoff best, hitting 10 of 18 shots, dishing when he needed to, staying aggressive.  At the end of the first half, he responded to Kendrick Perkins blocking his layup attempt by coming back to hit a twisting, driving shot high off the glass to send the Lakers to halftime with a 10-point lead.

The Lakers kept the pressure on in the second half. For 40 minutes they were in complete control, maintaining a low double-digit lead, never letting the Thunder get closer than 7 points. OKC’s body language was frustrated; after Bryant found Bynum under the basket with a nifty pass that led to a dunk, Kevin Durant and Kendrick Perkins could only shake their heads. With a little over nine minutes to play, the lead was 13, Staples Center was rocking, and it appeared the series was headed back 2-2 for Game 5. 

Then the wheels came off the Lakers offense. As Bynum said later, Perkins started fronting him, and he got swallowed up in the post. Bynum got one shot off in the final five minutes, a hurried miss from the baseline.  Russell Westbrook and Durant took over the game.  Bryant kept shooting, Pau Gasol never got off a shot in the final 12 minutes, and no other Laker stepped up.

As Thunder coach Scott Brooks said afterwards, “I don’t know how it happened, but it did.”

No play epitomized the Lakers’ collapse more than the egregiously bad pass that Gasol made with the score tied. Holding the ball in the right frontcourt, he passed up an open shot and attempted a cross-court pass to World Peace. Durant anticipated it, picked it off with one swoop of his long arms, and calmly moved down the court, backing Metta on his heels before launching a long three that the entire building seemed to know was going in.

"It left my hand, (and) I was thinking, 'If this doesn't go in, it's going to be a terrible shot,'" Durant said.

It wasn’t, of course. Gasol’s pass, unfortunately, may be Lakers’ fans lingering memory of him when he is likely traded this summer.

“I could have probably taken a shot at that point,” Gasol admitted. “I thought I had a good look to Metta at the three-point line…. I could’ve shot it, I could’ve dribbled it… I am unselfish, and sometimes it kind of plays against me. Unfortunately, I made a mistake.”

Said Bryant of Gasol: “He’s looking to swing the ball too much, he’s gotta shoot it, he’s got to be more aggressive.  Got to shoot the ball, got to drive to the basket, and he will be the next game.”

A game that could well be the Lakers’ last of this often confounding season.