After the Lakers lost to the Grizzlies by 19 points on Sunday night, Phil Jackson appeared to take a shot at Kobe Bryant.

Bryant scored a game-high 28 points, with 17 coming in the third quarter when he took 12 of the team's 22 shots. Memphis saw its lead increase from nine at halftime to 17 points entering the fourth quarter.

"We get behind early on in the third quarter on some stupid plays -- poor passing, poor transition defense -- and then Kobe has to screw up the game and start energizing the team by going one-on-one and that takes the rest of the guys out as a consequence," Jackson said after the game.

Jackson clarified what he meant when he said "screw up the game" after Monday's practice.

"When a game starts getting out of hand -- and rightly so -- Kobe will crank it up, not screw it up," Jackson said. "I used that term 'screw it up' but not in terms of it being an error or a mistake, but 'crank it up.' He'll go to another notch to try to get us back in the ballgame. That's something we do in the fourth quarter, that's our fourth quarter action, that's how we win ballgames. To have to crank it up and do that in the third quarter, we didn't have much left in the gas tank after that."

Bryant admitted that Jackson's comments weren't totally off base, but that his role on the team is to sometimes handle the scoring load.

"[Jackson] was right, I totally broke the offense, but I did it intentionally because I felt like we needed to get something started because what we were doing just wasn't working," Bryant said. "So, I tried to kick start it and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't but that's my responsibility. When it works out? Great. When it doesn't? I'll take the criticism for it, but I have thick enough skin to be able to do that. ... You just have to take the good with the bad. That's part of my job in the seat that I sit.

"I was trying to win the damn game. We were playing like [expletive], we all were, so I was just trying to get something going, trying to pump a little energy to us and it just didn't work out. But Phil doesn't really care how many shots I take, he just wants me to take them inside of the offense. [Sunday] was one of those days where I was like, '[Expletive] the triangle, I need to get myself going and try to save this damn game,' and it just didn't work out."

Bryant added that he didn't take offense to the comments.

"When you've been around Phil for as many years as I have, we all understand that he likes coaching publicly and I think it's important for the new guys to understand that -- Ron [Artest], Pau [Gasol], guys who kind of have issues with that," Bryant said. "You see myself, you see Fish [Derek Fisher], we understand that's how he coaches so it's fine. You just let him do his job and you go about your business."