Utah's struggles are nothing new against the league's MVP

EL SEGUNDO- Short of tying Kobe Bryant’s shoelaces together, NBA players cannot seem to stop the Lakers guard. Need evidence? Just watch him during a game.

Certainly the Utah Jazz, like the Denver Nuggets, didn’t know how to slow Bryant on Sunday.

The best the Jazz could do was foul him, sending him to the line for 23 free throws. He finished with 38 points.

“All you can do is (use) team help because he is such a good player,” Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko said. “It’s very hard to guard him one-on-one. The whole team needs to be motivated to help and help the helper.”

Not even Bryant’s teammates have figured out how to stop him in practice.

Before signing with the Lakers this season, Ira Newble often was the guy assigned to guard Bryant no matter what team he was playing on. Newble calls himself a “Kobe Troublemaker.”

“I’m not a Kobe Stopper,” he said.

His experience going up against Bryant, though, made Newble the perfect candidate to guard him in practice. But practice doesn’t make perfect.

“What makes Kobe so tough to guard is that he shoots the ball so well under pressure with a hand in his face,” Newble said. “There are not many guys like him. He is one of the best scorers ever. He makes every shot tough to guard, and you’re not going to stop him.”

Newble, like Sasha Vujacic, said the only chance an opposing team has of stopping Bryant is to use double-teams.

“One-on-one he is unstoppable, so that’s why you have to double-team him and be ready to help on the weak side,” Vujacic said.

Luke Walton gets his share of time facing Bryant in practice as well. He said the coaches attempt to play the same defense an opponent will play and depending on the team the rest of the players “might trap him all over the court. We might just guard him with one person and let that person get torched and try to stop everybody else.”

Does it work?

“It works the same as it does for everyone else in the NBA,” Walton said

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