Dallas May Try 'Kobe Rules' To Slow Bryant

The Lakers visit Dallas tonight, in a battle of two of the West's top teams. L.A. surprisingly has a better record than the Mavs, who recently won 12 straight games after beginning 0-4. With Lamar Odom sidelined due to a sprained knee, the focus will be on Kobe to see if he can singlehandedly carry the Lakers to victory.

Mavs coach Avery Johnson is well aware of this, and even discussed what he may do to try to stop Bryant from doing what he did to the Mavs last season. In case you might have forgotten, Kobe dropped 62 points on Dallas in just three quarters of play.

"With the rules nowadays, it's hard to really stop people individually. You've got to get into their legs. Anything hands-on or upper-body stuff is going to be a foul. So try to get into their legs, just get a low center of gravity, lower than those guys, and get into the passing lanes."

And if that doesn't work?

"You've got to go to total deny, and if they're still getting it done, you've just got to tip your hat to them."

Hopefully for the Mavs they can get the ball out of Kobe's hands and force people like Smush Parker and Luke Walton to beat them. If not, they may just see a replay of last season's ridiculous performance, which can be seen in the video below. By the way, the Mavs may want to consider retiring those alternate uni's. At least in that game, they definitely didn't have the desired effect.