Coming into this NBA season the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers looked like they had legitimate shot at repeating with the addition of defensive specialist Ron Artest and the resigning of both Lamar Odom and youngster Shannon Brown.

With all the pieces in place and Andrew Bynum coming back healthy and motivated with his goal of being an All-Star, the Lakers were on their way to possibly building another Lakers dynasty in Los Angeles. Not only did the Lakers have all the right pieces to the puzzle for another championship run, but the most important piece to the Lakers title defense in Kobe Bryant is content and extremely happy to still be wearing purple and gold after winning his fourth title in Los Angeles.

The only problem the Lakers were facing coming into this season was the health of forward Pau Gasol who suffered a hamstring injury just before the start of the season. Without Gasol in the paint the Lakers had to change up their gameplan and be ready for opposing teams to attack their now weak frontcourt.

As a way to evolve without Pau in the first ten games of the season, Kobe Bryant altered his game by becoming more of post player instead of perimeter player like we are all used to seeing. The same thing happen with Michael Jordan as he started to get on in years with the Chicago Bulls and as a result MJ added the deadly turnaround jumper to his game and once again became virtually unguardable.

One of the biggest comparisons Kobe has gotten to MJ has been making this transition to more of post game this season and doing it as well as MJ did back in the day!

As a result, the Los Angeles Lakers are arguably the best team in the NBA once again with the best record in the NBA at 17-3 and are number one in the NBA power rankings for the third week in a row!