SALT LAKE CITY — Larry Krystkowiak walked into the Varsity Club Room at the U.’s basketball facility for his weekly press conference, carrying a yellow Los Angeles Lakers number 24 jersey and hung it on the front of the rostrum.
Like many folks in the sports world, the Ute basketball coach had personal interactions with Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash Sunday, and was more than willing to share them for nearly half of his 25-minute interview.
Krystkowiak had played for five NBA teams before going to play in France for a year and in his final season, played for a short time with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1996-97 when Bryant was a rookie.
The Lakers’ coach at the time was Del Harris, who had coached Krystkowiak in Milwaukee. Krystkowiak knew the Lakers had some injuries to their big men and sort of as a joke sent a message to Harris, asking for a 10-day contract. Before he knew it, Krystkowiak was playing for the Lakers, wearing No. 7 alongside Bryant’s No. 8.
Krystkowiak said a lot of people don’t remember that Bryant’s first season, it “wasn’t all roses for Kobe,” who only averaged 15 minutes per game and didn’t even play in several games.
“I’m trying to figure if I can validate it, but I’m certain that there were a couple of games in that run for me that there were two guys on the Laker roster on that stat sheet that got DNP-CDs and it was me and Kobe,” Krystkowiak said.
He’s right. A check of stats in late February in 1997 shows that Krystkowiak and Bryant each had a couple of DNP-CDs together, which stands for “did not play, coach’s decision. In fact, Bryant had 10 in his rookie season.
Krystkowiak’s relationship was renewed later when he went back to the NBA as a coach in Milwaukee 10 years after playing with the Lakers. He coached the Bucks as an assistant and head coach from 2006-08.
Krystkowiak said he talked with his team Monday about the tragedy, but doesn’t feel it will be a distraction to his team this week, as it heads to southern California for a pair of games Thursday at USC and Sunday at UCLA.
“To me we should be playing for Kobe,” he said. “It creates a little bit of an inspiration and a motivation. He was a great role model of how to play the game. In times like these it should be a great motivation.”
Krystkowiak went on to say that he hopes something good will come out of Bryant’s death, as tragic as it was for him and his daughter and the others in the crash.
“The last time I felt like this was 9/11 where it just hits you in the gut,” he said. “I know at the same time, our country was kind of brought together, politically, religiously and everybody was really compassionate to one another. Unfortunately it takes things like this where you kind of open up your eyes and it brings everybody together. Hopefully this is something that brings everybody together, not just in the sports world, but with some of the craziness going on. I think the world can be a better place.”
NCAA GOAL: The latest NET rankings, which the NCAA uses to help determine which teams make the NCAA tournament, the Pac-12 is sitting pretty with four teams in the top 20 and three more in position for berths in the NCAA tournament.
Utah comes in at 74, which means the Utes will need to move up another 25 spots or so to be in consideration for an NCAA berth in March.
Krystkowiak says the NCAA Tournament is always his team’s goal every year.
“I know what we’re trying to achieve and that’s getting a ticket to the Big Dance,” he said. ”There’s ways that can happen. I’ve said it every year — until somebody tells me we’re not going, that’s what we believe.”
The other NET numbers in the Pac-12 are as follows: Arizona 10, Oregon 16, Colorado 17, Stanford 18, USC 40, Washington 45, Arizona State 56, Oregon State 90, Washington State 108, UCLA 124 and Cal 155.
UTE NOTES: The UCLA game is set for 1 p.m. MT on Super Bowl Sunday and Krystkowiak is disappointed that his team will be flying home and have to miss the first half of the game ... After the two weekend games, the Utes will come back home for games against Stanford and Cal next Thursday and Saturday ... Utah leads the conference in free throw shooting at 74.6% and Rylan Jones is second in the Pac-12 in free throw percentage at 87.9% ... Timmy Allen, who has led the league in scoring most of the season, has fallen to No. 4 at 19.0 points per game ... Allen is seventh in rebounding at 7.58 rpg ... Jones is fourth in assists at 4.94 per game ... Utah is second behind Arizona in home attendance at 10,730.