Bryant Caught Off Guard

In a phone interview after his eagerly awaited session with Charles Barkley on TNT, Kobe Bryant defended his play in the second half of Game 7 against the Phoenix Suns and expressed surprise, if not disenchantment, with criticism that has since tracked him.

Bryant, who appeared as a TNT in-studio analyst Wednesday night in Atlanta, told The Times that post-Phoenix scrutiny from media members nationally and in Los Angeles was “completely inaccurate.”

Bryant scored 24 points in Game 7, only one in the second half. He missed all three of his second-half shots in the Lakers’ 121-90 loss to the Suns on May 6.

“It’s just a matter of people being completely inaccurate,” Bryant said. “You look at what we had done the entire series, it was the same thing. We had a 12-point deficit in Game 4 [actually eight points]. We had a game plan and we stuck with it. You look at Game 4, I took only 14 shots. People were just inaccurate.”

Bryant, who had one assist and made eight of 16 shots in the Game 7 loss, said he was upset by its what-was-Bryant-doing aftermath.

“It overshadowed how much we evolved as a team and how well we played as a team,” he said. “Luke [Walton] and Kwame [Brown] were stepping in there, Sasha [Vujacic] was stepping up, Ronny Turiaf making big plays ... we evolved tremendously as a team. It would be nice to see people get back to that and see what we did. Nobody expected us to even make the playoffs.”

On other issues, Bryant expressed confidence, his usual mind-set on issues relating to the Lakers’ future.

The Lakers are over the salary cap this summer and will have only the midlevel exception of about $5 million and the biannual exception of $1.67 million to spend on free agents this summer. They also have the 26th selection in a draft that is not overly deep.

“I have confidence. I have faith,” Bryant said. “We’ll obviously make some improvements. I don’t feel we’re that far off. Look at all the noise we just made.”

The Bryant-Barkley ruckus began when Barkley referred to Bryant as “very selfish” immediately after the Lakers lost Game 7. Bryant then defended himself the next day via a series of heated text messages he sent to Barkley.

Their on-air exchange Wednesday began with Barkley backing off a bit, saying he was at fault for informing a national TNT audience last week that Bryant had fired off the 20 or so text messages in protest.

“I think I did make a mistake making that public. He didn’t take it public, I did,” Barkley said. “But I didn’t like the way he played in Game 7 because I didn’t think he was aggressive. I understand why he didn’t like it, me calling him out on national television. He let me know it. And to me, that should have been the end of it.”

Bryant responded to Barkley on Wednesday by referring to the Lakers’ approach of pounding the ball down low to their post players.

“We had a strategy that worked very well for us in three games,” he said. “We tried to keep the strategy going in Game 7, and the other games as well, but it didn’t work for us. But we’re out there to try and win, so to label me as being selfish is something I had to take up with Charles.”

Bryant also said scoring 20 or 25 points in a quarter against the Suns would not have mattered because “they couldn’t care less.”

“It depends who we’re playing,” Bryant said. “What I mean by that is there are certain teams you can demoralize by scoring a lot of points. If I come out against a certain team ... if I go out there and score 20, 25 points in a quarter, it takes their momentum away. Phoenix is not one of those teams. I’ve scored 20 points against them in a quarter. It doesn’t do anything to them. To demoralize them, you have to stop them [defensively].”