watching kobe give up in that game didnt' surprise me, the guy won his championships and he's not hungry anymore. it's not that he's less of a player then nash or king james, he simply plays for different things now. i'm sure when nash or james reach the point kobe is at now, they'll be running out of steam too.
all things aside tho, the only way lakers will ever win a championship again is if kobe's numbers per game in playoffs are equal to the other guys on his team. if lakers spread the ball and slowed the game down like phil wanted them to, they would have smoked the suns. coaching that team is a waste of phil jackson's genius imo.
as for nash vs kobe, i'll take nash over him anyday. while kobe can score a ton of points, he can really f*ck up a tempo of a team by controlling the ball too much. nash on the other hand can make any team into a 100x better squad. i'll bet u anything phil jackson would probably give up 2 of his rings to have nash on his team instead of kobe. there are a dozen amazing scorers in the nba who are just as good if not better then kobe, but nash is the #1 playmaker in the nba. you can't top that.