Kobe Bryant: “’Everybody shut up. Let us work.”

Hey, Charles Barkley and Shaq. Hey, Lakers haters who have savored the past week. Hey Lakers fans. Yes you. The ones saying the it’s all Mike Brown’s fault the Lakers are 0-2. The ones blaming the Princeton offense for everything except Hurricane Sandy.

All of you. Kobe Bryant has two words for you:

Shut up.

Via ESPNLA.com.

“I’ve won so I can [tell people to shut up],” Bryant said. “For Mike it might be a little tough to say that so I’ll say it for him, ‘Everybody shut up. Let us work. At the end of the day, you’ll be happy with the result as you normally are.

Lakers fans have overreacted to the Lakers 0-2 start in a way Angelinos normally reserve for how they drive on the 405 when it starts to rain (“OMG, better slow down to 35, it’s sprinkling”). They have taken to the Internet and sports talk radio calling for the Princeton offense to go the way of the Dodo, to have it replaced by random chaos because that might be better.

“I don’t understand,” Bryant said with a smile when asked about the distress the Lakers poor start has created amongst the city. “And I’m trying to bite my tongue and not calling them ‘dumb’ which I kind of just did.

“But they’ve seen us win multiple championships here in an offense that was tough to learn, that was a sequence of options that weren’t set plays, that took five guys getting on the same page and working together. They know how that stuff works, so for them to be so stupid now, for them to say, ‘Oh, let Steve dribble the ball around and create opportunities for everybody, or let Dwight post up or let me Iso’ … It’s, I don’t want to say ‘idiotic,’ but it’s close.”

It’s too early for Lakers fans to panic. Do we need to remind you how the Heat started 9-8 when LeBron James arrived and the world was going to end in Miami (then they made it to the finals)? But the questions about why this Lakers team has been so bad defending the pick-and-roll are legit. So are the questions about whether the hybrid and complex Lakers offense is needed on a team with enough talent where just executing simple sets would overwhelm teams. These are issues the Lakers need to deal with.

In fact, if they don’t start to defend the pick-and-roll better by the time Chris Paul and the Clippers take the Staples Center floor Friday night the Lakers fans will have another ugly loss to freak out about.