Thursday, June 21, 2007

Kobe



W-a-a-h.

Boo hoo hoo (sniffle)

I'm gonna take my ball and go home!

Kobe keeps up trade demands
LOS ANGELES - Intentional or not, Kobe Bryant seems to be doing everything he can to pressure the Los Angeles Lakers into trading him.

So far, it doesn’t appear to be working.

The latest twist in the Bryant saga involves an amateur video of the nine-time All-Star denouncing general manager Mitch Kupchak and teammate Andrew Bynum.

Lakers spokesman John Black said the team was contacted about the video before Bryant first requested to be traded on May 30.

‘‘It doesn’t change our stance at all,’’ Black said a day after saying essentially the same thing - that the team has no plans to trade the two-time defending NBA scoring champion.

‘‘These people called us about a month ago, they told us they wanted to sell it, we told them we had no interest in buying it,’’ Black said. ‘‘That’s the end of the story. There’s been no further contact between them and us.’’

Kupchak declined further comment, saying, ‘‘I think enough has been said.’’


Did you hear that, Kobe? Shut up already. Nobody cares.

To judge Kobe as an athlete is easy: he's the best player in the NBA, with the gaudy statistics and the three championship rings to prove it. As a man, he's a petulant crybaby, and a backstabbing punk who cheated on his wife, betrayed his teammates, chased Shaquille O'Neal out of L.A., and publicly trashed the boss who made him rich.

But Kobe's ego has gotten so big, it's squeezed the common sense out of his head. Basketball isn't a one-man game like golf, so nobody, not even a cold-blooded, supernaturally-talented player like Kobe, can do it by himself. In today's NBA, the championship-winning Los Angeles Lakers were an anomaly: they had two Hall of Fame players on the team, not one. Ask Allan Iverson, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Yao Ming, and Kevin Garnett how it feels trying to do it all by yourself every game. Yeah, you'll get big bucks and put up big numbers every game, but that's all. You'll never win the big game.

David Robinson figured out the math. On his way to being one of those great players doomed to never win a championship, a merciful deity dropped Tim Duncan into the laps of the San Antonio Spurs. It would have been easy for the Admiral to be an arrogant prima donna and refuse to share the spotlight with Duncan, but the aging superstar was intelligent enough to realize that this gifted young player could finally help him win a championship. For the Spurs, it was the beginning of a dynasty.

Until Kobe remembers what got him there in the first place, he'll never win another championship again. Boo hoo hoo.



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