Kobe Bryant

I realize that 90% of the people who read this blog (my parents, my siblings, my friends) do not follow the NBA very closely.

You guys are just going to have to deal with some NBA news for a moment.

Kobe Bryant is widely acknowledged as the most prolific scorer in the NBA. He's a fair to good defender. He's a good to excellent late-game player. And he's one of the only guys in the league who seems to really, passionately, care about winning. This week he's gone on a rampage about the ineptitude of the Lakers' front office, then today announced that he wants to be traded from the Lakers. This is so ridiculous that I had to invoke my "two source" rule.

I'm not sure if anyone else is aware of this, but Kobe Bryant is also one of the most widely reviled players in the league. Even before the whole rape trial (charges were dropped), Kobe had the reputation of being a colossal jerk whose arrogance was Jordan-esque without any of the accomplishments. Then he racked up 3 rings as Shaq's side-kick and became the 'too-successful' guy that everyone loves to hate. Then he threw Shaq under the bus while being interviewed by the police. Then he appeared to orchestrate Shaq's departure from the Lakers.

Kobe has become the lightning-rod for everything NBA-related. The Blogoverse screams constantly that he was robbed from the MVP award the past two seasons, and at the same time the MSM (who votes on the MVP) didn't even let him get close to the award. On a hundred NBA blogs you will find one group of people saying that if you don't like Kobe, you don't like basketball. At the same time you'll see other people saying Kobe represents everything that is wrong with basketball. These people tend to not get along, with increasingly escalating rhetoric.

So now that Kobe is demanding a trade, expect all coverage of the NBA playoffs to disappear from the blogoverse or the MSM. Remember when Allen Iverson got traded earlier this year, and we didn't hear anything else about it for weeks (lame)? This is bigger. Whoever acquires Kobe is going to have to gut their team to get him, and then they are going to be surprised when he really doesn't make them much better. Oh, and for the record, I think he'll end up in a Lakers uniform next year.

I think this says something about how the NBA is being perceived: Everyone is looking towards the future. Nobody cares about the present. Why? Because the present sucks. The Spurs are the best team in the league. They are lead by the greatest PF of all time, but also by a guy dating an annoying actress and another guy who could be described as a 6-6 version of Vlade Divac without the popular appeal.

I think this is crazy. The NBA has completely lost it. I'm at the point, as a diehard fan who will probably never really give it up, where I just don't care. The rules are enforced asymmetrically, the officiating is awful, and most of the teams were trying to lose this year.