Kobe Bryant entered the NBA as a 17 year-old rookie out of Lower Merion High School. The Lakers shooting guard has been the league’s top player throughout the 21st Century. A perennial All-Star. 81 points in a single game breaking Elgin Baylor’s team record. 4 championships. The top selling tee-shirt in the USA.
New York basketball fans have abandoned the Knicks for the Celtics. I was surprised to see in Frank’s during the pre-season that the clientele preferred the Celtics broadcast to the game from MSG. I wore my Celtics shirt at the bar. One regular was a LA fan. Their rivalry was important to us. We have the basketball jones.
“Kobe ain’t shit.” I’d greet Larry and he’d respond, “Kevin Garnett ain’t shit.”
Our riposte were good-natured. Kobe was a lock for the Hall of Fame in Springfield as if KG, however Kobe’s name is spoken by basketball fans as if someone shit in their mouth.
“It’s his attitude.”
I didn’t buy this excuse. Most basketball players have attitude otherwise they couldn’t get playing time in the NBA.
“He only thinks about himself.”
Everyone in then world is the same way. The ‘woman and children’ talk is fine and good until the Titanic is sinking in the cold Northern Atlantic. It’s ‘everything man for himself’ in the best of situations.
“He raped a woman.” Kobe had been arrested for sexual assault in Colorado. The same circumstances as Mike Tyson, except Kobe escaped from the threat of prison by paying off his accuser. His wife’s support was rewarded with a $4 million dollar diamond. They are a girl’s best friend.
I understood that Kobe was facing a multi-faceted antipathy from non-Lakers fans.
“He’s a philander.” They say the hardest thing in the NBA is for a player to not break into a smile while kissing their wife good-bye before a road trip. Wilt Chamberlain boasted of having sexed over 20,000 women. Tiger Woods was nailed for a mere 15. Kobe has to be in triple digits. It’s no big thing. I’m in the same league.
“Kobe snitched on Shaq.”
This was the heart of the matter.
Kobe had sold out the Lakers center to the police, saying, “He should have done what Shaq does … that Shaq would pay his women not to say anything.”
After that statement Kobe has worn the snitch jacket.
“You dirty rat.”
Those immortal words were falsely attributed to James Cagney in PUBLIC ENEMY, however finking out a friend is considered a sin as grievous as shitting on the wedding cake,which was why I was surprised the other day by General Stanley A. McChrystal stating to the media that the Afghanistan Occupation Forces were received good intelligence from reliable sources. This claim has worked well in Washington. General Stanley A. McChrystal actually believes the USA can succeed in Afghanistan, where the British Empire and Soviet Union have failed, but the on-the-ground reality is that if someone says someone is snitching out the bad guys,then the bad guys will kill all the someones they can find until no one is saying a word.
Afghanistan is not the NBA.
Betrayal is a mortal sin punished by death.
Usually with pain most extreme.
And General Stanley A. McChrystal has forgotten one of the prime tenets of crime.
“You can only snitch up.”
Like Kobe on Shaq.
Which is why I say,”Kobe ain’t shit.” and neither is Stanley A. McChrystal.
He’s 100% Army and calls it the way he sees it.