You’ll be happy and (I’m guessing) relieved to know this column will NOT be about the pros and cons, the merits and demerits, the whys and why nots, of trading Kobe Bryant.
I’ve read enough of those to be www.bloggedout.com.
Besides, there’s really only one reason the Lakers can’t trade him right now, or maybe not at all this season: It’s called $89.24 per ticket, highest average ticket price in the NBA.
You think Laker fans are gonna want to pay that to see Luol Deng? Deng right they don’t.
No, this isn’t about wins and losses, the quality of Kobe’s teammates, his court compatibility with Lamar Odom or the ticking of Kobe’s athletic biological clock.
For professional purposes, Kobe and his Laker teammates get along just fine.
If the Lakers changed owners tomorrow, Kobe would buy two more mansions here and sing “I Love L.A.” on Leno.
Plain and simple, this is about a broken marriage, a love affair gone sour.
It’s about a high-end employee who has decided he hates his bosses and can’t work for them anymore.
I mean, he WILL work for them because he has to, and because he’s a pro, and because it’s a lot easier being unhappy on the job when you’re making $22 million a year, $14 million of which you’ve already collected up front in one very fat check.
But Kobe Bryant is working for the Buss family under strong, silent, yet unmistakable protest.
This is about the relationship between Bryant and the two Busses being over, done, kaput, finito. Get it?
Or as Kobe himself would tell you because he knows Italian, capiche?
This is about hurt feelings and bitter resentments and (figuratively) having to be in bed with someone who makes your skin crawl.
I don’t know Kobe personally, but I know people, I feel Kobe’s vibe, intuit his emotional withdrawl from the Lakers; so when I watched his face and body language Tuesday night against New Orleans, I saw a man seething on the inside, a man now fully disconnected from the people who sign his check, a man who does not want to be where he is one second longer than he absolutely has to.
Laker fans, I hate saying this as much as you dislike reading it, because who doesn’t love watching Kobe Bryant play basketball? But it is over. Irrevocably and irretrievably finished. The Lakers improving by 10 wins or Andrew Bynum morphing into his mentor, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, isn’t going to change that inalienable fact.
What Kobe said last summer, Kobe meant. He wants out, and that hasn’t changed at all.
Chicago, Dallas, Washington, Pluto, Wherever.
Just out.
If anything, Kobe today is even more firmly entrenched in his position than he was in July.
He has boxed himself into this corner and there are four defenders around him that even he can’t dribble through.
Now, there is a big part of me that wants to tell him: C’mon, kid, grow up. You don’t like YOUR bosses? Try working for jerks when you’re making 10 bucks an hour! You’re in the real world now and it ain’t always pretty. But look on the bright side: You still take the most shots, play the most minutes, sell the most jerseys and make the most money. And you live in Newport Beach. So over this you’re unhappy? I want to tell him: Son, you’re a long way from a thousand feet underground breathing coal in a mine in Pennsylvania, so instead of wallowing in pettiness, can’t you just be happy for the many blessings you do enjoy?
The other voice I hear, maybe not as strong but present nonetheless, tells me that if the Fat Lady indeed has sung on the Bryant-Buss relationship, then fine. End it. Cut the cord. It is becoming more joyless watching Kobe’s nightly highlight show while knowing he can’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge.
And because the story is still out there, etched on the very face of Kobe Bryant, you tried and true Laker fans might as well come to grips with the idea that there is no such thing as equal value in a trade, unless it’s Lebron James. At least then you’re in the conversation. But even if the Bulls give the Lakers everyone they want–Deng, Heinrich, Gordon and Tyrus Thomas–the Lakers will still be missing the one thing you can never replace, the one thing their fans are making a house payment to see, the incredible star power of Kobe Bryant.
And so unless both aggrieved sides go to mediation, or marital counseling, this looks likes it’s going to end badly, one way or the other. Like War of the Roses, with Michael Douglas dangling from a chandelier and Kathleen Turner crumpled on the perfectly polished marble floor.
Even if Kobe sucks it up, they win 54 and go to the Western finals, it looks like nothing short of a one-way plane ticket out of Los Angeles is going to soothe the hurt feelings or repair the fractured dynamic.
Right now Kobe Bryant is with the Lakers, but he is not of them.
by Ted Green
SportsHubLA
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