Will Kobe be happy if Lakers don't win?
Doug Robinson
Now he's happy.
Now he talks nice about his teammates and shares the ball with them.
Now he wants to be a Laker for life.
Now he's an MVP.
With his official coronation as the Most Valuable Player of the NBA Tuesday, Kobe Bryant finally has everything he wanted, except a world championship when he was Da Man and not somebody's sidekick. Bryant has transformed himself into the perfect basketball player.
Just brace yourself if things ever go awry again. We've seen Bryant at such times, and it's not a pretty sight.
Bryant is happy now, and all it took was to give him everything he desired.
Want the team to rid itself of the best center of this generation? Next question.
Want to be the lone star of the team? Got it.
Want to be surrounded by players he can call "my guys"? Next question.
Want the organization to cater to your every whim? Done.
The media and Laker fans have fully bought into the New Kobe — the new attitude, the joy, the unselfish play, the winning. Why wouldn't he be all those things now? He got his way — or it was the highway. The Laker fans who are chanting "MVP!" are the same ones who were booing him in the season opener.
It wasn't that long ago that he refused to shoot the ball in the fourth quarter in an on-court pout.
There was an amateur video that turned up on the Internet of Bryant profanely trashing his team.
He reportedly still has a chilly relationship with owner Jerry Buss, his long-time loyal ally, and he doesn't speak to some Laker officials.
As the L.A. Times' Mark Heisler put it, Bryant "lurched" from crisis to crisis of his own creation the last few years. The rape case. The feud with Phil Jackson. The staredowns and putdowns of teammates. The battle of egos with Shaquille O'Neal. The resulting destruction of a team that had won three NBA titles.
The irony is that he spent years complaining about the lack of talent around him after refusing to make nice with O'Neal and playing a part in the breakup of a talented team.
Not that he was asking much. All he ever wanted was to win championships and be the shining star of the team, the centerpiece of the organization, the leading scorer, the leading man. He had no interest in playing Sundance to somebody's Butch. He wanted it to be his team, and so it is.
All of the above will always dim Bryant's stardom, which is a shame, because he is possibly the most skilled basketball player ever. Yes, he might be better than Jordan. Has there ever been a more athletic player in the game? In any game? He can run, jump, score, shoot like no one else, and he has Karl Malone's work ethic to boot.
With everything going his way now, Bryant is left to cover his trail of ungraceful moments, and it's the one thing he can't pull off. Asked if he was happy that Kupchak was patient with his trade requests, Bryant said, "The other way around. I've been sitting around for four years, waiting to get it done. That showed a lot of my patience on my part."
Uh, let's try again. Asked if he is happy now with the job that Kupchak has done, he gave him a backhanded compliment, explaining that Kupchak had improved his grade from an F to an A-plus.
And Bryant gets an MVP trophy, and how happy is he now with the current state of affairs? "I love the weather," he says. "I love my '63 drop-top Impala. I love the 405 and I love my guys."
My guys? Well, it is his team.
E-mail: drob@desnews.com
Recent comments
wow - I'm totally blown away by your crack analysis of bandwagon...
re; McKay | May 7, 2008 at 8:01 p.m.
All of us in Utah need to give credit to Kobe and quit hating him...
Jazz Fan | May 7, 2008 at 7:53 p.m.
Any chance Robinson ever writes a good article - what a poor effort...
Anonymous | May 7, 2008 at 7:46 p.m.
