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I'm guessing it was somewhere along the lines of a violent sexual assault.
Sports of The Times: How Did Kobe's M.J. Imitation Go Wrong?
December 26, 2004
By SELENA ROBERTS
LOS ANGELES
IN the latest of his serial attempts to rehab his manhood
for Christmas, Kobe Bryant spun a few fancy doughnuts in
the lane, at times careering into the belly of Shaquille
O'Neal.
Wasn't it softer before? As Hollywood's vanity experts at
the Staples Center gazed at their beloved O'Neal yesterday,
they must have wondered, what fad diet was he on?
He has gone Kobe-free and looks good for it. So who says
Bryant doesn't make other players better? It is warped this
way, but it always is with Bryant, a player with phenomenal
talent that is misapplied, a man with a wholesome appeal
that has curdled.
Christmas, like every day, was all about Bryant, and his
need to prove he's the Man without understanding the
responsibilities of adulthood. He got his - a whopping 42
points - but the Lakers took the 104-102 overtime loss to
O'Neal's Miami Heat on Bryant's watch. He was obsessive -
shooting 30 times - but his 3-pointer cracked off the rim
at the buzzer.
"I wasn't worried about doing anything crazy or out of my
team's character," O'Neal said after a solid 24 points and
11 rebounds. "I would rather get a win every time."
O'Neal's team finished without him as he watched overtime
on the bench after fouling out. Bryant's team lost with him
as his legs grew leaden once his adrenaline expired.
O'Neal turned the game over to Dwyane Wade, a player he has
mentored since he landed in Miami. Bryant turned the game
over to Lakers extras, players left atrophied from watching
their shooting star shoot until the last second. "I knew
that it wasn't going to go in," O'Neal said of Bryant's
final launch.
Shaq should know. As a Laker, O'Neal was a witness to
Bryant's implosion, a spectator to the deflation of the
league's great hope.
Bryant was once the N.B.A.'s alternative programming to its
hip-hop players when he arrived as a pop star that the
Volvo crowd could embrace. He had Eminem in his music file
but projected Osmond. And while other players had
strip-club punch cards, Kobe soon had a wife waiting for
him at his Pacific Palisades mansion.
He entered the league with an 1100 on his SAT and not one
tattoo. If Allen Iverson appealed to the sneaker-buying
urban youth on the street, Bryant played to the
ticket-buying soccer dads in "The O.C."
He was the great suburban icon as the son of a former
N.B.A. journeyman from the upper-class outskirts of
Philadelphia. He was worldly, but all ball, preferring
Michael Jordan game tapes over PlayStation videogames.
Wasn't he just like Mike? Before long, Bryant had the
Madison Avenue smile and GQ style to go with his Cirque du
Soleil court skills and championship rings. And, as it
turns out, Bryant also channeled Jordan's scoundrel side
behind the family image and his ruthlessness as a teammate.
Bryant was exposed; Jordan was not. While the
hype-come-true bash yesterday invited an inventory to
detail Bryant's plunge to outcast, while he was cast as
Kobe-nezer to Shaq-a-Claus, it was also a moment of
reflection.
Where did Bryant go wrong in his imitation of M. J.? It
began somewhere in suburbia, with his needs indulged by a
doting family, the ball always in his hands.
Somehow, this sheltered existence left him arrested in
development and devoid of street savvy. Bryant never
learned the N.B.A. code: choose pole dancers over hotel
clerks, teammates who make you better and discretion over
snitching.
For two years, Bryant has violated all of the above.
Instead of abiding by the "keep it real" index of N.B.A.
players, Bryant outed himself as a phony. The first sign of
this developed when Bryant, a self-professed glowing father
and husband, was accused of raping a concierge in Eagle,
Colo.
Instead of finding humility, Bryant responded with an odd
mix of arrogance and insecurity. As if to boost his street
cred, Bryant sat still for his first tattoo - which, even
now, seems like a Cracker Jack press-on.
Bryant's rite of passage didn't make him one of the fellas,
though. Without showing any conscience, he parlayed his
free-agent capital into a cudgel to run off Coach Phil
Jackson and O'Neal.
Still, many gave Bryant a pass on hypocrisy until he was
publicly exposed as a tattler this year. All those seasons
of ball hogging, and Bryant chose to dish dirt on his
teammates.
He whispered O'Neal's name into the ears of the police when
cornered in Colorado as he ruminated on ways to pay off his
accuser. And to think, Bryant never thought he needed Shaq.
Then Bryant went to the news media to describe the juicy
tidbits of how he said Karl Malone had hit on his wife,
Vanessa. And yet Bryant's indignant tone had long lost its
credibility.
Jordan never divulged self-incriminating details, forever
playing personal defense as the caretaker of his image. He
was a great player and a high-stakes gambler, a fierce
compe or and an insatiable flirt, a bully and a
manipulator, but he understood the value of teammates,
victories and discretion.
Bryant's transparency is his weakness. You could almost see
through him yesterday, peer right into his desperation to
show up O'Neal. There he was, crashing into O'Neal - the
Corvette versus the brick wall, as Shaq described it last
week - trying to reclaim his image as an untouchable
superstar, as the man of the moment, as the embraceable
star he used to be.
Bryant called the loss a "learning experience," handled a
few more questions and politely left the podium. All that
charm, and little appeal. All those points, and no victory
for Kobe. In this odd way, it's Christmas every day in
Laker Land.
E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/sp...0410e6776f0651
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
I'm guessing it was somewhere along the lines of a violent sexual assault.
What's wrong with his M.J. imitation? He's well on his way to being as widely disliked as Michael Jackson. And if Vanessa catches him fooling around again, he'll have the voice down pat.
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