September 19, 2003

• Leave Kobe Bryant Alone.
  
  He is just a man, like you and me.  He is a gifted young man, engulfed in fortune and fame.  A man that is surrounded by temptations that come to someone of his status.  A man that faces the pressure of living up to the good boy image that the media, the sponsors, and the people hoping to relive in the glory days of the NBA made up for him.
  
  But he is just a man that wants to play basketball.  A man that can cheat on his wife.  A man that committed adultery, and possibly rape.  A man that can make mistakes just as easily as you and I can.
  
  So please.  Stop freaking out about his tarnished image - an image that he didn't even want, but had to accept because so many people out there wants to make him "the next" certain greatest basketball player in this world.  It's not fair to him.
  
  If you have no idea who this "person" everyone wants to make Kobe to be, you've either been living under the rock for the last 20 years.  Or you're just a bandwagon hopper that started watching basketball because you live in LA and that its team has won 3 championships in the last 4 seasons.
  
  In that case, you should refrain from making ignorant remarks about how you can't come to grip that Kobe would do such wrong, while having no doubt that the most electrifying basketball player in history, Michael Jordan, would do such horrible things.
  
  Michael Jordan, during the early days of his career, was EVERYTHING Kobe is AND MORE!
  
  Why do you think shoe companies are fighting to get young players contracts before these young men even prove they can play in the big league (see LeBron James)?  How do you think NBA players got their ludicrous multi-million dollar salaries?  Why do you think McDonald's were so eager to have Kobe's endorsement?
  
  Because Kobe Bryant has a slim chance to actually to be like Mike.  And it has always been about Mike.  No one else.
  
  What did Michael Jordan do that was so great?  Let's do this reversely:  What DIDN'T Kobe Bryant do?
  
  - He didn't increase the rating of NBA ratings.
  - He didn't give the NBA another upward salary spike.
  - He ain't best pals with Bugs Bunny.
  - I don't remember seeing him on the Wheaties cereal box.
  - He certainly didn't help his sponsors to become multi-billion corporations.
  
  Michael Jordan did.
  
  Jordan was the ultimate poster boy for anything and everything, from car companies to foreign country relationships.
  
  And he'll ALWAYS be the man, hands down.
  
  Jordan, too, is still just a man that can make mistakes, and suffers the scrutiny by the media.
  
  What YOU need to do is to wake up and recognize that if "the man" with the ultimage image have his faults, surely will a man that has only "the man's" replicated image.
  
  So stop disrespecting Jordan and the history of NBA basketball by saying you can believe in his faults, but cannot accept that Kobe Bryant's.  Because without Jordan, Kobe wouldn't even have a game to replicate, and certainly have no chance to have an image to tarnish.
  
  Don't believe in the hype.  Image is nothing.  How ironic that the Sprite slogan can mean so much for Kobe Bryant these days.

  • 6:09 am
  • 3 Comments