Wake Up With An NBA Countdown: Kobe Bryant

Good morning everybody, happy Thursday! There’s light at the end of this work week tunnel so do your best to hang in there. It’ll be over before you know it, I promise. Now normally I would avoid today’s subject like the plague, but seeing as how it’s Kobe’s 40th birthday today I figured I would be fair and let the Lakers fans have their moment to celebrate the legend. Kobe may be my arch nemesis and one of the greatest players ever for a franchise I hate more than poison, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t revolutionary for the sport we all love.

If I get past the hatred for this all time Laker I can at least respect the on the court career Kobe had. Anytime you are able to see a player of his caliber dominate for as long as he did is sort of cool I guess. He’s the closest thing I’ve seen to that Jordan killer mentality, and while he’s certainly NOT Michael Jordan, he is a guy who was an 18 time all star, 11x All NBA First team member, 2x All NBA Second Team member, 9x All NBA Defensive First Team member, 3x All NBA Defensive Second Team member, a 2x scoring champ, 5x champion and 2x Finals MVP. I’d say it’s safe to say he is one of the more accomplished players in NBA history. When you look at his all time ranks, Kobe is 6th in FGM, 3rd in FGA (ball hog smh), 1st in FG missed, 3rd in FTM, 5th in FTA, 30th in assists (shocked me), 16th in steals, 4th in turnovers, 3rd in points, 24th in PER, 4th in Usage, and made something stupid like $328M on the court during his playing days. That’s all fairly ridiculous if you ask me.

I was actually a little disapointed that we heard Kobe was going to turn down playing in the Big 3, mostly because I think watching his mamba mentality come out and rage against over the hill washed up NBA players would be blogging gold. Now while it’s true Kobe always had to have a dominant big man in order to win his titles, that shouldn’t take anything away from what he accomplished. He’s not the only all time great that needed great teammates to win titles, so I don’t really hold that against him when putting his career up against the best players to ever do it. He may also be the reason the worst type of person on the planet exists, Kobe Stans, but again, that’s shouldn’t be held against him. It’s OK to admit maybe LeBron is better guys, you can say that now that he’s a Laker too.

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The best way I can describe Kobe is when I think back to the times the Celts met him in the Finals, there was legit fear every time he had the ball. You knew he was going to score whenever he wanted whether he was going to break someone down or get help from the officials. Like Game 3 of the 2010 Finals when the Lakers won in the Garden, I remember sitting in the stands and just knowing things were going to work out poorly every time Kobe had the ball. He finished with 29 on 29 shots, but I think when things got tight late, the whole building knew he was going to make those plays late. Fuck Kobe, now I’m letting my hate ruin what I felt like was a good job of holding it in.

So let me just say happy birthday to the legend, if you’re a Laker fan I hope you enjoy the video, and everyone else I hope you have yourself a great Thursday!

P.S.

Credit to me for being the bigger person and saying so many nice things about a Laker while bringing up none of this skeletons. Not many people are willing to do that.