It's Been A Full Day And I Still Don't Know How Kobe Made This Shot
Like the entire internet, when the Mickstape fellas put out this video clip to our timelines yesterday I didn't know what I was watching. Upon the first few dozen watches I was convinced I was watching some sort of deep fake video of a young Kobe. Now a full day and thousands of watches later I still have no fucking idea what happened here. Slowing it down frame by frame I think #4 swiped the ball out of Kobe's hands and then #14 knocked it in? But the way Kobe spun and how he celebrated makes it look like it was intentional? This is some basketball wizardry if I've ever seen it. It's not often that a basketball play breaks your brain but this is legit breaking my brain even though I've had 24 hours to dive into it.
I think this is one of those things where you can convince your brain to see what you want it to see. It also doesn't help that this was filmed with a potato, I wish there was a way to take this footage and recreate it in HD. Even if you want to go with the deflection theory, it's still utterly ridiculous that the ball went in. What are the odds of that happening? Not a math guy but I'm going to say 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.
And another thing. No CHANCE that ref clearly saw a travel. Where's the travel? From what I can tell Kobe established his right foot as his pivot foot and it never left the ground, even on his step through. Hey ref, nobody is there to see you and just because you had no fucking idea what happened doesn't mean you just say fuck it and call a travel. What a horse shit call.
Perhaps this was the first sign that Kobe would go on to become one of the greatest to ever do it. I feel like this shit doesn't happen to a regular kid who does not have a future in basketball. The reality for 99.9% of us is that play ends up being a turnover and you get benched for trying to force a shot through a crowd. Tell me I'm wrong.
Now, because it's Friday afternoon I think this is where we enjoy some additional Kobe highlights. RIPIP.