Each year, I write at least one column on one of
my few passions, sports. Particularly, the politics of sports.
I’ll have to write at least two this year, one will be when
Barry breaks Aaron’s home run record and all the haters
come out of the shadows. The other one is this one, pleading with
Los Angeles Lakers owner, Jerry Buss, to trade his so-called “franchise
player,” Kobe Bryant.
Let’s get all the biases out of the way upfront—I
am a lifelong Laker fan. I’ve been rooting for the Lakers
(and the baseball Giants) since I was seven years old. I know
Laker history, through and through. I cried through the many championship
defeat years of the 60s and 70s (against the Celtics and the Knicks).
I exalted in their first L.A. championship in 1972, as well as
the Showtime I and II eras of the 80s and 2000s. But the past
couple of years has been tough to be a Laker fan. To see a championship-caliber
team fall apart in the matter of two years has been just painful.
Runaway egos (Buss, Phil Jackson, Shaq and Kobe) tore the team
apart. They’ve tried to pull all the pieces back together
without Shaq, and since Buss declared the Lakers were “Kobe’s
team,” it hasn’t been pretty at all. In fact, if it
hasn’t been already declared, I’d like to official
declare the "Kobe’s team" era a failure, largely
because in the last two years, the team stunk so bad that even
Kobe has threaten to leave it. Granted, he hasn’t had much
to play with - and Mitch Kupchak should be fired for hesitating
on more trade deals than somebody’s granny at an intersection
trying to cross a busy street - but if it’s your team, you
need to be in it to win it. Not Kobe Bryant. The threats have
already started. Kobe threatens to leave every year and he’s
at it again. So let him go. Trade him.
The problem with the Lakers is that Kobe thinks
he is the team, not on a team. The Lakers haven’t
perfected team ball the past two years because every time they
get into trouble, Phil defaults to “Kobe-ball” and
you have to watch Kobe jack up all kind of crazy shots, 30 or
40 of ‘em, just to watch them fold in the last five minutes
of every game. If I want to watch someone play by themselves,
I’ll watch Tiger (golf), or Venus and Serena (tennis), or
the Golden Boy versus the Pretty Boy (boxing). My point is, there
are plenty of individual sports out there to watch. Basketball
ain’t one of them. If Kobe plays team ball, he can help
the Lakers win. But that doesn’t happen very often. The
best team ball we saw in Los Angeles this year was watching the
Clippers, and they had half the talent the Lakers have. That’s
hard for a Laker fan to admit, but it’s the truth.
Somebody needs to tell Kobe he’s not Michael
Jordan and can’t take over every game just because the team
falls behind. The team has to make the comeback. Everybody on
the Laker team this year was scared to tell Kobe to give up the
ball. He might be a league favorite, and even some fans' favorite
but he’s not the team player’s favorite and he’s
not my favorite. I was hecka mad over the Shaq trade, and pissed
over the Kobe rape allegation distractions the season after. But
I think we’re tired of waiting for Kobe to grow up. We want
to see winning basketball again. Almost all the key players of
the Lakers’ recent championship teams have been back to
the finals. Robert Horry has won two championships since he left
the Lakers. Shaq and Gary Payton, one. Even Derek Fisher almost
made the finals this year. Where was Kobe’s team? You get
my drift.
Kobe wouldn’t even get into my “fav
five” of all-time Laker players. Elgin Baylor, who had more
moves than Kobe and Michael Jordan (but not Julius Erving), is
my all-time favorite Laker. Magic Johnson is my second all-time
favorite, followed by Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and
Jerry West. In fact, Kobe wouldn’t even get into my second
favorite five, James Worthy, Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Cooper,
Robert Horry and Connie Hawkins (one of my all-time favorites
who played his last years with the Lakers, I know - I’m
biased). I wouldn’t consider myself a “Kobe-hater”
but all the other players were talented and team players. And
they were loyal.
Kobe is talented but disloyal and loyalty is a
two-way street. Just because you have a hard season, a losing
season is no reason to blame everyone but yourself. Whatever happened
to, “We’ll get ‘em next year,” or “We
have some work to do but thanks to the fans, while we work to
improve for next year.” Not Kobe. It’s always a whine
that he can’t do it by himself. When he didn’t have
to do it by himself, he couldn’t get along with the league's
most dominate player. No telling what would happen if the league’s
second most dominate player, Kevin Garnett, comes in and tries
to get Kobe to “pass the damn ball.” I’d rather
just see Lamar Odom (who is a great team player) with the handcuffs
off, throw the ball to Garnett. We’re tired of Kobe pouting
when he doesn’t get his “touches”, his not shooting,
to prove his team can’t win without him, or his busting
teammates in the chops in the press, or never knowing when he’s
going to shoot us out of a game.
There’s no mustard off the hot dog like
the mustard off a Kobe hot dog. Maybe some other team might want
to try it. I know we’ve had our fill. For the sake of Laker
fans everywhere, please spare us another season of this madness.
If Kobe doesn’t want to play in L.A., fine. We could do
with a few less 50 point (40 shot) games, and a few more wins
and championships. So, trade him so that the Lakers can truly
rebuild, and all will be well in Lakerland next season.
BC Columnist Dr. Anthony Asadullah
Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban
Issues Forum and author of the upcoming book, Saving
The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com.
Click
here to contact Dr. Samad. |