Why We Should All Relish the Kobe Bryant Show
Basketball is entertainment, and Kobe Bryant is the best show in town. That has to be the starting point, or we'll get nowhere.
If you keep those ideas in mind, it's harder to get bogged down in the weird outrage surrounding Bryant's crazy shot totals and the broader truth that his presence does more harm than good to the Lakers' long-term health.
Kobe's desire to dominate on his terms is phenomenally interesting on a number of levels—especially if you like digging for universal truths and real-life lessons in something as inherently silly as a game played by adults for money.
It's also nice if you're paid to think about basketball, an unserious thing, in a serious way. Bryant is nothing if not endlessly analyzable.
But when you get caught up arguing about Bryant's play, his impact on his team and whether what he's doing is right or wrong, you're really just trying to say something you think is important.
And it's ridiculous to use basketball for that purpose.
There are two extremes to this. Some laud his loyalty, while others chide his selfishness. Everybody has an opinion, and everybody seems to use Bryant as a tool to explain something bigger.
Forget all that. Toss out the lessons you're trying to learn (or teach) from what Bryant's doing. Dispense with the high-minded criticism, the stubborn devotion and whatever other rationales are in play. Unburden yourself.
And consider just one truth in place of all that stuff: This. Is. Fun.
Fun!
We'll never see a single-minded basketball monster like Kobe get away with something like this again. It's fascinating—surreal, even—and we should be drinking it in, bathing in the wild absurdity of a player turning a team game into a one-man show.
Bryant leads the league in scoring despite posting career lows in efficiency. He's taken more shots than anyone else in the NBA, connecting at a 38.8 percent clip—for a terrible team with no hope of those shots actually meaning anything.
Rapidly approaching his basketball expiration date, Kobe is screaming into the void. And it is incredible to watch. Just ask his teammates, who have deferred to him out of fear, or maybe reverence. It doesn't really matter which.
"I think there was a timeout last game where I pointed at Kobe and I said, 'I know how great this guy is, but you guys have got to play basketball,'" head coach Byron Scott said, per Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com. "'You can't look at him every single time and try to give him the ball. You've got to take shots that are there. You can't pass up shots.'"
If you can get past the tragedy of it all, of a formerly great franchise listing drunkenly, fixed to Bryant's anchor of a two-year contract with no place to go, the Lakers are the most compelling watch in the NBA. Because we will never see anything like this again.
Analytics won't let it happen; coaches and front offices all know iso-ball doesn't work, especially not in the staggering volume with which Bryant is employing it.
And, of course, we'll never have another Kobe, another player with the combination of elite talent, hard-earned fan worship and singular disregard for the team concept.
This is a "step back and think about what's actually happening" moment in NBA history. It's just not the kind we typically celebrate.
"Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan because he could not be anybody else; Kobe Bryant is Kobe Bryant because he could not be Michael Jordan, but never stopped trying. That might seem like a putdown, and if it works as one, Kobe probably deserves it, but I'd be a liar if I denied finding something to admire in that 13,421 number. We should all be silly and liberated enough to fire up 13,421 bricks.
"
Yes!
If everyone operated like Bryant on a basketball court, we'd have mass chaos. Each of us would have an unshakable belief in our own primacy, our own alpha dog-ness. It'd never work in the real world.
But Bryant, in many ways, doesn't operate in reality.
"He still believes he can be the best player in the league every time he steps on the court," Carlos Boozer told Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com.
That Bryant is not the game's best player hardly matters. What matters is what he's doing with that semi-delusional confidence.
Kobe is playing for nothing. He has zero to prove. But he spends his time on the court acting as though everything hangs in the balance and, more critically, that he's the only one capable of doing anything.
Maybe that feels particularly selfish—even for Bryant. But B/R's Kevin Ding suggests it's merely part of Kobe's deeply embedded code:
"And we're being reminded now that what is more important to Bryant than winning championships is staying true to the mindset that wins championships. That is what he can hang on to, no matter who is or isn't on this Lakers team, and that is what he can take pride in even if he never gets to play another playoff game.
"
For Bryant, the winning is in the trying. The success is the struggle.
This is fiction we're watching: A hero with a code fighting against unbeatable foes (time and age) and unconquerable odds (the Western Conference). If every NBA team were a movie, wouldn't you watch the one starring Bryant and the Lakers? The one with the classic narrative, the grizzled protagonist going out with guns blazing?
This fiction is real. It's happening right now.
And that's really what sports are supposed to be anyway—a diversion from the real world.
Bryant, in his own way, is giving us exactly what we want and more than we could have possibly expected all at once.
So let's all step back and think about this differently. From now on, let's recognize what's happening for what it is. Without agendas or self-serious analysis. The next time Bryant tosses up 35 shots in a loss, or catches fire for an entire quarter, relish it. Don't think about the numbers or the analytics or anything else. Just think about how entertained you are.
We can be as earnest and pensive as we want when talking about the other 400-something players and 29 teams in the league. When it comes to Kobe and the Lakers, why don't we just sit back and enjoy the show?
After all, something this improbable, this oddly inspiring, can't last forever.
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