i'm posting this simply because this gives a VERY LOCAL perspective to the past week's events.
this newspaper is less than 15 miles from tobe's front door:
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
While Bryant complains, others prevail
MARCIA C. SMITH
Register columnist masmith@ocregister.com In the week since he stood on his soap-opera box, voiced his frustrations, demanded a trade and later admitted he didn't want to leave "my team," Kobe Bryant has suffered by comparison.
While Bryant complained about the Lakers failing to build a championship team around him, his NBA contemporaries have prevailed.
While Bryant vented and flip-flopped on radio shows, blogged on his Web site and made himself the Lakers' squeakiest wheel, others garnered greater respect.
While Bryant sunk before our eyes, they climbed in our opinion.
Don't LeBron James, Tim Duncan, Dwyane Wade and Kevin Garnett seem much more admirable now than they did a week ago?
We listened to Bryant gripe about being the Lakers' one-man show. Then we witnessed Cleveland's James solo blockbuster, fulfilling his "King" hype and delivering to Cavaliers to their first NBA Finals.
In Thursday's Eastern Conference finals Game 5 against the Detroit Pistons, James scored 48 points, including his team's final 25, in the Cavaliers' 109-107 double-overtime victory. He ignited the Michael Jordan heir talk while burying Bryant's 81 points — the second-highest single game total — deeper in NBA history.
So why worry about Kobe? We have James to celebrate.
The same bizarre Wednesday when Bryant aired out his grief, Duncan put up 21 points, seven rebounds and three assists on the Utah Jazz in the deciding Western Conference finals Game 5 and lifted the San Antonio Spurs to their third NBA Finals in five years.
As usual Duncan played a solid game, more fundamental than acrobatic. He was efficient and selfless on the court, reserved and humble after the game.
That day magnified the difference between Bryant, the NBA's two-time reigning scoring champion who was grabbing every open microphone, and Duncan, the quiet team player who has chased fame's floodlight.
That day made it easy to realize the player Duncan is and the man Bryant is not.
So why worry about Kobe? We have Duncan to revere.
Now take Wade, whom we would expect to be disappointed about not being able to defend the Miami Heat's 2006 title. He is not publicly weeping and blowing spitballs at his teammates and coaches who wrestle with their dysfunction.
Instead Wade remains likeable and positively exposed. He lunches with Charles "Is that your dad?" Barkley in T-Mobile commercials. He says his dream is to "leave the world a better place" in a Lincoln Navigator commercial in which he drives to a playground court, gives kids an SUV full of basketballs and tosses the keys to the coach before pedaling home on a bicycle.
Bryant's last positive public appearance was Disneyland's May 19 red-carpet premiere for "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," with wife Vanessa and daughter Natalia, 4.
Beyond making a Nike NBA-stable commercial and fronting Sony PlayStation's NBA 07 videogame in the last year, Bryant's endorsement portfolio has thinned from the early-2000 Lakers' three-peat, a pre-sex-assault-allegation season when he joined kids for pickup ball in a McDonald's promo, leaped off Sprite cans and posed on labels of "Try Kobe's Favorite!" Nutella spread.
Bryant's self-orchestrated exposure last week became his most widely seen circus act in years. Perhaps this was his first project as the month-old investor and primary client of Venice-based Zambezi Ink, "an elite team of message makers … dedicated to creating effective and breakthrough communications," according to its Web site.
So why buy into Bryant? We have Wade to love.
Because Bryant is a superstar fed up with being stranded on a team that has once again fallen short?
Let's consider Garnett, the 6-foot-11 Minnesota forward who made the high school-to-NBA first-round jump in 1995, a year before Bryant went from Lower Merion (Pa.) High to the Lakers.
Garnett doesn't even have one of Bryant's three NBA rings. Garnett has averaged 38 minutes, 21 points and 11 rebounds a game through 12 seasons with the Timberwolves, who've reached only one Western Conference Finals (2004) since they drafted "The Franchise."
We'd understand if KG is sick of the Timberwolves' front-office promises and transactions that haven't amounted to a Finals appearance. But All-Star Garnett hasn't picked up a megaphone, ranted against his bosses and publicly demanded a trade they way Bryant did last week.
So while Bryant and the Lakers sort out the week that was, we should appreciate the discretion of Garnett, who endures without a championship; the appeal of Wade, who is one season beyond his title; the grace of Duncan, who competes for his fourth; and the talent of James, who plays for his first.
When the NBA Finals begin Thursday, where will Bryant be?
