SportsDystopia

It’s just not fair.  All my life, I’ve been a Lakers fan, and now, because of…him…I can barely stand to watch the team anymore.  I grew up with the fast break, with Showtime, with Magic running the team with a smile on his face, with Big Game James and The Captain alongside.  Those teammates of Magic’s, they sure loved playing with him.  It was a joy to watch, the Purple and Gold, up and down the floor, night in, night out, usually winning, always having fun.  But now…he’s here.  He might be the best basketball player the planet has ever seen…and it kills me to have to root for him night after night.

I didn’t always feel that way about Kobe Bryant.  When he came to the Lakers at 17, he was a brash, precocious, and yes, arrogant young man, who already possessed all the tools to turn him into his generation’s Jordan.  And like so many other good young players of the past 15 years, he was hung with the label of “The Next MJ”.  But unlike the Penny Hardaways, Vince Carters, and Tracy McGradys, with Kobe, the label fit.

He had a relentless desire to do one thing: win.  It was clear as soon as he set foot in town, but it would take Phil Jackson’s calming influence to bring out the real beast in Kobe, to teach him how to harness those immense talents for the sake of a championship.  It was only his 3rd year in the Association, but there he was, leading a Shaq-less LA squad over the Pacers in a memorable game 4 of the NBA Finals, doing his damage down the stretch and in OT.  The Lakers clinched in 6, and a dynasty was born.

The Lakers won 3 titles in a row on the backs of Kobe and Shaq, with alot of help from Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, and Rick Fox along the way.  But maybe Kobe resented living in the shadow of The Big Fella, and Kobe/Shaq feuding came to dominate LA storylines for as long as O’Neal stayed a Laker.  The window finally closed on the era 4 years ago, when LA (now dragging the corpses of Karl Malone and Gary Payton along for the ride) was destroyed by Detroit in a disappointing NBA Finals.

The Lakers turned down a trade offer which would’ve given them the most entertaining team in the league, when they rejected Dallas’ offer of Steve Nash for Shaq, and instead dealt the Big Fella to Miami, getting in return Lamar Odom, Brian Grant, and Caron Butler.

Only Odom is left of those 3, and he has played well at times, and maddeningly awful or inconsistant at others. (Where was he, exactly, during those games with Boston this year?)  In any case, the Lakers became Kobe Bryant’s Team.  And the time has seen incredible feats by Kobe, not the least of which was his 81 point game, and stayed competitive the entire span in spite of, until this year, one of the worst supporting casts in the NBA.

Maybe that’s the first thing I notice anymore when watching LA: That Kobe Bryant also seems to think his supporting cast is one of the worst in the league.  Although the roster was dramatically improved last year, Kobe still at best had thinly veiled contempt for his teammates, and the veil was off completely during the Finals, where he openly humiliated Pau Gasol on the floor and disrespected Phil Jackson during timeouts.  What little humility he once had is now gone, and his attempts at likability come across as heavy-handed and stagy, like his newfound love of having his kids on his lap at press conferences, or his Aston Martin jumping. 

I guess what it mostly comes down to for me is, that it’s hard, damn hard, to root for someone you don’t respect.  And it’s awfully hard to respect someone who so obviously doesn’t respect anyone else but himself, not even teammates who have done the same work as he has to get to the same place.  Or maybe I’m just spoiled from growing up on a selfless Laker team that loved to play together, and now stuck watching a talented-supporting cast mail it in when it counts for sports’ most narcissistic star.  It just isn’t fair.

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