Posts Tagged ‘Kobe Bryant’

Last fall, Sports Illustrated and most other experts promised us a 2012-13 Lakers rose garden. Last night, at the end of a season that has turned out instead to be all about the thorns, Kobe Bryant willed his team to victory at Portland’s Rose Garden.

Bryant is doing things at age 34 that most NBA players ten years younger can only dream of. Even Mr. Hockey Gordie Howe, who just turned 85, is probably shaking his head over last night’s 113-106 one-man show.

So how are sportswriters describing Bryant’s season-high draining of 47 points in a place where the team usually gets stomped? Take your pick: “implausible” (LA Times); “epic” (ESPN Los Angeles); “thrilling” (Yahoo)…

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Glad we’re not alone. Looking over the teaser announcement for Wednesday night’s debut of Connected With… Kobe Bryant on Time Warner Cable SportsNet, we were immediately struck by the following excerpt:

On retiring: “I could play another five years. That’s not to say I will.”

Say what!? Veteran Laker watchers have all bandied about the time frame of two to three years. This latest reminder of Bryant’s super-human physical specimen qualities, from the specimen himself, is new and as also noted at Lakers Nation by Daniel Buerge, jaw-dropping. Maybe this is Bryant’s way of letting interested Chinese parties know that he will be ready and able to suit up over there around the fall of 2015.

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17yrs. Countless fades. This has happened TWICE. Jalen and Now Ankle still very swollen. Treatment all day #focus twitter.com/kobebryant/sta…

— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) March 14, 2013

Just when you thought this season couldn’t get any worse for the Los Angeles Lakers, Kobe Bryant suffered a sprained left ankle in the final seconds of Wednesday’s 96-92 loss to the Atlanta Hawks and is out indefinitely.

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Before Sunday’s Lakers-Mavericks game, Dallas owner Mark Cuban suggested that Los Angeles should use their amnesty clause (fancy way of saying release) on Kobe Bryant in the offseason.

Kobe Bryant being Kobe Bryant, took Cuban’s comments to heart and carried the Lakers on his back in a 103-99 victory with 38 points, 12 rebounds and 7 assists.

If that wasn’t bad enough for Cuban to swallow, Bryant tweeted the following after the game:

Amnesty THAT

— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) February 24, 2013

Welp.

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It’s been quite the emotional week for the Los Angeles Lakers family following the death of owner Dr. Jerry Buss.

Returning to the court for the first time since his death on Monday, the Lakers paid tribute to Buss prior to Wednesday’s game vs. the Boston Celtics.

The NBA scheduling Gods delivered as the Lakers-Celtics game was on ESPN, which meant Magic Johnson was able to reflect throughout the night on the impact Buss had on his life in the 30-plus years since he was drafted from Michigan State.

To Johnson, Buss was not just an owner. He was a friend and mentor who Johnson would routinely call for advice. You can truly get the sense how important Buss was to Johnson by his reaction following Kobe Bryant‘s speech to the crowd.

A day after a verified Twitter account for Shia Labeouf popped up on Twitter, it has been de-activated. In its wake, the best place to get a sense of what transpired are the tweets of next-door-actor @JamesUrbaniak.

Twitter Labeouf – or someone posting on the account’s behalf – got things rolling Monday with a couple of very straightforward greetings, only to then quickly delete them. This being Twitter, the disappearing act was grounds for all sorts of musings.

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The antisocial has become social #mambatweets

— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) January 4, 2013

Well, well, well.

Look who decided to rejoin Twitter finally.

Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant has finally caved in and joined the social media platform again. A source close to Bryant confirmed to Mark Medina of the Daily News that the account was legit and No. 24 was the man behind it.

Medina also points out that Bryant was on the ropes about returning to Twitter as recently as last week:

“Maybe,” Bryant said on Dec. 30. “The one thing about me is when I’m doing it, I enjoy doing it myself and putting the time into it. I don’t know if I have the time available to give the fans the attention they deserve.”

Bryant’s first time on Twitter was in September 2011 before suspending his account shortly thereafter.

Looking to make a splash in his Showtime debut, Jim Rome is digging deep in his athlete and celebrity Rolodex for the one-hour premiere of Jim Rome on Showtime.

Kobe Bryant, Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Perry and Peter Guber will all sit down with Rome on Wednesday to discuss a wide variety of topics within the sports and entertainment industry.

Not bad, Rome. Not bad.

He will complete his move to the CBS family when his nationally syndicated radio show makes the move to CBS Radio starting in January.

Huge scoop for ESPN LA reporter Ramona Shelburne (pictured). According to her sources, the Los Angeles Lakers couldn’t even wait until the end of their first 2012-13 season homestand to see whether Mike Brown‘s Princeton offense could be salvaged. She says he was fired this morning:

After numerous discussions over the past 48 hours, Lakers management came to a unanimous decision that the team clearly wasn’t heading in the right direction and it was best to fire him now.

This speaks also to the power of a “death stare.” Even though Kobe Bryant laughed off the media’s interpretation of his Utah glare in the direction of Brown, looks like the Buss clan took it very seriously.

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Shut up.

It doesn’t matter if the Lakers lose to the Clippers tonight, just like it didn’t matter that they lost to the Mavericks and the Trail Blazers. Far beyond the first week of the 2012-13 regular season, they’re going to make the playoffs. And by that time, the team will be just fine.

Panic of this preposterous sort is what drives sports talk radio ratings. And so, if you have been listening – as we have – to ESPN 710 and KLAC 570, you are hereby forgiven for assuming the Lakers are 0-81 going into tonight rather than 0-2.

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