GM Kobe just one highlight of summer in L.A.
The last time the Los Angeles Lakers let Kobe Bryant be general manager, well, you see what happened.
Now he wants to be general manager again, if not necessarily with the Lakers, and the possibilities are ... well, hilarious, really.
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| Will Kobe Bryant end up walking away from L.A.? Stay tuned. (AP) |
And now he went on the radio and said he wants to be traded, and won't take no for an answer. And several hours later, after talking to Phil Jackson, he said he didn't.
Which proves if nothing else that nothing quite beats contrived drama for fun.
Bryant is, in short, tres pissed. And when Kobe Bryant gets pissed, Jerry Buss gets arrested for suspicion of DUI with a 23-year-old woman. Nahh, we're just funnin' ya on that last one. Buss did get arrested for that, but Bryant had nothing to do with it, at least as far as we know.
It is, however, clear that the Lakers are decomposing yet again before our very eyes, behaving badly in public because they have no discernible direction, because Bryant is pushing the employee-employer envelope again, and because Buss doesn't know how to drive in Carlsbad.
And yet you hear the argument that the league needs the big-city teams to thrive for the good of the game. I mean, are you kidding?
Bill Rhoden, who typically knows better, wrote the other day in the New York Times that the league should grease the Knicks and make them good again because the league needs a strong team in New York. We can assume that there are people (like Bryant, to name just one) who believe the Lakers should be saved from their own wretched impulses as well for the same reason.
But the truth is that stupidity is what stupidity does. The Knicks in their entire history have rarely been good enough to save the league, and while the Lakers have been that good, they wrote the notes for their own version of the National Lampoon hymn Deteriorata over the past few years, and nobody wants to miss a moment of their cannibalization.
Jerry's son Jim is trying to flex his muscles. Jerry's daughter Jeanie thinks Jim is losing his mind. Jerry can't count backward from 30 by threes. Kupchak is dodging bullets left and right, and West is denying any interest in taking Kupchak's job because of their deep and abiding something or other.
And Kobe is going stark staring loonbucket while the rest of the franchise chows down on its own legs. A trade? To where, Denver?
The problem here is that Jerry seems to be loosening the reins without telling someone else to take them, and the kids are acting up while he's gone. His arrest has little to do with that, we assume, but it is an indication of ... oh, hell, it's not an indication of anything. It's just part of the laugh track at this point. The Lakers are imploding, and everyone is shrieking to be heard above the concussion.
