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If there’s one person who knows what it feels like to be accused of chasing stats, it’s Kobe Bryant.

The recently retired Lakers legend rode the “ballhog” stigma across his entire career, and had to deal with the criticism even after his most incredible feats, like scoring 81 points in a game, scoring 50 points in four straight or dropping 60 in his final NBA game.

So it’s no surprise to see Bryant come to Russell Westbrook’s defense. Westbrook had 23 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists in Friday’s loss to the Suns, which clinched a triple-double average for him on the season. Westbrook is just the second player ever (along with Oscar Robertson) to accomplish the feat.

Westbrook fell two assists shy of breaking Robertson’s single-season NBA record of 41 triple-doubles, however, and appeared to be passing up open shots late in the game, possibly in an effort to get two more assists and set the record. The media asked Westbrook after the game whether he was actively trying to get assists, and Bryant did not appreciate the line of questioning.

“He averages a trip dub for the season @ramonashelburne and this is the kind of question he gets #silly,” Bryant wrote on Twitter.

Clearly, Kobe was not happy about the reporters questioning Westbrook’s motives, but that’s exactly what you would expect from Bryant, or any other player really -- they generally come to each other’s defense when there’s any sort of “us vs. the media” situation.

If you watch the full video of Westbrook’s postgame comments, you can see that he was asked about clinching the triple-double record (1:42) well before being asked about chasing assists (4:00), which hurts Bryant’s case a bit.

Perhaps in Bryant’s mind the questions should have been centered more around Westbrook’s accomplishment, but it really did look like he was intentionally passing up shots to look for assists toward the end of the game, so it was the media’s responsibility to at least ask the question.

Surely on some level Bryant understands this, but he just wanted to take the opportunity to stick up for the only NBA player who’s come close to displaying the passion and intensity that Kobe did when he played.