Why I Cheer Against Kobe

Kobe Bryant: Innocent of Rape, Guilty of Being a Terrible Teammate

As the Los Angeles Lakers have foundered about for the better part of this season, I have been left asking myself one important question: Why do people overrate Kobe Bryant so much?

Kobe’s career has been marked by incredible fortune, superb skill, and terrible teamwork.  He has been blessed to have played with perhaps the most dominant center in NBA history (Shaq), one of the best power forwards of the last decade (Gasol), and in Bynum and Dwight Howard, the two best centers of the past decade. 

Despite currently being on a team with 4 Hall of Famers, Kobe and the Lakers may not qualify for the playoffs (they currently sit in 9^th place with only a handful of games remaining).  How is that even possible, given that Kobe (and his blood doping-induced career resurgence) is having one of his most efficient seasons?  He is averaging a career-high in assists, shooting at a high clip, and rebounding more than any season since 2007-2008. 

The Lakers’ shortcomings are not tied to any statistical shortcoming of Kobe, but rather, his personal and teammate-related shortcomings.  The truth of the matter is that Kobe Bryant inspires fear and loathing in his teammates, not love or admiration.  Some leaders could get their troops to walk through fire for them; Kobe’s troops would rather throw him in the flames. 

I had a long conversation some years ago with a former NBA player who I will not name.  I asked him about Kobe, and he said that Kobe was known in NBA circles to not talk to teammates, to disrespect them openly, and to generally act like a dick.  Such comments seemed likely given Kobe’s, shall we say, teammate-related transgressions.  After all, this is a man who told police investigators (while he was being questioned about a rape he was accused of having committed, no less) that his teammate, Shaq, paid women $1 million dollars to keep their mouths shut and not talk about their relations.  This is the same Kobe who ran Shaq and Phil out of LA.  This is the same Kobe who has publicly disparaged teammates, and told them not to talk to him until they get their stats up, as he said to Smush Parker.

The Kobe-Smush Parker feud really gets to the core of who Kobe Bryant is: a horrible, pompous bully and a terrible teammate.   Context: Smush was the starting point guard of the Lakers for two seasons, and put up solid stats, averaging double-digit points per game during the absolute apex of Kobe’s career.  In both of Smush’s seasons with the Lakers (or the LA Bryants, as Smush calls the team), the Suns beat the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs.  Nash won MVP in one of those two seasons.  In an interview last year, Kobe described a conversation with Steve Nash about the latter winning the MVP:

"I tell Steve, you won MVP but I was playing with Smush Parker...He's playing with [Leandro] Barbosa. I'm playing with Smush and Kwame [Brown]. My goodness…Smush Parker was the worst…He shouldn't have been in the NBA, but we were too cheap to pay for a point guard. We let him walk on…Smush Parker, with Tierre Brown as the backup…I’m taking 45 shots a game. What was I supposed to do, pass the ball in to Chris Mihm? Chris Mihm?”

What kind of dick says something like that?  Kobe, that’s who.  Smush fired back: 

“I had a workout with the Lakers, beat all the guards out for the starting position, earned a spot on the team. Midway through the first season, I tried to at least have a conversation with Kobe Bryant — he is my teammate, he is a co-worker of mine, I see his face every day I go in to work — and I tried to talk with him about football. He tells me I can’t talk to him. He tells me I need more accolades under my belt before I come talk to him. He was dead serious.”

“What I don’t like about him is the man that he is. His personality. How he treats people. I don’t like that side of Kobe Bryant. Basketball is a team sport. It is team-oriented. It is not an individual sport. It’s not tennis or golf, it is a team sport. When you are the star of the team, you have to make your teammates feel comfortable. You have to make them feel welcome. And he did not do that at all.”

“On road trips, he traveled with his security guards. Those were the guys he talked to. On the team plane, he sat in the back of the plane by himself.”

“The reason I wasn’t a Laker after my second year is because I didn’t bow down to [Kobe]. I didn’t kiss his a–. I wasn’t kissing his feet. Quite frankly, towards the end of the second season, I stopped passing him the ball. I stopped giving him the ball. I started looking him off.”

Kobe’s public degradation of former teammates Kwame Brown, Smush Parker, Chris Mihm, and Tierre Brown is something the likes of which I don’t recall hearing from other athletes of his stature.  His willingness to blame others for his team’s lack of success, like his willingness to rat out Shaq’s extramarital affairs, speaks to the disdain he has for his teammates.  There is a reason that he and Dwight have clashed so frequently this season, just as there is a reason that Bynum said that Kobe retarded his progress as a player.  Kobe accepts things either his way or no way at all.   Kobe isn’t dumb; he knows that he rubs his teammates the wrong way (at best), but he doesn’t care.  As much as he proclaims that he is driven by winning, he is driven more so by being Kobe Bryant, and making sure that all his teammates know he is better than them.  Who would want to play with someone like that? 

There is a reason that in his prime, as the lone wolf, the Lakers were mediocre, and only became great once they added Gasol: Kobe’s teammates hate him, and his toxic attitude and ball-hogging ways make his teams less than the sum of their parts.  In short, he is the anti-Lebron.  As Phil Jackson revealed in his book, Kobe berated his teammates publicly, lied to Phil, was uncoachable, and listened to nobody.  These issues prompted Phil to demand that Mitch Kupchak either trade Kobe or find a new coach.

Real fans judge basketball players by how they make their teams better, not how they get their own stats.  This is where Kobe’s standing takes a big hit.  At his absolute apex, Kobe was not even good enough to get his team into the playoffs consistently (in the season before Smush came to the Lakers, on a team with Caron Butler and Lamar Odom, the Lakers finished 34-48).  If Kobe thinks his supporting cast was weak and is willing to throw them under the bus, he should take a look at the team Lebron led to the Finals in Cleveland (a team that had Larry Hughes and an aging Ilgauskus as its second and third best players, respectively), or the team Lebron dragged to 66 wins (Lebron is so good that he made Mo Williams, a journeyman, into an All-Star). 

Over the next few weeks, I will be cheering against the Lakers.  As much as I respect Kobe’s skillset and work ethic, it is hard to support someone with such a vile and antagonistic relationship toward his co-workers.  It becomes even harder to manifest such support when Kobe is wrongfully glorified by the media, which conflates his individual talent with his skill—or lack thereof, as a teammate.