Time for Kobe to Emerge from the Shower

During this morning's drive, Tracy Simers and Fred Roggin were discussing this morning's Los Angeles Times article by T.J. Simers. (T.J. is not on the show this morning, for reasons that will become apparent.) At the time, the article was unavailable on the latimes.com website, so Tracy actually had to go and buy a paper during the commercial break. (Score one for old media.)

However, Tracy, having her connections, had a sneak preview of the article the night before, which dealt with the latest T.J. Simers interview with Kobe Bryant, which took place in Las Vegas. (He had interview Bryant previously, with better results.)

You may remember that Kobe had an agonizing early summer, in which he either wanted to be traded or didn't want to be traded, and was either going to play this fall or sit this fall, etc. etc. ad nauseum (and I mean that).

So warm fuzzy T.J. asked Kobe his opinion of the Kevin Garnett trade and Kobe's future with the Lakers. Because the article still isn't on the latimes.com web site as of 7:15 this morning (and because I didn't buy a paper), I can't report Kobe's exact response, but he basically said that he didn't think about the Kevin Garnett trade, and that there's no reason why he won't be at training camp.

Tracy Simers agreed with her father that these were legitimate questions to ask of Kobe, and that if he was going to throw a tantrum in the early summer, perhaps he should offer an explanation in the late summer (along the lines of "I was frustrated then, but I'm committed to the Lakers now" or some such).

Fred Roggin, playing devil's advocate, tried to put a positive spin on Kobe's responses. The one positive was that Kobe will be in training camp.

Um, wow.

However, since this is an El-Lay team, I have a solution for Kobe. Why doesn't he just say that the whole series of early summer interviews were just a dream?



Of course, if you're going to have dreams like that, you don't want to make enemies.



The interesting part about this whole thing is that Bryant told ESPN the following in July:

“I understand the interest in the situation, and when the time is right, I’ll be more than happy to answer those questions,” Bryant said....“Right now we have a lot to accomplish, and I don’t want to detract from that or be a distraction from that.”

Asked when exactly the time will be right, Bryant said he did not know.

If Simers' article is any indication, the time may be never.

But Bryant is apparently willing to discuss other topics...or not:

[David] Stern blamed a “rogue, isolated criminal” [Tim Donaghy] for a scandal that threatened the credibility of every referee. But players are trying not to get too caught up in it.

“Honestly, I don’t think anybody’s thinking about it. Us players, we haven’t discussed it,” superstar Kobe Bryant said. “It’s not something that’s on the radar for us. We know that the commissioner and the league and whoever else is handling the situation, they’re going to take care of it, so we don’t have much to worry about.”

So, if I follow this correctly, Bryant is perfectly willing to let the powers of the league make decisions on matters...as long as they don't affect HIM.

[27 SEPTEMBER 2007 - SORRY, KOBE. ALTHOUGH ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END, I'M SURE THAT T.J. WILL BE AT LAKER MEDIA DAY IN HIS NEWSPAPER CAPACITY.]

kobebryant

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