If Kobe Bryant had any pride left, he would retire

Due to the popularity of the 1st edition of my “If he had any pride” segment (often imitated but never duplicated), I decided to bring the sequel. And my target this time is Kobe Bryant.

Sure he has 25 million reasons to stick around till the end of the year. But at what cost? He’s tarnishing his legacy one air ball at a time. He’s playing on a team competing for the draft lottery. It’s a pitiful way to finish a glorious career. Almost as pitiful as watching Al Pacino in The Humbling. It didn’t have to finish that way.

When you legitimately think that your black buddy from high school can now take on Kobe one on one, you know it’s time for Kobe to hang them up effective yesterday.

He’s taking his victory lap around the league, and helping LA tank their way into a better draft pick on the way. He’s certainly earned the former and doing a favor to the organization with the latter. I see no issue here, but you take issue with most everything so this post isn’t shocking

More or less than Manning?

I never pay attention to the NBA until after the AFC/NFC championships, but I heard Dan lebastard (or another talking head) say that he was THE worst player in the NBA right now. Whether that’s literally true or not, I don’t know, but to have a talking head say that about you really means that you’ve fallen from grace.

Eh, that supposed tarnish fades over time. No one really cares about Montana with the Chiefs or Jordan with the Wizards and so on. Although I suppose neither of those guys reached a level of suck that Kobe is at right now.

Still don’t think it winds up effecting much. People will forget about this final year and remember the decade of dominance.

Nobody cares what you did at the end of your career (the tarnishing your legacy argument is lame) when your body is failing and you are winding down. It is what you did in your prime that people remember. When the great Roger Federer decides to retire I hope he does a tribute tour so we can watch him play one last time.

EDIT: I think Kobe is an egomaniac and very self absorbed person that does not know how to act in this stage of his career. He should just walk away, but he is too self absorbed to do that. Does he get all competitive knowing he is not very good now or does he just laugh it off and giggle? I don’t think he knows either,

There are at least 9 guys on the Sixers’ roster who are worse than Kobe.

lmao that is a fact, 76ers are so bad its fun to watch! But a sports talk show host would NEVER exaggerate a claim in the heat of a rant.

One bad year doesn’t negate 18 years as a top 5 guard.

No, but would you rather go out while you’re on top of the world, Barry Sanders-style?

Or eventually peter out to the point where you become a virtual laughing stock, Peyton Manning-style?

At Kobe’s point, he can go for lifetime records if he plays longer. For instance, he is the NBA’s #3 scorer in history. Maybe he can be just a normal good player for a while longer but push himself up one spot.

He’d have to average like 65-70 points a game to catch Karl Malone this season.

Also working in his “who the heck cares” department is the fact that Golden State and Steph Curry are on track to be the greatest team… ever. What they’re doing is absolutely absurd.

I’m shocked. To the core. An egomaniacal basketball player: who’d have thunk it?

The last thing I want to see him do is a farewell tour just to lose in straight sets to guys that were in their cribs when he started his career.

Bump.

Hasta la Vista, Kobe.

Steven A Smith (I think) said that he is the only current player that belongs in the top-10 all-time NBA list. I guess he forgot about Tim Duncan and Lebron.

SAS is a moron.

See ya Kobe, one of the greats

Did Bromion change his name or was he banned?

Mr. Bean scoring 60 in his final game. What other way would Kobe want to go out then to chuck up 100 shots on 25% shooting and pad his numbers.

Hating aside, he’s still a top 10 player of all time but SAS is way off not mentioning Duncan as a top 10 player as well.

I brought that up in another thread and the Mods never replied