The most accurate description of Kobe Bryant’s last game that you will ever read… and my heartfelt Goodbye Letter to Kobe. HAM, OUT.
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Oh you thought I meant Sixty? Sixty points? Yeah, I don’t care about 60 points. Motherfucker took 50 shots.
FIFTY!
Last night was like when you give your little cousin unlimited attempts to hit a shot at a family BBQ. Standing out there “guarding” him in khakis and a button down, “accidentally” tapping rebounds back out to him, diving the wrong way when he tries to do a crossover, giving him more shooting space than DeAndre Jordan, lowering the rim to 8 feet without him noticing, and basically doing everything you can to let your washed little cousin finally hit a shot so he can tell the whole family that he scored on you. And as much as you want to Mutumbo all his pathetic two handed layups down the driveway to teach him a life lesson about taking it to the hole at that age, you realize that it’s probably just easier to let him have his moment. So you let him “go to work” on you. You let him take as many contested-but-not-really-contested shots as he needs to. You let him get a free lane to the basket any time he drives. And you don’t protest when your drunk uncle starts giving him bullshit bailout calls when you clearly got all ball.
And after he hits the “game winner” and announces to the whole family that he beat you, you can at least take solace in the fact that Uncle Adam Silver is gonna throw you an “early birthday check” for being a cool older cousin and letting Little Kobe have his moment in the sun.
Seriously… Sixty points? Motherfucker, I could drop 60 if you gave me fifty shots and twenty bailout calls. The only thing impressive about last night is the restraint it took Kobe to wait until his final game to break the Field Goal Attempts record. Mamba has been itching to shoot 50 since the day he put on the purple and gold. But being the storyteller he is, he waited until his last game ever so that he could get a free pass on taking that many attempts to end his career with a storybook 60 point night.
Fifty fucking shots. That’s absolutely outrageous. And it’s probably the perfect ending to the career of the most selfish, me-first, dickhead narcissist to ever pick up a basketball.
Hey Kobe, you might fall short of Jordan by ever conceivable basketball metric there ever is… but at least you have this to retire with:
P.S. I don’t really believe any of that, I just wanted to get Kobe fans mad. There are few things more fun in the world than to piss off Kobe stans. The idea of people losing their mind while reading that whole rant above is the kind of stuff I go into blogging for.
What can I say… HAM, OUT
Last night was cool… I’ll admit it. But I’m also not about to write some “Goodbye Kobe” love letter that everyone is expected to write today.
I hate Kobe. I think he’s a douchebag, and I think this whole #ThankYouKobe retirement tour has been one of the most contrived, fraudulent things that’s ever happened in sports. The idea that everyone has to bow down and pretend we all love this guy, who not even two years ago was considered one of the biggest assholes in sports history, is just stupid to me.
As a matter of fact, I had a hot blog lined up for today ready to shit all over this whole thing. The retirement tour… running Shaq out of town and ruining a dynasty… making no attempt to make his team better during that three year stretch so he could shoot as much as he wanted… his trash rap album… calling himself a Laker Lifer when he openly tried to leave later in his career… giving himself his own nickname… lucking into Pau in one of the most lopsided trades ever… having a garbage clutch shooting percentage… shooting 6 for 24 but getting bailed out by Pau against the Celtics in the Finals… taking all the Lakers cap space so that they couldn’t sign another star who would take shots away from him… submarining the Lakers franchise these last two years so that he could go out on his terms… that one time he raped that girl… and this wildly fraudulent new “nice Kobe” act he’s put on this last year once he realized that he couldn’t be “asshole Kobe” while shooting 35% for a twenty win team.
I just can’t really write that blog now (even though I kind of just did), because it would look pretty dumb on the heels of last night.
I wanted to hate on Kobe today, and I still will, but I can’t possibly deny that last night was really cool. Was a lot of it over the top? Of course. But if there’s a time and a place for it to be a little over the top, then that’s the place. It was the last game, at home, for a guy who spent twenty years there. All the videos and tributes and such? Awesome. I’ll happily joke that last night was like when you let your little cousin get unlimited shots just to piss the Kobe stans off, but I could never seriously say that last night wasn’t a really cool night to be a sports fan.
I’m just not about to sit here and be one of a million people writing a goodbye love letter to Kobe, especially when I never liked him in the first place.
Not everyone has to show him “respect” or “gratitude”. He was a basketball player, not a civil rights leader. And as much as I hate to make those kind of comparisons, it kind of has to be made here with how vehemently Kobe stans will attack you for “disrespecting” him. It’s sports. None of this matters. My hatred of Kobe has no bearing on anything whatsoever, so I’m not gonna go out of my way to heap disingenuous praise on a guy I hate just because he’s retiring. I care as much about “showing Kobe respect” as he cares that some fat idiot blogger like me hates him.
He was a great basketball player who was also an asshole that became self-aware enough to put on this fake act at the end of his career. I hated him ten years ago. I hated him five years ago. I hated him at the start of this season. And to pretend like I like him now would be as disingenuous as Kobe pretending he’s now this humble, gracious guy he’s claiming to be.
Congrats on getting your fairytale ending, Kobe. I still hate you. And this “Hate Me” commercial is another perfect example of why I do…
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