The milky way #milk (Taken with instagram)
Daylight posted (Taken with instagram)
#streetlights glowin (Taken with instagram)
Lets hope so. (Taken with instagram)
Time to try this shanghai steak . #pandaexpress #orangechicken (Taken with instagram)
![gotemcoach:
“I don’t give a [expletive] what you say. If I go out there and miss game winners, and people say, ‘Kobe choked, or Kobe is seven for whatever in pressure situations,’ well, [expletive] you.”
- Kobe Bryant
Read the rest here.
#GotEmCoach](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4a4jnf7ml1qcmnsoo1_1280.png)
“I don’t give a [expletive] what you say. If I go out there and miss game winners, and people say, ‘Kobe choked, or Kobe is seven for whatever in pressure situations,’ well, [expletive] you.”
- Kobe Bryant
Read the rest here.
Lets go lakers #lakergang #kobe (Taken with instagram)
#abovenbeyond #golakergang (Taken with instagram)
![fuckyeanba:
Things are getting weird in Laker land. Maybe it’s the knee-jerk way we watch sports in the 24 hour news cycle (I’m as guilty of this as anyone), but Kobe’s frustrations at the end of game 2 against the Thunder, seem to signal the the start of possibly re-evaluating Kobe’s “clutch-ness.” Or possibly some articles questioning whether Kobe should be less or more deferential near the end of the 4th quarter even though Blake took that last shot (basically the opposite of what people complain about with LeBron; what a world).
First, a couple LA-based reporters highlighted Kobe after last night’s loss. LA Times columnist and frequent Around the Horn guest, Bill Plaschke—who has called Kobe an asshole before (no qualms with that assessment, but not exactly the objectivity you’d want in a reporter)—wrote about Kobe disappearing at the end. Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register did somewhat the same thing, writing a piece called “Kobe for the win? Unlikely scenario,” highlighting how strange it was to see Steve Blake take that last shot. Both writers criticize Kobe, but it’s Plaschke that uses the hyperbolic language that’s a rite of passage for major metropolitan newspaper columnists.
“It was Mount Rushmore crumbling, piece by piece. It was the Grand Canyon shrinking, inch by inch.”
It gets more stridently poetic from there as Plaschke uses last night’s loss as a referendum on the end of Kobe’s invicibility, and with it, the end of the Lakers as we know it.
”It was the greatest closer in basketball history closing a playoff game — and perhaps a season — down upon his own fingers with such force that an entire city still wails in shock and pain.”
Plaschke isn’t done either. The whole column features his grandiloquent musings, and here are two more snippets including his closing salvo featuring an apocalyptic doom normally reserved for Evangelicals discussing same-sex marriage (<3 you Obama and Jay-Z).
“Put it this way: I’ve covered Kobe Bryant since he arrived in Los Angeles 16 years ago, and I’ve never seen him fall so completely apart in a moment so incredibly big.”
…
Perhaps the most definitive explanation came from World Peace himself, who simply said, ‘I don’t know what to say exactly what happened.’
Yeah, the rest of us have never seen anything like it, either. The closer was closed, the hero was hollowed, the 2011-12 Lakers may be finished because Kobe Bryant couldn’t.
While Plaschke yukked it up with rhetoric straight from the ecclestiastical teachings in the Book of Revelation—which was hardly a revelation (and a classic case of columnist over-load after a single basketball game)—Kevin Ding took a more muted approach.
Ding wrote from a more nuanced angle about the game, highlighting the Lakers final play, the one where Metta threw the ball to Steve Blake rather than Kobe Bryant. But he does take a moment at the end to make the audacious claim (but nothing compared to Plaschke) that even if Metta had found Kobe, he still would have missed.
Bryant has been saying this season that the Lakers are a championship-caliber team with a small margin for error.
Perhaps that slight doubt creeping into his usually so-optimistic mind contributed to his own late-game unsteadiness Wednesday night. Just as in life, the most certain and most assertive tend to succeed.
You don’t have to be perfect – and those were actually the exact words that Thunder coach Scott Brooks put to his team in the huddle, even when they were down by seven with two minutes left. But if you are already thinking you have a small margin for error, you are far more likely to get tight and not get tough.
Given that, even if World Peace throws a perfect cross-court pass to Bryant for that last shot, it’s hard to envision it going in.
Ding wasn’t the only OC Register reporter to take a shot at Kobe. Janis Carr, the bastion of slide-show articles at the Register, asks the insulting question: “Where does Kobe rank? among floppers.” It was open season on Kobe Bryant in LA-area newspapers apparently.
It wasn’t just the national columnists that highlighted Kobe’s disappointing night on such a large stage. Kobe described the Thunder defense at the end as “risky” and “unconventional” during his post-game presser. BR writer (and ESPN and Hoopspeak contributor), Ethan Sherwood-Strauss, details some other blips of poor play on the Kobe Bryant radar. Blips that mirror the unconventionality Kobe spoke of; except, Strauss is talking about the Lakers and not the Thunder.
“None of that describes what happened on Bryant’s bizarre pass to Kevin Durant with 1:50 left in the game. KD was just too long for such a low entry pass (I believe Pau Gasol was the target). He barely jumped in, snatching it for an easy transition dunk.
Such a “gamble” description could, however, fit what occurred on the subsequent possession, when Russell Westbrook blurred into the path of a Steve Blake pass. Still, it isn’t as though Blake would have made Westbrook pay with a drive from half court to the hoop.”
Kobe Bryant fell apart in the last 2 minutes of an NBA playoff game. That much we know. But how he responds will go a long way towards figuring out which one of these writers will be forced to eat their words. Strauss and Ding took a more reserved approach to Kobe’s mistakes, Plaschke used them to add to his rotund language best left to the apostles. This could really be the end, in which case Plaschke can pat himself on the back for foretelling that end, but more likely it’s not, and Strauss and Ding were right to hold back on the doom and gloom of Plaschke.
I don’t think Kobe Bryant is done, regardless of what the LA Times suggests. I just think he had a bad game. It’s on him to rectify that.
[Ilustration by Chris Robertson by way of Hooped Up Online]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m46izlHKYw1qbcs46o1_400.jpg)
Things are getting weird in Laker land. Maybe it’s the knee-jerk way we watch sports in the 24 hour news cycle (I’m as guilty of this as anyone), but Kobe’s frustrations at the end of game 2 against the Thunder, seem to signal the the start of possibly re-evaluating Kobe’s “clutch-ness.” Or possibly some articles questioning whether Kobe should be less or more deferential near the end of the 4th quarter even though Blake took that last shot (basically the opposite of what people complain about with LeBron; what a world).
First, a couple LA-based reporters highlighted Kobe after last night’s loss. LA Times columnist and frequent Around the Horn guest, Bill Plaschke—who has called Kobe an asshole before (no qualms with that assessment, but not exactly the objectivity you’d want in a reporter)—wrote about Kobe disappearing at the end. Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register did somewhat the same thing, writing a piece called “Kobe for the win? Unlikely scenario,” highlighting how strange it was to see Steve Blake take that last shot. Both writers criticize Kobe, but it’s Plaschke that uses the hyperbolic language that’s a rite of passage for major metropolitan newspaper columnists.
“It was Mount Rushmore crumbling, piece by piece. It was the Grand Canyon shrinking, inch by inch.”
It gets more stridently poetic from there as Plaschke uses last night’s loss as a referendum on the end of Kobe’s invicibility, and with it, the end of the Lakers as we know it.
”It was the greatest closer in basketball history closing a playoff game — and perhaps a season — down upon his own fingers with such force that an entire city still wails in shock and pain.”
Plaschke isn’t done either. The whole column features his grandiloquent musings, and here are two more snippets including his closing salvo featuring an apocalyptic doom normally reserved for Evangelicals discussing same-sex marriage (<3 you Obama and Jay-Z).
“Put it this way: I’ve covered Kobe Bryant since he arrived in Los Angeles 16 years ago, and I’ve never seen him fall so completely apart in a moment so incredibly big.”
…
Perhaps the most definitive explanation came from World Peace himself, who simply said, ‘I don’t know what to say exactly what happened.’
Yeah, the rest of us have never seen anything like it, either. The closer was closed, the hero was hollowed, the 2011-12 Lakers may be finished because Kobe Bryant couldn’t.
While Plaschke yukked it up with rhetoric straight from the ecclestiastical teachings in the Book of Revelation—which was hardly a revelation (and a classic case of columnist over-load after a single basketball game)—Kevin Ding took a more muted approach.
Ding wrote from a more nuanced angle about the game, highlighting the Lakers final play, the one where Metta threw the ball to Steve Blake rather than Kobe Bryant. But he does take a moment at the end to make the audacious claim (but nothing compared to Plaschke) that even if Metta had found Kobe, he still would have missed.
Bryant has been saying this season that the Lakers are a championship-caliber team with a small margin for error.
Perhaps that slight doubt creeping into his usually so-optimistic mind contributed to his own late-game unsteadiness Wednesday night. Just as in life, the most certain and most assertive tend to succeed.
You don’t have to be perfect – and those were actually the exact words that Thunder coach Scott Brooks put to his team in the huddle, even when they were down by seven with two minutes left. But if you are already thinking you have a small margin for error, you are far more likely to get tight and not get tough.
Given that, even if World Peace throws a perfect cross-court pass to Bryant for that last shot, it’s hard to envision it going in.
Ding wasn’t the only OC Register reporter to take a shot at Kobe. Janis Carr, the bastion of slide-show articles at the Register, asks the insulting question: “Where does Kobe rank? among floppers.” It was open season on Kobe Bryant in LA-area newspapers apparently.
It wasn’t just the national columnists that highlighted Kobe’s disappointing night on such a large stage. Kobe described the Thunder defense at the end as “risky” and “unconventional” during his post-game presser. BR writer (and ESPN and Hoopspeak contributor), Ethan Sherwood-Strauss, details some other blips of poor play on the Kobe Bryant radar. Blips that mirror the unconventionality Kobe spoke of; except, Strauss is talking about the Lakers and not the Thunder.
“None of that describes what happened on Bryant’s bizarre pass to Kevin Durant with 1:50 left in the game. KD was just too long for such a low entry pass (I believe Pau Gasol was the target). He barely jumped in, snatching it for an easy transition dunk.
Such a “gamble” description could, however, fit what occurred on the subsequent possession, when Russell Westbrook blurred into the path of a Steve Blake pass. Still, it isn’t as though Blake would have made Westbrook pay with a drive from half court to the hoop.”
Kobe Bryant fell apart in the last 2 minutes of an NBA playoff game. That much we know. But how he responds will go a long way towards figuring out which one of these writers will be forced to eat their words. Strauss and Ding took a more reserved approach to Kobe’s mistakes, Plaschke used them to add to his rotund language best left to the apostles. This could really be the end, in which case Plaschke can pat himself on the back for foretelling that end, but more likely it’s not, and Strauss and Ding were right to hold back on the doom and gloom of Plaschke.
I don’t think Kobe Bryant is done, regardless of what the LA Times suggests. I just think he had a bad game. It’s on him to rectify that.
[Ilustration by Chris Robertson by way of Hooped Up Online]
