The Diatribe

I am of two minds today and so I will write both of my stories.  I am angry and sad as so many of us are.  Already in print articles and on NPR this morning I have heard theories for why and how this happened and I have my own ideas about those too, but I am not interested in those right now.  I know exactly who to blame for this outcome. 

First, The Diatribe.

Every dumbass motherfucker who voted for Donald Trump is responsible for this outcome.  Humans are consistent and predictable and as the saying goes, opinions are like assholes.  Everyone has one and most of them stink.  If you voted for Donald Trump however, you are a special breed of asshole.  First, you think you know.  You have it all worked out.  You trust your judgment more than anyone else’s.  You are wrapped up in your world and your experience and you’re selfish.  Second, you do not empathize with others.  You don’t care about the reputation of your country.  You don’t care about how your behavior as an adult is seen by your children. You are not open and your values around education and reading are likely not conducive to recognizing the truth or seeking it out. 

I don’t care that republicans have effectively gutted the voting rights act over the last 10 years.  I don’t care that Citizens United has allowed the wealthy class to exert undue influence on our political process.  You allowed this to happen. You made this happen.  

You voted for a guy who joked that he liked to walk up to women and grab them by the pussy adding that as a celebrity, he could get away with that behavior.  Did that sound like a joke to you?  I know his spin on it, locker room talk and all that, but did you buy it?  I didn’t.  (Then again, maybe you did buy it?  If so your judgment is pathetic.)  How do you reconcile that with your children?  This is a serious question.  Are you telling them that it was okay because it was a joke?  Are you telling them he was wrong to say such a thing but it's forgivable, his judgment is still good enough to be President of the United States?  President of the United States?!

About Hillary all that she is corrupt stuff is bullshit. I'm sorry you feel marginalized. Perhaps you really are a low information voter  Maybe the only information you take in is from Fox News or even the mainstream corporate outlets?  Hillary is as corrupt as the majority of our politicians today.  She is adept at playing a corrupt game.  That you think she is somehow a trillion times more corrupt than everyone else on the face of the earth is a testament to your inability to discern the truth from whatever someone or some entity is selling you.  If Citizens United allowed foreign governments or the Koch Brothers to spend millions of dollars through so called think tanks, (propaganda machines,) to  influence you it doesn’t change the fact you are responsible for succumbing to all that. More, in a straight up comparison of the two, Hillary never said she walked up to people and grabbed them by the genitalia.

What is wrong with you?  How could you do this?  We will all feel the pain of this Presidency but you should feel it more and I don’t know how that happens beyond sane people who had the good sense not to vote for him telling you how irresponsible and pathetic you have been.  This is not a one-time thing, either.  Like, whoops, I voted for Trump.  No, you allowed yourself to be here.  You were the one who did not focus in school, who did not embrace reading, who chose to nurture a short attention span rather than instilling some self-discipline in yourself.  We get the democracy we deserve and what we deserve presently is because of you.  How embarrassing for all of us.  (And if you are successful or well off, by odds you likely lack roundness and the balance of a gentleman and your financial success in no way represents your overall value as a member of society.  On that you have spoken-loud and clear.)

You voted for someone who as a candidate offered no real ideas or plans.  Instead he said, trust me.  And you did.  You voted for a guy who as a candidate refused to let the people, (as in, “We the people,”) see his tax returns.  It is not a law that candidates have to show the public their taxes, rather it has just been considered proper and it was thought the American people would never vote for someone who refused to reveal their financial behavior.  You proved that wrong.  You voted for him anyway.  Apparently you do not believe in accountability.  You are inclined to trust Donald Trump.  He has never behaved in any way like a statesman or a sage and yet, you...  the-fuck?!

You did it ostensibly because Hillary Clinton is connected to Bill Clinton who runs the Clinton Foundation who accepted money from a multitude of entities around the world to engage in charitable endeavors.  As an example the Clinton Foundation accepted $1 million from the little principality that is Qatar.  This transaction  occurred while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.  It was her duty based on her word to report this transaction to the Department of State and in this regard she failed.  There is room to parse this.  She promised to report any new or increased contributions and we do not know what Qatar may have donated in previous years, only that they did donate.  Still, she erred on this to avoid even the air of wrongdoing.  Of course there is so much more but this is as substantive or as egregious a thing as I can find against Hillary.  There are email issues that pale in comparison to what occurred in the Bush administration so I dismiss those out of hand based on the FBI concluding there was nothing to prosecute there.  There are far-fetched rumors of murder and worse I suppose but of course, that’s all bullshit.  A cursory analysis typically debunks those stories. 

By the way, you should google performance ratings for charitable organizations and check on the clinton foundation.  Charitywatch, charitynavigator, they all say the same thing.  

From factcheck.org: "Daniel Borochoff, president and founder of CharityWatch, told us by phone that its analysis of the finances of the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates found that about 89 percent of the foundation budget is spent on programming (or “charity”), higher than the 75 percent considered the industry standard."

Amazing.  Right?  Right?!  That's 14% higher at the rarefied top of the margin.

Am I a big fan of HRC?  No.  Bernie best represented my values.  Hillary, however, was in the mold of prior Presidents.  Presidents like Obama, Clinton, George HW Bush, Reagan, Carter and so on.  Yes, they were products of a monied system, (an increasingly monied system.) but in terms of education level and decorum, grace, if you will, they were Presidential.  I failed to mention George W Bush because yes, the two are similar.  They were both privileged, wealthy children who as a class, often do not adopt some of our most basic values of goodness and kindness. 

What Bernie Sanders accomplished as a candidate was beyond simply being unprecedented.  It had looked like a grass roots campaign could never compete in this system.  No doubt powers are at work trying to figure out creative ways of stopping the masses from being so influential in the future.  To raise the money needed to compete in this utterly corrupt system through small, individual donations, (yes, averaging $27,) was very much like a miracle.  I had such high hopes.  

Bot no, you did not get on board with Bernie by and large because you were sold all this bullshit about high taxes and the debt, (Of course the bogeymen changes seasonally and you're stuck on buy.)  You think you are going to be rich one day.  You blame people who receive welfare benefits for why you are not already rich, because you're such a hard worker and you're so brilliant of course.  The military budget does not bother you but there's a good reason for that.  You don't understand how exorbitant it is relative to every other country on the planet, or how much overkill it really is, (pardon the pun.)  

We can point out the evidence, show you how tax rates were following the great depression and the new deal, in the 50's for example.  We can illustrate the direct correlation between those tax rates and the wealth and prosperity that followed.  We can point out basic truths about how big business had behaved when unchecked in the past and what it took to rein them in, a strong adversary.  We can draw the through line for you right to a strong federal government but you still buy the propaganda the wealthy class, republicans and the right sells you about "states rights," and how the federal government should be weakened in favor of power distribution.  Who will protect our children from being forced into the work force, uneducated and prematurely?  Who will protect miners?  Who will protect workers in the work place?  Donald Trump?  Donald fucking Trump?!  Wake the fuck up.  

I can't blame ignorance anymore, as if it is a faceless nameless condition.  I can't empathize with you anymore after what you have done.  I want so much more for my children.  Fuck you.

I have heard this criticism of people who make Hitler comparisons on social media.  And yet, everytime we see societies bring someone like Trump to power bad things happen. 

A Moon Shaped Hole in My Heart

The hole or the pool or the crater or whatever it is on the cover artwork of Radiohead's new record, 'A Moon Shaped Pool,' looks like the feeling you have in your chest and stomach when you listen to it.  The music is tense and nervous, sickly sweet and disgusting.  This is not the music of the day.  It does not make you want to fuck.  It is not uplifting like an affirmation yelped into a morning mirror as if to charge or embolden.  It is not the humdrum singalong whistling tune by which to work your day around.  This is grown-ass men making thoughtful, artistic music as commentary, warning, diatribe, bombast and spectacle.  The children will not like 'A Moon Shaped Pool,'-remove them.


When a band composes music filled with minor chords and dark lyrics and dissonant sounds people tend to characterize it as depressing or even suicidal.  They mock what they don't understand.  The music affects them darkly.  It is not what they want or expect from their music.  An aesthete by contrast appreciates being moved at all costs.  If art bothers, confuses, invigorates in any direction or spurs something inner, some sort of inertia by means of the five senses, it is successful in its endeavor. Art moves and 'A Moon Shaped Pool,' is high art indeed. 


If you are an aesthete you will appreciate the opening track, 'Burn the Witch.'  It is an apt allusion to any witch hunt.  It is not necessarily about immigration, illegal or otherwise, in the United States, but the general sense you get, of gathering around the bar or the office and complaining about others while avoiding eye contact, or responsibility for your own personal witch hunt, is apt.  You live in a time of witch hunts, with a drumming, forward beat, jaunty in its momentum, blithe even.  There is no time to think, only to burn the witch. 


'Dreamers,' the second track is a dull warning about how impotent dreams are.  You can spend your life dreaming the world is somehow bright and cheery, the way the music of major chords and bright lyrics portray life.  However, if you view the world in such a way you have constricted your view to a narrow glimpse of images projected onto a wall, perhaps in your own mad cave, for the purpose of believing something that is simply not true. 'Dreamers' reminds you that life can be beautiful and sublime but only if viewed while awake, confronting the darkness with eyes wide open.


'Decks Dark,' asks if you have had enough of your former partner, (perhaps.)  Are you over him who exposes the truth?  Are you ready to go back to the cave or do you want to know it all?  Certainly you can choose enlightenment but if you don't, the foray to knowledge and life will be just a laugh, and certainly the decks will be dark. 
It's not as if Radiohead is so serious or so self involved as to believe their art, their music, can change the world, wake people, open you.  Still, they offer ideas with mood and intensity that spirit you forward, tumbling into the abyss to arrive wherever you may, maybe even a moon shaped pool. 
On 'Desert Island Disk' you are offered a respite from the weight of murky light.  Yorke tells you he feels light.  (You are sure he means it both ways.)  The song is all positivity.  If there is a Radiohead song you will want to include on your desert island disk it will be the hopeful one, the one that assures you no matter how much understanding you arrive at, no matter how much isolation it brings you from those who would run and hide from the light as if the suffocation would not give way to a higher plane, you know the truth.  "Different types of love are possible."
It is possible this collection of songs dating back into the 90s are culled together for far more personal reasons.  They may just be Yorke's epitaph punctuating the end of his own long term relationship.  Perhaps the full stop period is an ending that still tastes like bad medicine.  Perhaps you have experienced your own 'Ful Stop,' a partner who betrayed trust and threw it all away.  She put the full stop on your relationship and Yorke has a revelation for her, "the truth will mess you up."
When love turns cold in the heart of someone with 'Glass Eyes,' it can only sound as exquisite as this when Radiohead composes it, (with the help of an accomplished string section.)  You are familiar with this setting, the dark, angry, complicated lyrics with the candied falsetto floating over the top of it all.  In many ways it does not matter to you what the singer croons.  On the other hand you know the message will sink in and take you later by surprise.  You can't help recalling that former partner with the glass eyes.  All the warmth you once knew with her turned icy cold.  Icy fucking cold.


'Identikit,' continues the post mortem.  It is a bitterly dissonant song musically full of confusion but with a melody you recognize at once.  It is the melody of grief, of the aftermath.  Broken hearts do make it rain and the tears you shed are personal and for your kind.  In so many ways 'A Moon Shaped Pool,' conjures the pain social media seems to add to breakups.  'Identikit,' may be the acidic answer to the pain of seeing and hearing.  You would rather see your former lover as just another anyone, a common patchwork identikit of anyone, anyone at all, not someone special who knew, who knew...
L'est you ever think Radiohead is in anything short of all that came before, 'The Numbers,' proves their discography is the culmination of all that came before.  It feels like the continuation of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and Neil Young.  The Numbers is pure message.  The future is inside us.  We are of the earth.  Open on all channels.  One day at a time.  We call upon the people.  People have the power.  The numbers don't decide.  There's much more.  You listen and you fall in love with hope and truth all over again because amidst all this heartbreak you know, everything out there is in here.  Wonder.
'Present Tense,' is a staggering attempt at empathy.  Yorke puts himself in her shoes and identifies through the pain with how lost one can be when confronted with so much growth. 


On 'Tinker Tailor Solder Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief,' you feel like tagging her.  She is it.  You've said your peace.  The pain comes and goes, ebbs and flows, and if you are suspicious, if you are paranoid, you must be it.  You can't help but want to tag her again to rid yourself of this pain. 
'True Love Waits,' may have been about chastity rings when it was conceived 20+ years ago but here, where it belongs on a Moon Shaped Pool, it becomes the simple cry it is.  It is a promise that can't be kept of course, and a plea.  "Don't leave."  You can't help but feel this way in the wake as the water crests you under.  You can know the end was inevitable.  You can be at peace with the outcome but you will still have those moments when you remember how good it was or more importantly how good it could have been, how good it still could be if somehow it all came back together in a perfect way, (because it would take a perfect way after all this, right?)  "Don't leave," Yorke intones.  "Don't leave.  The burden of loss and sadness in unmistakable.  Love hurts.  And maybe true love is a juvenile emotion.  It seems that way when you try so hard, when your heart is as pure as the chastity of a young supplicant, When you have no control and can't keep what you love.  "Don't leave," you plead,
'A Moon Shaped Pool' is not easily defined.  It is not this kind of record or that kind of record.  It is a long way from the sets of stellar pop songs The Bends and Pablo Honey were.  It is not quite OK Computer, Kid A or Amnesiac in their knowable conceptual themes.  It is more, really.  It is all of those things and In Rainbows too, but with greater maturity and perhaps even complexity, (you think.)  By the way, Street Spirit would fit like a jigsaw puzzle on this record.


As for the album art, the moon shaped pool is actually a face, a specter or apparition, appearing in an aftermath of confusion.  Maybe it's Yorke's face separated out by so many shades leaving only his right eye and what looks like a sprawling nose and a puff of smoke coming from his mouth.  Like so much of Radiohead's music this collection represents a person alive and at odds with his environment, (therapy) thereby achieving an uncommon, prescient harmony. 

Why I Consider Kobe Outside of the Top 31 All-Time NBA Players

Kobe Bryant is the most overrated player of sports in my lifetime.  As a lifelong Laker fan it pains me to make this point but from a keen sense of justice I have always been bothered by the enormity of Bryant’s legend.  To be certain he is a terrific player and one of the best to ever join the Association but not top 10.  No way. 

Kobe has been one of the best.  First, his endurance has been exceptional.  Until the last few of these 20 seasons in the league Kobe was incredibly healthy, which can be attributed to his superior physical fitness and perhaps also to genetic good fortune.  Second, he may have possessed the greatest pull-up jumper in the history of the game.  Kobe’s versatility is also among the all-time greats.

Kobe’s drawbacks begin with his ego.  When he entered the league he was groomed by many of the game’s greats to be prolific, even the best ever.  He had that kind of talent.  And that shot was so smooth from day one.  We, (I’ll speak for all Laker fans here,) all dreamed it, imagined it, and pronounced it as if his destiny was manifest by the purple and gold “Lakers,” emblazoned across his chest.  Never mind the missed three-point shots at the end of the Kobe’s rookie Lakers’ season-ending loss in the Western Conference Finals to Malone and Stockton. Kobe averaged 7 points a game and was not an integral part of the offense or the rotation.  He was the future and in many ways he lived up to the potential.  Once the Lakers brought in Shaq and surrounded the two of them with efficient workmen like Derek Fisher and Rick Fox and Robert Horry, the threepeat was born. 

In the modern NBA every team has a scorer.  The Lakers in those years had Shaq who could literally sink 40 points and gobble up 20 rebounds every night if necessary.  Bryant, however, was the team’s classic scorer.  He averaged 22, 28 and 25 points a game in those three glorious seasons.  Kobe’s points may have been easier to come by than some other scorers around the league based on the attention Shaq drew to the key.  Then again, maybe it was harder to find those points given the lion’s share Shaq achieved by owning the paint and putting back everything.  In any case he was more than proficient in his role.  I can’t help but wonder what a garden variety NBA scorer like Alex English might have achieved if paired with someone of Shaq’s caliber and stature.  Or Allen Iverson.  Iverson was not the defensive player Kobe was and he certainly brought a shitload of baggage to his team but as a scorer, he was more creative and better than Kobe and he honed his skills on a bunch of otherwise bad teams.  Carmelo Anthony may have had equal success to Kobe with Bryant’s supporting cast.  Dwayne Wade achieved at a similar level with less.  Today, around the league there are several players who will never be considered in Kobe’s class, who carry a greater burden than Kobe had to on his winning teams, and who achieved more than Kobe did when his teams were equally inefficient. 

Scorers get the recognition in the NBA.  Sometimes players like Dennis Rodman or Joakim Noah are lauded for their yeoman’s role but generally, it is the Derek Rose’s and the Isiah Thomas’s who are given the credit for wins.  This makes sense in as much as scoring is the single hardest thing there is to do in a basketball game.  At the same time they are not just plentiful in the game at any level, every team has one or two.  Kobe led the league in scoring in two of his 19 years.  Both of those years the Lakers departed the playoffs with first round losses.  For those two years, ’05-’06 and ’06-’07, Kobe was one of those scorers around the league he gets so much credit for being vastly better than.  To me he was virtually Carmelo Anthony in those years, except with good defense. 

Kobe also gets a lot of credit for somehow being a smart or heady player.  In fact he was never smart enough to focus in on his best skill and capitalize on it.  He became known as the best bad shot maker in the game, which is a truth and a manifestation of the fact that he got good at something that was unadvisable in the first place.  More, to say he was good at is a relative estimation.  It is not as if that bad shot selection yielded better results than other players or than himself when he got better shots.  Had Kobe been a truly smart player he would have made a living off of taking 1-3 hard steps and dribbles in either direction then pulling up for the mid-range jumper.  That being the shot he did better than everyone else.  Only Jordan was close and may have exceeded Bryant based on his ability to consistently get more lift on his jumper making it an easier shot for him. 

In 2008 the Lakers beat the Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals and in that series, but scarcely at any other sustained time in Kobe’s career, Kobe did focus in on his strength.  He also played unselfishly and with great defense.  In a word, in that particular series, Kobe’s play was devastating.  Personally, I was overjoyed.  For me Kobe had finally become the best player in basketball and all that Laker fans had hoped for.  It was the season of his first title sans Shaq.  He had been joined by what was at that time the best big man in the game whose name was not Tim Duncan, Pau Gasol.  As we know with Lamar Odom and Ron Artest the Lakers won two more championships, which was what fueled Kobe to play as he did in that Denver series.  Getting that other title as Shaq had in Miami was a big deal to him and finally he set his ego aside and played team ball, even in his role as the scorer.  Kobe also played well in the Finals that year, and had a spectacular game one, but Trevor Ariza and Derek Fisher made the necessary clutch shots in the crucial games four and five.  (That is the reality that can be seen throughout Kobe's career in spite of his reputation as somehow being a clutch performer.  He is not and never was.)  In the following year, even though the Lakers won Kobe’s 5^th championship, he digressed.  His ego got the best of him and he reverted to slashing to the hoop to try to get crowd pleasing dunks and bombing three balls like Pistol Pete Maravich on Dopamine.  My friends and I used to feign tears when he would hit two or three three’s because we knew the end result would be him jacking up a bunch more.  He is a lifetime 33% three-point shooter and he achieved all of 35% in that remarkable ’08-’09 season.

 

One more piece of evidence on  Kobe’s ego and a bit of conspiracy.  First, Kobe gave himself the moniker The Black Mamba.  He said he adopted it as a means of coping with the turmoil he endured being accused of rape.  He got it from a Quentin Tarantino movie.  Who nicknames themselves?  That is narcissistic as hell, right?  On the conspiracy front I question Kobe’s ability to speak Italian fluently.  It’s been out there forever that he is fluent having spent a number of years growing up in Italy while his father played in the Italian professional basketball league but I have never heard it.  We have all heard him say a few words to somebody but if that is the measure of fluency then I am fluent in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese and Armenian.  I just don’t trust him.  He seems like the type of person to lie about such a thing.  He wants so bad to be the best ever and thus far the public has cooperated.  Also, almost everything he ever says publicly, every quote, every interview, he reveals the true megalomaniac within.

I don’t know Kobe.  It’s possible I am all wrong about him.  I have always swam upstream on this one but outside of a playoff run that led to his 4^th title, the counterintuitive Kobe is the only one I have ever seen.  He won the NBA Finals MVP award when the Lakers won that 5^th championship and I was beyond incredulous.  Go back and watch that series.  Kobe gets his 20+ points per game but his turnovers were not only abundant, they occurred at the most crucial and inopportune times.  I recall thinking during some of those crucial turnovers, ‘well, if they win at least Kobe won’t get the series’ MVP.’  Wrong.  If it had been to me I would have nicknamed Kobe 'The Emperor," for obvious reasons.

As for why or how Kobe’s reputation grew to such heroic proportions, I have fragments of ideas collected and stored over the years.  Yes, we all wanted him to be great, so we were prone to believe he was achieving it before our eyes over the years.  The Lakers had great success and Kobe was a part of it if not the overwhelming catalyst he was credited as being.  Kobe always talked the talk.  From day one he was always intent on creating that legend.  He would say he did not socialize with other NBA players because he was dedicated to honing his game and working out but it may just be that he was an asshole and no one was interested in being friends with him.  Whenever he did seem like he had become friends with someone in the league the relationship was always characterized as, “Kobe has become something of a big brother figure to Carmelo.”  I used to imagine the days when years after their careers were over some of these players would come out and tell the truth about Kobe.  I still  wonder if Dwayne Wade or Carmelo Anthony will emerge one day to say they always felt superior to Kobe and despised him for the cast he had around him and the success.  I also wonder about Pau.  He has always seemed like a heady sort of guy, in stark contrast to Kobe, and as such I thought he might one day back off all the lip service praise he has bestowed upon Kobe over the years as his teammate.  When I think about Kobe complaining to the cops the night he was arrested for rape, about how Shaq would have had his indiscretion swept under the rug by the authorities, it just seems appropriate from a karmic standpoint some of these guys would come out and cut Kobe back down to size a bit.  That they have not reveals their bigger nature.

I am a Laker lover.  When I was about 6-years-old I remember the Lakers were a great team and they had this guy who shot left-handed and always seemed to hit big shots in crunch time.  I was aware of this behemoth of a man, (unbeknownst to me in the twilight of his career,) Wilt Chamberlain.  I also knew Jerry West.  He was the team’s catalyst.  But Gail Goodrich was the guy I identified with.  Other teams could not leave West or Chamberlain alone and so Goodrich got plenty of good looks at the basket and he was in his own right a great scorer, (ironically by way of the mid-range jumper.)  A few years later it was Lucius Allen and Cazzie Russell on mediocre Laker teams.  Then Kareem came over and Magic was had in the draft and the glory years began in earnest.  Five championships in the ‘80s were salad days for Laker fans.  Kareem became and remains my favorite player of all time.  Magic was great.  His exuberance in action is unparalleled in sports.  James Worthy is vastly underrated due to the mixed fortune of playing with Buck and Cap.  I also loved Rambis and Michael Cooper and most every Laker.  I even liked Nick Van Exel. When glory returned in the new millennium, I quickly became a Shaq fan, even though I had not cared for him when he was in Orlando.  I also embraced Kobe.  In the first 6-7 years of his career I too sang the faithful refrain.  It was when the debate began about whose team the Lakers were, Shaq’s or Kobe’s, that I first became dismayed.  I remember thinking geez, I bet Chris Webber and Mike Bibby would be thankful to have Shaq on their squad and they would not act as if they were somehow on his level.  Kobe was never near Shaq in terms of real impact on basketball games.  Shaq was a pulsating force in the middle of the key who affected everything that happened at both ends of the court.  By comparison Kobe was merely a good player. 

As a Laker fan I loved Robert Horry and I embraced Ron Harper and Brian Shaw.  Along with Ron Artest later these players hit crucial important shots.  Derek Fisher also hit some big shots.  By contrast Kobe had a million chances to hit big shots and hit very few.  According to an article several years ago in Slam Magazine Kobe was statistically among the worst clutch shot makers in the league.  The cable network Prime Ticket created a show out of Kobe’s 10 greatest clutch shots.  Most of them occurred in the early season.  One or two were in the same last game of a season and another one was in the 2006 playoffs against Phoenix.  In 19 years and all those playoff games, given that Kobe has shot the basketball more than anyone to ever play the game, (the all-time leading misser of shots but well behind Kareem on the all-time scoring list,) isn’t it shocking he doesn’t have some real big clutch makes to show for all those attempts?  Fisher has “.4.”  Metta Worldpeace made hay of Kobe’s airball and made the layup as time expired in the Finals.  (Ron Harper from the baseline against Portland…Horry top of the key vs. Sacramento…so many big shots come to mind.  Only that one against Phoenix comes to mind for Kobe and the Lakers lost that first round series and the Lakers were a bad team, Kobe’s bad team.  Yes, that team was truly his.) 


Kobe is and was better than Robert Horry or Derek Fisher.  Fisher was a smarter player who used his brain and moxie to perform at a level higher than what might be expected of him physically.  Horry landed on several excellent teams that needed another really good, versatile player in their push for championships.  He was exceedingly skilled and as cool under fire as could be.


Kobe's legend was fueled by victory and Hollywood, self aggrandizement and folklore.  It was built over time by fans who wanted to believe.  It is groupthink and it is mostly harmless. 

There is not much I like about Kobe.  Even on a bad team when he calls a team meeting to tell the young guys they need to stop complaining and just go find ways to win, he could not be more tone deaf.  He is shooting 33% from the field, hoisting up way too many three-point shots and spending disproportionately more time on the court than these young guys while producing less. As it is Kobe’s legacy is larger than life and for me, larger than it should be.  I am interested to see if age changes his attitudes and if somehow he finds humility in his gray years.  It could swing my attitude about him.  I mean look, he was involved in a lot of Laker achievement.  I have no intention of changing my tune but I could see him popping up on an NBA broadcast and waxing humble for a period of time convincing me of some late-arriving maturity but then who knows how my opinion might evolve.  Still, no doubt as of today his reputation is completely overblown and unjustified. 

The odd videos one can find on the internet.  So I don't know that these are the top 10 but it is not surprising to me the only two Kobe makes are with a 5-point lead on an ill-advised two-point shot with Grant Hill all over him and one jump shot with plenty of time left in game 7 against the Celtics.  In that game it is pretty clear Ron Artest was the clutch shooter and in fact he should have been awarded the series MVP.