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.

Kings - Stanley Cup Champions

it's no longer spring so it makes sense that a big procrastinater like me is finally doing some deep cleaning.  i'm in the kid's room, throwing out what doesn't fit and toys of bygone years, rearranging virtually everything and cleaning deep in the carpet, windows and sills and all the cracks and corners.  since terra had a last day of school party and so did not go to the parade with me i got her a souvenir pennant commemorating the kings championship and today i put it up on a wall in her room.  afterwards, i stood back and admired the pennant and for a split second a wave of emotion welled up in me.

why?  do i care this much about a sports team?  if so, that is beyond silly.  that is not it, however.  i stopped and thought about it and i realized i feel something deep because i remember what the championships of my teams meant to me when i was a kid. 

in 1977 when the raiders beat the vikings in superbowl xi at the rose bowl, i was 11 and it was the greatest thing in the world.  i remember fred biletnikoff's sliding catch at the viking one that set up a touchdown like it was yesterday.  i remember the raider's first touchdown so vividly because i was impressed like nobody's business.

the raiders set up in a goal line set at the vike's one yard line.  of course mark van eeghen or clarence davis were about to pound through the middle of the line for a score, i assumed in great anticipation.  the vikings figured the same thing but stabler and john madden had another idea.  stabler took the snap and turned to his running backs who filed towards him as if to take the hand-off and vault into the end zone.  the snake faked the give and tucked the ball into his abdomen as slyly as his nickname suggests and acted as if trotting away from the handoff but suddenly, he pulled up and turned towards the left side of his line where he saw dave casper springing free from a tepid, almost fake, block and look up over his left shoulder.  i remember the sun.  the crown city, my city, was awash with golden hues of brightness and stabler pulled the ball up to his left shoulder and tossed it like a nerf basketball over the top of the pile of humanity clustered in front of him at the goal line.  i could see the ball spinning with stabler's trademark counter-clockwise rotation, sunshine guiding it over outstretched claws of hands and sparkling off the brown leather as it reached casper, "the ghost," who caught it like a firefighter catching a baby, two hands under the oblong treasure, cradling into his gut to put the raiders up 9-0.  (what casper did next is not what a firefighter would do with a baby after the catch, by the way.) 

i remember just being amazed.  i looked at the tv with my jaw open like a flytrap.  i was ecstatic and i admired that play because it was just so much bigger than life.  i did not expect that play.  neither did bud grant and the vikings who were losing their fourth superbowl.  i had never seen anything like that.  when the raiders were beating the patriots and the steelers en route to that superbowl glory i had not seen a play like that.  they had been an awesome team, especially in the passing game and in sheer moxie, but this play surprised me and made me feel something deep inside.  the world was large and there was much more to it, than i had dreamt of in my philosophy.

in october of 1981 the dodgers won the world series.  for the third time in five years they played the yankees in that series after having lost the previous two times.  thhe dodgers lost both of the first two games in yankee stadium then came home and won three in a row at dodger stadium, (all buy one run.)  then they walloped the yanks in game 6 back in new york.  what a thrill that entire post season was.  i attended the one game playoff against the astros at dodger stadium to settle the playoff participant after each time won a half of the strike split season.  jerry reuss was brilliant that day.

i had attended several world series games in 1977 and 1978 when the dodgers lost to the yankess and reggie jackson so revenge was especially sweet.  jay johnstone had a big pinch hit home run i'll never forget.  when you are 16 and a pinch hitter comes up for your team you are always thinking home run, (which reminds me of how i thought the same thing in the playoffs in 1988 when mike scioscia came up against the mets.)  the dodgers were bigger than life that year.  ron cey got hit in the head, pedro guerrero hit a monster homer to rub it in near the end of game 6, steve yeager had clutch hits and fernando, burt hooten, jerry reuss and the rest of the dodger pitching staff mowed down yankees like a jefferson davis dream sequence.  (dave winfield 1-22 on the series?!)

those were big moments for me.  later as an adult i enjoyed seeng the angels beat the san francisco giants in the 2002 world series.  at that time i thought of myself as more of an angel fan than a dodger fan but i go back and forth, (to the horror of many.)  at that time the angels had darin erstad,who was my favorite player, and they were a homegrown, ragtag unit that was not expected to win it.  and now the kings have won the cup.  wow.

there is still a little kid inside me.  noam chomsky says sports are a diversion that distract and pacify people who are in many ways being taken advantage of or at least in a democracy, not being represented properly, and he is not wrong.  still, what a diversion.  sports represent the vary nature of life.  there is a great deal of human drama therein.  the games are relateable.  we know what it is like to succeed and to fail and so we cling to our teams and we live and die with them. 

i have lived and died with the kings for 20 years.  (i was a fan much further back but really latched on in the wayne gretzky era, even naming my first cat "gretzky."  i remember marcel dionne and the triple crown line and i have a signed team canada card rogie vachon once gave me.)  it was in the early '90s when i decided the kings were my favorite of all teams.  i fell in love with hockey and was dismayed at never having played the game, (though i did play quite a bit of floor hockey, as it was called, in college.)  hockey was new to me and i loved the combination of athleticism and toughness.  i was becoming more politically aware in those days and may have even felt guilty for being such a jock and avid follower of my teams.  so, i remained loyal to the lakers, raiders, dodgers and angels, but the kings were something of a powerhouse with wayne gretzky and luc robataille and company and so, i latched on to them.  a funny thing happened however.  the king's owner bruce mcnall had his empire come crashing down in a barrage of tax evasion charges and the no longer flush kings hit the skids.  from 1994 through 2011 the kings won one playoff series and missed the playoffs 8-10 seasons in a row to begin the new millenium. 

so what?  i remember that series they won like it was yesterday.  i remember adam deadmarsh's overtime game winner against the vaunted detroit redwings in overtime as he fell to the ice and shot the puck at the same time.  i also remember all those in between years.  hell, i remember the years of vitaly yachmenev, yanick perreault and alexander frolov.  these were some poor teams.  each year i would see the bright spots but each year by the midway point in the season it was obvious the kings were going nowhere.  i despised their ownership, too. 

then something even funnier happened.  the kings got good.  dustin brown and anze kopitar grew up.  they seemed to take something from each of the several coaches they had in their careers and got better.  the kings finally got a goalie; jonathan quick.  most importantly, the kings committed to winning, (from the same ownership group i had formerly detested.)  deam lombardi took over as general manager and brought in a host of old, eastern and northern, hockey people including first terry murray then of course, daryl sutter.  the commitment to winning manifested itself in the kings acquiring depth.  they got mike richards from philadelphia last off season, which was when i knew lombardi and company believed they had a real contender.  i believed too.  the timing seemed right for kopitar and brown in particular. 

the kings won the stanley cup because of their defense and their physicality.  throughout the playoffs it was easy to see that other teams did not want to hit as much as the kings.  they would for a spell then they would drop off and the kings would take a lead.   then the other team would try to match the kings physical play in one big hit and would end up taking a penalty, which the kings took advantage of even when they did not score on the resulting power plays.  it was willie mitchell and matt greene and alex martinez and slava voynov and drew doughty who anchored this team. 

what a glorious run, too.  in 1993 and 1999 i loved playoff hockey because of its edge-of-your-seat nature.  overtime games in particular, make for great theatre.  this year was not like that.  the kings dominated every round.  they started against the team with the best record in hockey, president's trophy winning vancouver canucks and they won the first two games in vancouver and never looked back.  when they lost game four it just seemed like they took their foot of the gas a little bit.  in game five they accelerated anew right into the second round where they met the st louis blues; the second best team in hockey on the regular season.  the kings swept them and there was never a worrisome moment for yours truly.  in the third round the kings faced the phoenix coyotes, a tough team who had a great second half of the season, just like the kings.  the kings won the first two games in phoenix and repeated the pattern they had established against vancouver of dropping the fourth game before winning the series. 

in the finals the kings met the new jersey devils.  the kings won the first two games on the road for the fourth straight series.  true to form they lost the fourth game at home and had to return to new jersey where this time, they lost game 5 as well.  i was worried, finally.  that said at the start of game 6 i predicted the kings would win the game 6-1.  i felt like new jersey had just been hanging with the kings and that the kings would breakout and with the nature of big games being that teams behind will often take more chances when they are on the ultimate precipice of defeat, (as evidenced by a host of superbowls with lopsided scores...or that dodger game six they won 9-2 in yankee stadium in 1981.) the kings went up 3-0 early on a five minute major penalty resulting from an unfortunate boarding hit on rob scuderi that required 30 stitches to sew his face back together.  dustin brown scored on a redirection of a drew doughty shot, the brown scored again on a hard shot from right between the circles which devil's goalie martin brodeur got a piece of but which deflected up the length of his torso and into the net and then terevor lewis scored one more time with about two seconds left in the penalty from in close on a rebound.  the kings never looked back.  (here's a season recap.  this one got me too, boo-hoo.)

it was an amazing run and so satisfying to a longsuffering fan like myself.  i love the lakers but the lakers are perpetual greatness.  they do as good a job as any sports team on the planet of putting the best product possible on the court game after game, season after season.  i hope the laker under the buss family ownership and with mitch kupchak as general manager continue this practice for many more years.  if they are able to do that they will never please me like the kings just did.  there is something about remaining loyal to a team for a long time and finally being rewarded. 

in the intermission between periods two and three of game 6 i went outside with the smokers at the bar just to stretch my legs a bit.  one king fan there assured me if the kings won he would cry.  i laughed a little, understanding the emotion at same time.  my friend, felix, explained that he too would probably shed a tear.  he said this with a smile on his face and cigarette in his mouth and i wondered if i was going to see a bunch of gronw men sobbing. 

with under a minute to play in the game, the 6-1 score all set to confirm my prophetic abilities, the large bar i was in grew cacophonous.  almost everyone in the joint stood, staring at tv screens, mouths agape, clapping hands, hooting and hollering.  cameras snapped, cheers went up, and as the clocked ticked zero the bar manager bear hugged me from behind and said in my ear, "can you believe it-your team won?!"  (tony became an avid kings fan during this post season so he was careful not to call them his team just yet, though i felt different.  as far as i'm concerned, welcome to the fold, tony.)  i was a little shocked but more i was just ecstatic.  i jumped up and down and high-fived david and felix and roy and tony the bar manager and the guy next to roy and the man behind me who assured me jonathan quick would win the conn-smythe tropy for mvp of the playoffs and the two guys in kings gear in the middle of the bar who had joined us in making the entire place a loud uproarious kings bar.  i also looked over at that tall, 20-something kid who said he would cry, his face on the table in the crook of his arms, crying like a baby by himself.  i high-fived his friends.  i looked over at felix who had then sat down and who also had a tear in his eye.  he was not cobbing or anything but his eyes were moist and when he saw me look at him he seemed to laugh a little in spite of himself.  the older man who owned the towing company and who had been at the same bar with me through most of these playoffs came over an caught me sitting and put a hand on my left shoulder from behind and patted me about five times real quick in on the belly.  "how about that," he asked jubilantly?!  i just leaned back in exhaustion and grasped his hand and shook it fervently a few times.  "i'm going to the parade," i said, and he assured me he would be there as well.

next came shots.  too many shots.  tony got my kings jersey off the mannequin from behind the bar and told me to put it back on which i did.  monday night karaoke started and those two guys who never stopped dancing got up and sang 'we are the champions.'  sweet. 

three days later i took my son to the parade and since my daughter could not go, i got her a pennant commemorating this historic victory.  the parade was great, 200,000 fans lining figueroa downtown and the kings rolling by on the tops of buses with lord stanley's cup in tow.  mark kept calling it the piston cup, which tickled me to no end. 

so here i was a week or so later putting the pennant up in terra's room when it all caught up to me for a moment.  i was so happy the kings had won.  i wished the kids were a little older to enjoy this as i had with the raiders and the dodgers and magic johnson's lakers of the early '80s.  throughout the playoffs i had engaged the kings with the games as much as possible.   they watched much of the phoenix series with me and when i erupted in cheering and clapping because the kings scored a goal, the kids would erupt as well or come running back into the room to find out what had happened.  "was it kopitar," mark would ask?  (several times it was kopi.)  as i stared at that pennant on the wall i recalled the last month of hockey, terra and mark, the bygone championships of other teams and the many years of falling short for the kings. i remembered the frustration of all the playoff defeats of all my teams and how they could, at times, (ridiculously,) ruin my mood.  i remembered my childhood, kareem abdul-jabbar, ron cey, mike haynes, orel, garret anderson, shaq, reggie smith's bat from the 1978 world series my dad got for me from a friend of his who was a dodger scout, gail goodrich, mickey hatcher, robert horry, jerry west, ted hendricks, frankie rodriguez, robbie keane, rick monday, wilt chamberlain, john lackey, jim plunkett and now justin williams and dustin penner and these glorious kings.  i remembered where i was when many of  those championships were won, even on the side of the freeway getting a speeding ticket when kirk gibson launched one into the right field pavilion. 

i didn't cry.  i could have.  i felt it from deep within me.  i paused looking at that pennant and felt satisfied.  i hoped my kids would remember this one just as i remember the lakers of 1973, barely.  the kings are the stanley cup champions, which consequently makes me feel like a champ too.