| Petey Arms |
BY KEN BERGER
ken.berger@newsday.com
6:56 PM EST, December 22, 2007
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Kobe Bryant strolled down the hallway of what they now call Wachovia Center in Philadelphia on Friday night and smiled when he came across an old friend. By that, we mean an old friend.
Bryant's whole body seemed to relax as he embraced Sonny Hill, founder of the famous Philadelphia youth basketball league that bears his name and has produced such NBA All-Stars as Bryant, Rasheed Wallace, and Rip Hamilton, not to mention Kobe's father, Joe "Jellybean" Bryant.
Hill is one of the few people who truly have a window into Bryant's complicated mind. He has known Kobe as long as he has been alive -- or longer.
"I've known him," Hill said, "since before he was born."
Sunday, Bryant will walk into Madison Square Garden for his first appearance in nearly two years, needing 20 points to become the youngest player in NBA history to score 20,000. After an offseason of 20,000 trade demands and just as many doses of animosity, the Lakers' superstar finally has settled down. But it seems only temporary.
After staying quiet about his desire to be traded since the beginning of the season, Bryant opened up Saturday after practice at an Upper East Side health club.
Yes, the Knicks were on the list of four teams he asked to be traded to back in June, Bryant acknowledged for the first time Saturday to a small group of reporters. And, he said, no teams have been taken off the list.
"They were, yeah," Bryant said, when asked if the Knicks were among the teams for which he'd agree to waive his no-trade clause. After the Knicks and Bulls, Bryant said it was the Mavericks and Suns, marking the first time he has publicly disclosed the list.
The Knicks, who declined to comment Saturda on their role in the Bryant saga, have been aware since the summer that they were among his chosen teams. The situation never advanced beyond exploratory talks.
Bryant's answers Saturday to a series of questions about his level of happiness with the Lakers, the mechanics and details of his trade request, and where he goes from here qualified as his most revealing comments since he announced, then sort of rescinded his public trade demand in late May and early June.
And though Bryant has patched things up with 20-year-old center Andrew Bynum, whom he infamously ripped in an amateur video, and has grown satisfied with what he describes as a "solid" team, he realizes that the Lakers are not championship contenders. Not yet. Not even close.
More to the point, Bryant isn't sure how much longer he can afford to wait.
Asked if he removed the Knicks from consideration in mid-October because of the uncertainty and turmoil churning at Madison Square Garden, Bryant said: "No, I just kind of pushed everything to the back burner and stopped thinking about trades. It wasn't something where I was scratching teams off or anything like that. I just stopped thinking about it because once the season got under way, my focus had to be here. It couldn't be split, because I'd be doing a disservice to my teammates."
Asked if the list is still on the back burner and if his formal trade request is still on the table, Bryant said: "Call Mitch Kupchak and see what he thinks about that. I don't get into that ... It's all what Mitch wants to do, really. Mitch and Dr. Buss. It's all on them. They can either trade me or not trade me. It's completely their decision."
Well, yes and no, as we saw during the many twists and turns of Kobe's "trade me ... I want to be a Laker for life" summer.
As the only player in the NBA with a complete no-trade clause, Bryant can veto any deal. Though he is surprised that the Knicks have spiraled so rapidly, he wouldn't rule out a trade to New York if it were presented to him.
"I would look at it as just another challenge to prove that you can win," Bryant said. "That's how I would approach it. I wouldn't be down about it. I'd just work that much harder to try to prove that if we do work hard, we can win ballgames.
"Every storm passes," said Bryant, who then was asked if the chaos surrounding the Knicks and their embattled coach, Isiah Thomas, would frighten him. "I don't scare too easily."
Until Saturday, Bryant's uncertain future had taken a backseat to the accelerated development of a team he has been chiding management to improve since the first-round playoff loss to the Suns last May.
With a 106-101 victory in Philadelphia on Friday night, the Lakers improved to 16-8, second to Phoenix in the Pacific Division. Their seventh victory in nine games was notable for a dominant performance by Bynum, who scored a career-high 24 points and shot 10-for-11, mostly dunks. Bryant, on an injured groin, shot 6-for-20 and scored 19 points.
The Lakers angered Bryant by refusing to part with Bynum in a potential deal with the Nets for Jason Kidd last February, then proclaimed him virtually untouchable when Kevin Garnett, Shawn Marion, and Jermaine O'Neal were made available over the summer.
Bryant's frustration was captured in an amateur video in which Bryant excoriated Buss and Kupchak for refusing to trade Bynum to improve the team. "Ship his -- -- out. Are you kidding me?" Bryant said on the video, recorded in the parking lot of a shopping center in Newport Coast, Calif., and released in June, at the height of the Kobe drama.
After Friday night's game, Bryant said of Bynum: "I have a great deal of confidence in him ... When all the pieces of the puzzle come together, he could be pretty special."
As for the video comments, Bryant said, "Seemed like it lit a fire under his ass."
Bryant and Bynum patched things up on the first day of training camp in Honolulu, and "squashed it," as Bynum put it.
Bryant also apparently won back the trust of other teammates during a pep talk on the team bus before the season opener against the Rockets.
"It was important to understand that you have to be able to separate the business from the game," Bryant said. "Once we were able to make that separation, it was very easy from that point forward."
But while Bryant's attitude has changed as his focus shifted from business to what he calls "absolute basketball mode," the underlying factors that led to his discontent remain. The Lakers are no better than a marginal, low-seeded playoff team, and there is a widespread belief that once they falter, Bryant will throw another trade-me tantrum.
"No, that's not true," Bryant said. "I'm very happy. I'm happy because we have a very close-knit group here. We're like brothers. We all get along, so the chemistry is great. I'm having a great time."
But Bryant's desire to win now doesn't match up with his team's slow, steady growth curve. Never the twain shall meet, it could be argued, considering that Bryant, 29, is in his 12th season and Bynum, 20, is in his third.
Bryant finds himself in a similar position Sha.quille O'Neal was in when the Lakers acquired him in 1996. Bryant was an 18-year-old rookie; Shaq was in his fifth season and turning 24.
"He wasn't going to wait for me to develop," Bryant said. "You've got to step up. I had to become a championship guard at the age of 20 or 21, and he has to do the same thing."
The story doesn't end here. Far from it. But for now, it brings us back to Hill, the Philly hoops icon who knew Bryant's parents when Kobe's mother, Pam, was carrying him.
"A lot of times, it's his competitiveness that is speaking as opposed to him," Hill said. "There's two individuals there. There's the competitive side of him, which is second to none in this era of basketball. Then there's the other side, which is the side that he keeps hidden to a large degree. In terms of just the competitiveness, it's crying out.
"In my mind," Hill said, "he'll be a Laker all his life."
Or not.
Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc. |
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| Valve |
| Of course he would. He'd love to be on a team that promotes harassing women. |
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| KingOfAllWhites |
| Dont you need players in order to make a trade? :rolleyes: |
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| LarryHorseFucker |
Quote: Originally posted by KingOfAllWhites
Dont you need players in order to make a trade? :rolleyes: |
Exactly.....keep dreaming knick fans. |
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| LennyD23 |
Quote: Originally posted by Valve
Of course he would. He'd love to be on a team that promotes harassing women. |
yes valve. they promote it. you fucking retard. |
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| AcquiringSignal |
Kobe wanted this!!! HE wanted Shaq gone and now he sees all the heavy lifting you need to do to have a championship team.
He fucks the lakers management & fans with his hissy fit and now he wants to leave.
:rolleyes:
Stay there and fix your problem, dont run away from it! |
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| beavisoncrack |
| Yo I speaks Italian son!!!!! Yeah nigga I ripped dat white bitch booty up son!!!!!!! She was a ho anyway, hahahahahahahhhahh! Had to get wifey dat rock but dat bitch ain't trying to get off the gravy train......I'll fuck her moms in front of her if I want to.....muy caliente ho...hahahahhahhaaahhhhaahhhh!!!!!! Fuck a couple of endorsements nigga I'm still da man!!!!!!! |
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| DestroVega |
The Knicks organization let their players run wild through the Garden... I say they might not promote bad behavior, but they sure don't care it happens...
They are a fucking joke... who are they gonna trade for Kobe?.. Isiah circa '85?... give me a fuckin' break. |
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