Kobe's killer instinct

There are rules in basketball, particularly the NBA, aimed at avoiding humiliating the other player or team. Some of them are written, many are unwritten. It’s part of a decades-long code perceived at honoring one’s opponents.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, almost all coaches forbade dunking, because it was considered “showing off”. Bill Russell said he only blocked certain shots to send a warning against incursions into the paint. You don’t call a timeout when the other team has no more chance of catching up. On a more hostile note, the Detroit Pistons created the “Jordan rules” because they didn’t want their feared defense to be embarrassed by league-leading scorer Michael Jordan getting lay-ups on them. Dikembe Mutombo was barred from waving his finger in a player’s face after blocking his shot; it was classified as “taunting”. In December of 2006, 10 players were ejected when the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks got into an ugly brawl, precipitated by the host Knicks’ perception that the Nuggets were running up the score. Denver had its starters on the floor and was up by 19 with 1:15 left.

“They just wanted to embarrass us,” said Nate Robinson, then with the Knicks. “It was a slap in the face to us. As a team, as a franchise, we weren’t going to let that happen. A clean, hard foul happened and after that it went down from there.”

Unfortunately, the hard foul wasn’t “clean” at all. New York’s Mardy Collins grabbed Denver’s J.R. Smith around the neck as the latter went for a breakaway lay-up.

“I feel bad for the league, I feel bad for the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks,” Nuggets coach George Karl said. “Very poor display of respecting basketball and respecting the game in the best place in the world to play basketball.”

So you get the point. The question is, does Kobe Bryant believe in those unwritten rules?

Let’s look at the evidence. The Los Angeles Lakers guard’s competitiveness has been documented comprehensively in the media and by friends and acquaintances. After being buried on the bench in his first season by then-coach Del Harris, Bryant went on a scoring spree, and has only slightly toned down since.

When Bryant was 11 years old and his father, Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, was playing in Italy, he challenged Brian Shaw to a game of HORSE.

Bryant claims he beat Shaw. Shaw denies it.

“His dad was a good player, but he was the opposite of Kobe, real laid-back,” Shaw was quoted as saying. “Kobe was out there challenging grown men to play one-on-one, and he really thought he could win.”

At Lower Merion High School in Pennsylvania, Bryant would ask benchwarmer Rob Schwartz to stay after practice and play one-on-one, each basket worth one point, race to 100. Of course, he routinely demolished Schwartz. But whereas other players would be kind when they were up by a comfortable margin, Bryant would consider it a personal affront when Schwartz would score even once. There were even times he would lead his helpless teammate 80-0. And to this day, Bryant denies Schwartz’s claim that he ever scored in double figures. To this day.

When he entered the NBA, Bryant showed little respect for players he once worshipped. Though he missed all of training camp with that infamous broken hand, Bryant walked up to Del Harris and said, “Coach if you just give me the ball and clear out, I can beat anybody in this league.” He was a rookie straight out of high school. In 1998, he went after Penny Hardaway as if it were Game 7 of the Finals -– in a charity game. In the Al-Star Game that season, he waved off a Karl Malone screen when he was up against Michael Jordan – then one of the league’s best defensive players – believing he could chew Jordan up alive. He was 19.

Recall how Bryant was when he shared the spotlight with Shaquille O’Neal. Instead of being the magnanimous host for his new franchise center, there were only token signs of welcome from Bryant, unlike when Dwyane Wade welcomed the Big Diesel to Miami. Their verbal sparring continued in the media, until long after Shaq had departed LA. When the Lakers lent Bryant the team jet for his sexual assault case in Colorado, he complained about the service, even though the team was not obligated to lend aircraft to him and he was missing practice. Even then, he was attacking Shaq. And remember how competitive Bryant was when the Lakers couldn’t seem to get him support, and he asked to be traded?

On Jan. 22, 2006, Bryant had 81 points against a hapless Toronto Raptors squad. To be fair, The Raptors were leading until late in the third quarter, when Bryant had almost single-handedly given the Lakers the lead after they were trailing by 18 in the period. Bryant had a mere 26 points in the first half, and surpassed that total by racking up 27 in the third period. In the fourth, he had 28 more. A total of 28 out of 46 field goals, and 18 out of 20 free throws, with seven out of 13 three-pointers.

The catch is that some observers say that Bryant should have been taken out of the game when the Lakers were already comfortably ahead, and even the Lakers own announcers joined this chorus. A month before, Lakers coach Phil Jackson had been criticized for taking Bryant out when his All-Star guard had already tallied 62 and had the game in hand against the Dallas Mavericks. Was it a case of racking up the score?