Earlier this week, ESPN the Magazine’s Henry Abbott published a lengthy story about Kobe Bryant that basically blames him for the recent downfall of the Los Angeles Lakers. The premise was that nobody wants to play with Kobe, which prevents the Lakers from building a quality team around him. What are Kobe’s thoughts on the subject?
On Tuesday night, Bryant told reporters that he has learned over the years to not overreact to negative stories and instead just “roll with it.”
“It’s not the first one and won’t be the last one, right?” Kobe said. “One thing I’ve come to understand over the years is that you’ll have a bad story come out on Monday and it seems like the end of the world and everybody’s taking shots at you, but time goes by and you look back on it and it was just a Monday. You have another story that comes out a month later and it’s a fantastic story, and then another bad story a month after that.”
If anything, stories like Abbott’s motivate Kobe. He loves proving doubters wrong and would love even more to do it at age 36.
“Understand that it’s a cycle and things are never as good or as bad as they seem in the moment…” he added. “I just kind of roll with it.”
For what it’s worth, one of the free agents who Kobe supposedly scared off was Paul George. On Monday, George blasted the media and said the story was crazy.
Between the Abbott report and ESPN’s “bunch of idiots” — as Kobe called them — ranking Bryant the 40th-best player in the NBA, the five-time champion’s bulletin board should be fully loaded heading into the season.
Video via Pro Basketball Talk
