The Unfortunate Tao of Kobe

I have adopted and loved sports teams in almost every place I have ever lived; the Cubs from my early childhood in Illinois, the Broncos and Avalanche from growing up in Colorado, the Orioles from my years in Maryland (including watching Cal Ripken break the greatest sports record ever), the Hartford Whalers (although I just missed them) from my brief stop in Connecticut, the Predators from Orlando (am I the only who misses Arena Football?), the Jaguars from Jacksonville (a city has never loved a team so much), and most recently the Dodgers and Kings from my time in L.A. But to be an true Angeleno is to love the Lakers, as much as it is to love the Yankees for any "real" New Yorker. But despite my best and most recent attempts, I cannot love the Lakers, and a true Angeleno I may never be.

Last night, I watched the Lakers, or the group of otherwise forgettable mooks that play basketball with Kobe Bryant, finally do away with a Houston Rockets team that was more triage than trying. The victory was inevitable, and had all the drama of watching a vintage Mike Tyson beat up some scrappy, young amateur with three of his four limbs broken. But what makes me unable to love the Lakers, or even to love the transcendent talent that is Kobe, is how classless the entire thing had become by that point.

I worry, in writing this, that I become a “sports blogger”, which would mean two things: (1) I will alienate any of the headier folks that read my rantings, who relegate professional sports to the same part of their brain and personal schedule where monster trucks and the semi-gross songs they learned in summer camp go; and (2) I will unwittingly become a part of the fastest growing receptacle for useless, poor and hyperbolic prose that exists on the Internet. But, in considering whether or not to write this particular piece, I found that there was a greater message in my refusal to watch or cheer for my hometown team – I can only hope that you, dear reader, will endure the sports context in which it is encased. I promise it will be worth the ride.

The scene, however, requires a bit of explanation – because, the NBA playoffs do not have the cultural relevance that they did twenty years ago, and I fear that without it, you won’t have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about. The Lakers have been the prohibitive favorite to win the NBA championship all year, since their new young center (whose absence was largely blamed for their failure to win in last year’s Finals) was finally healthy. Led by mega-star Kobe Bryant, they spent a season vanquishing impossible foes, beating the reigning champion Celtics on Christmas Day (and stopping their 22-game win streak) and handing Cleveland (home of the league’s other superstar, Lebron James) their only home defeat. The Houston Rockets, on the other hand, lost half of their “dynamic duo” of stars, Tracy McGrady, mid-season – and the unflappable Yao Ming (who has the personality of your average slab of cheese) seemed unlikely to be able to shoulder the responsibility of winning on his own. The offseason addition of Ron Artest, the Association’s most polarizing character, had brought a cautious optimism – because the team seemed desperate for the one thing Ron could bring, intensity, but the instability that accompanied it (and which infamously drove him into the stands in Detroit and into a fistfight with fans), always seemed to put him and his team a moment away from disaster.

The Lakers won the Western Division title by an astonishing 11 games (in an 82-game season), which to put in some perspective, would be like Secretariat winning the Kentucky Derby by over 110 lengths. The Rockets improbably finished as the fifth seed, winning without, arguably, their best player, and held together by heart, duct tape, and a very good coach. The Lakers dispatched the Utah Jazz in the first round like so much lint from their jackets, where the Rockets MASH unit surprisingly outplayed and out-muscled a younger Portland team that looked like it may be only a season or two from being the best team in the league. So, when the Rockets showed up at the STAPLES Center a few weeks ago for Game 1, for a best of seven series with the Lake show, many of us had them penciled in for only four more games, admiring their pluck, but feeling that a good effort can only take you so far. Then they won the game. And it wasn’t close.

The Lakers have a long-held association with the tagline “showtime” – which in some circles is associated with their glory years in the eighties (Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc), but for most fans has never really left the arena. Their star player, Kobe Bryant has been one of the league’s best individual players for nearly a decade, and has drawn more comparisons to Michael Jordan than any other player in memory. He is, however, a player that only Los Angeles could love. One of the last and few players who came into the NBA straight from high school, he plays with a ferocity that looks ever so much more like a chip on his shoulder than a mantle of greatness whose responsibility has been passed to him. His anger looks like petulance more than fury – and he has always appeared much more eager to pass the buck than to demand that it stops with him. But, he’s good; very good – even great, although, I expect that most of us expect the greatness requires an off-the-court persona far more ingratiating than his. He can, however, usually back up the trash he talks, and once he’s gotten you down, his ability to satisfy the carnivorous and hungry crowd, in front of which he plays, with a splendidly brutal death-blow is nearly unmatched. The problem is, he has no reluctance for the crown he wears, and can’t even be bothered to pretend as much – and I so I cannot love Kobe, or watching Kobe play.

The American love affair with reluctant leaders began with our very first, when George Washington famously tried to beg out of being the President. Now, I haven’t read the prevailing biographies to know if this was actually the case – but I like the idea, as I think we all do. We love the humility of our heroes, their selfless moments as they attribute their success to their mothers, their Gods or their teammates. Whether contrived or not, it helps us to feel as though we are somehow, no matter how trivially, connected to their greatness, and as though we might find it, similarly, within ourselves. I am not so naïve as to think that professional athletes and celebrities are not creatures of tremendous ego – but I still appreciate the effort to at least try and attempt normalcy. Michael Jordon was long ago revealed to not be the saint we all believed him to be – but on-stage, on-court, he was. Every time I watched him play, I immediately wanted to pick up a basketball. Every time I watch Kobe play I feel a little bit smaller, and like going to bed early – desperate for the inspiration of a new day to wash the thin film of despair off of me that watching winners win poorly always seems to leave.

The real testament to the Tao of Kobe is the fact the entire Lakers roster seems to have adopted his personality. Although many of them have experienced personal, individual glory before – they all seem content, now, to be faceless members of the ensemble cast. What’s more, Kobe seems completely content to keep them there. Their talent as a group is often enough to carry them to victory – and, as a result, it often has to. You see, the Lakers take games off, because they cannot always be bothered to put the effort forward. Having become fully invested in their own greatness, there feel no need to respectfully fight lesser opponents with their best labors – especially when the loss is tolerable, and still permissible of an ultimate championship. The Lakers are the Mighty Casey of basketball, content to let two strikes go by, confident of their ability to crush the third into the seats. Such was the case with Houston.

After three games, the Lakers had won two, and the Rockets only remaining star player, Yao, was out for the rest of the season with a fractured foot. The inevitability of a Laker win was overwhelming and the drama of the series seemed to fade palpably as the news was reported. And then the Rockets won again, this time in Houston. And it wasn’t close.

With three games remaining, it was all tied up, and the drama of an impossible Lakers defeat, re-energized the series. The Lakers went back to STAPLES and won by 40 – looking altogether the champions they had been touted to be. But realizing that they only had to win one of the final two games, took another night off in Houston and lost for a third time, and it wasn’t close.

Not even the magic of a Game 7 could hide the predetermined nature of the deciding contest. The betting line was thirteen points, which is Vegas’ way of saying “not a chance in hell.” As it turned out, a healthy number of sports pundits had warned of the fatal effect that a Laker loss would have on Kobe’s permanent reputation – which, we collectively discovered, is really what makes him tick. Like a late-career Barry Bonds, obsessed with his own place in history, Kobe produces game-days efforts only as edifices to his own greatness – to mark the road he expects us all to follow to his election to the Hall of Fame, and permanent cultural adoration. And so, threatened with the only true thing he fears, irrelevance, Kobe drove himself and his forgettable posse to a victory – whose empty celebration seemed caricatured even as it was happening.

In that moment, it was finally clear to me that no matter how much time I spend in Los Angeles, I will never be a Laker fan. But L.A. loves this team, and they love Kobe. L.A. loves its front runners, and its success stories. L.A. only bothers with tragedies to the extent they can be media vehicles for the talents of its stars – never intending to glean any purpose or message. L.A. doesn’t root for the underdog – because underdogs beat winners – and this is a town that not only loves its winners, it worships them. The “scene” crowd packs into STAPLES Center as if it were the Roman Coliseum – there to see a scripted massacre, and to bask in the glow of its spectacle to assure themselves of their own importance.

But I didn’t find indifference last night. I found loathing. I found myself, after finally trying to count myself a fan, actually rooting against the Lakers. I found myself wishing for them to lose and to lose badly, under the most embarrassing of circumstances. The internal debate which had raged for years about whether to try and love the Lakers or to finally embrace my disdain was decided. And it wasn't close.