The Sweet Smell of Napalm in the Morning....

I woke up this morning to news that Kobe Bryant demanded a trade from the Lakers. He was throwing everyone under the bus (no pun intended) and ripping the team for violating his trust (a small incident in Eagle, Colorado involving a woman not named Mrs. Bryant comes to mind when we speak of trust, but that's neither here nor there). Anyways, considering the name of this site, I figured I'd have to emerge from my batcave to weigh in on the latest Kobe news from way up here on my high horse. Despite my snide remarks earlier, and I can’t believe that I’m about to say this, but in a way I can sympathize with Kobe. I wrote at length a few columns ago about this whole ordeal so I won’t expound on it excessively. However, if Laker management really did lie to him about the willingness to try and be competitive immediately, then they are getting what’s coming to them. According to Phil Jackson, Laker owner Jerry Buss told Kobe, back when he was a free agent, that they were committed to winning now (which was the reason he re-signed with them...well that and $137 million), and then turned around and told Jackson they were planning to rebuild the long way and had a plan to “scale back” to save some cash. Couple that with the revelation that Buss had already decided he was getting rid of Shaq no matter what Kobe said or did, and I think the Laker organization deserves any and all bad press they are getting from this. And you wanna talk about karma coming back to bite you in the ass? Props to the 74 year old Buss who got pulled over for driving under the influence with a 23 year old woman in the car….who wasn’t his daughter or granddaughter. Hmm…wonder where he was in a hurry to get to?

Ultimately, do I think Kobe is going anywhere? No. After taking such a strong stance this morning on Stephen A. Smith’s radio show, he seemed to back off somewhat on Dan Patrick’s show a couple hours later. Then on the local radio stations out here he stated his heart was in LA. Kobe and the Lakers will work this out. They have to. Laker management would be stupid to not do anything in their power to mollify him. Then again they traded one of the three best big men of all time for 40 cents on the dollar so stupid might be the best word to describe them. But putting all that behind us for one second, where would be the three places I’d like to see Kobe end up? (all trades work under the salary cap thanks to ESPN.com’s trade machine)

3. Phoenix (for Captain Barbosa, Marion, the Hawks number one and Marcus Banks): Imagine a lineup of Nash, Bell, Bryant, Diaw and Stoudamire? Plus trade throw in Radmanovic, James Jones, and Kurt Thomas coming off the bench. NBA champions right there. That would be the funnest team to watch bar none. Plus it would virtually ensure that I would never have to watch another NBA Finals matchup of San Antonio and Detroit.

2. Denver (for Carmelo Anthony, Kenyon Martin, Diawara and J.R. Smith): Pair Kobe and Iverson up with George Karl and those would be some high scoring games. Plus we get the added bonus of Kobe returning to Denver where the alleged rape occurred. Kobe has a no-trade clause, so this will never happen. One can dream though.

1. New York (for Channing Frye, David Lee, Nate Robinson, Jared Jeffries, and Jamal Crawford). The Lakers would get the least value out of the three deals, and Kobe would get to fight for the ball in New York with Marbury and Steve Francis while Eddy Curry eats his way out of the league. Plus with the Lakers being so bad I’ll need another team to really hate, and I’ve never liked the Knicks to begin with. With Isaiah Thomas as their coach their “hateable” potential will be through the roof. Not to mention, as much as I hate the Lakers and Kobe and the Knicks, I love basketball even more. The NBA needs to be relevant again and having a marquee player in NY (instead of a trainwreck of a basketball team whose owner got so excited that they almost made the playoffs in the wretched Eastern Conference, despite having the highest payroll in the league, that he gave his coach a contract extension) will undoubtedly help the league. It’ll be the best of all worlds.

P.S. The best part of all of this is listening to some of the more crazy Laker fans be completely shocked that it all came to this. Where is that sense of entitlement now?