Monday, November 25, 2013

When is it Time to Give a 'Legend' the Hook?

The term legend gets thrown around a lot, but I guess Kobe Bryant lands under this label. Personally I don't think he's a legend. Kobe is like Joe Torre who was on the right team at the right time since Shaquille O'Neal was in his prime mowing teams over in the paint leading the Lakers to several championships while Kobe kind of hid in his shadow, but here we are in the last year of Kobe's contract and after stating that he was going to retire after this contract today came the announcement that Kobe has signed a 2 year extension to continue playing basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe Bryant has been in the league for 17 years and has played well over 40,000 minutes on the basketball court and it has been starting to show as of late since he's been dealing with nagging injuries the last few years and is coming off major knee surgery this past off season.

You would think that being on one team for as long as Kobe has been and with the decline in his performance and minutes (due to injuries) he would be more welcome to giving the Lakers a discount, but no his extension is for 48 million which isn't going to help his team make the necessary moves to be competitive with the Miami Heats and Indiana Pacers of the world. What free agent is going to want to go play with a ball hog that is taking up a solid chunk of the salary cap? The Lakers need a fresh start and with old man Kobe sticking around that isn't going to happen and the Lakers won't benefit from it anytime soon.

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