HoopsHype.com NBA Blogs - Dee Brown

The biggest story still going on before the 2007-08 NBA season jumps is who is going to win the Kobe Bryant sweepstakes. It has been back and forth with Kobe and the Zen Master. And now Jerry Buss has chimed in and said that he will listen to trade offers for the Laker star.

What?

Kobe is the most individually dynamic. I love LeBron, Nash, and other superstars around the league and what they do for their teams. But we are talking about a guy who scored 81 in an NBA game. He fills every arena he goes to. Fans just sit on the edge of their seats waiting for him to do something unbelievable. But that’s where the problem lies… He’s an individual and the last time I checked, basketball was a team game.

Here is an old NBA question…What is the best backcourt in NBA history?

Answer: Michael Jordan and whoever.

Jordan was so good that he made every backcourt mate a better player, a better shooter and a champion. Can Kobe be the type of player that does that for his backcourt mate? That’s is the question that 29 teams are asking themselves, but only a few can really be serious in addressing. The three teams that have been named are the Chicago Bulls, Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks.

Eddie Johnson explained it beautifully and I will expand a little. Which team is willing to depart with practically their entire core for one guy? Remember Kobe is a perimeter player. He’s not Shaq, Chamberlain or Abdul-Jabbar in terms of inside presence and pure dominance. If those guys were traded, anybody can be traded. But at what price? The Mavs and the Suns would have to give up their respected superstar or a combination or All-Star players to even have a chance to get Kobe. And why would the Lakers trade him in the same conference. That wouldn’t be pretty at all.

The Bulls seems like the best fit. They are a Eastern Conference team. They have been looking for a replacement for His Airness since Jerry Krause disbanded the team. They have enough young assets to maybe package something together and still have enough left so Kobe wouldn’t feel like he is in a worse situation than he was back with the Lakers. Sounds great, but could he co-exist with Scott Skiles and his tough minded approach? I think so. Could he relish and not feel all the pressure that the city of Chicago would put on him to get them back to the promise land a la Jordan. Kobe loves that type of pressure! He wants to say, “I put this franchise on my back and got them a back as a legit championship team.”

And as long as the Cubs are still in town, he still has some leverage for at least the next 100 years. Ouch, low blow. My bad, Cubs fans.

So to sum it up, who wouldn’t want Kobe? If I’m a GM, I’m taking a quick look at the possibility. But are these teams willing to pay top dollar for the meat or just sit back, observe and stay vegetarians all season long?

After hearing about Shawn Marion’s latest trade gossip and now a request that’s it’s time to move on, I just think this is the same song and dance over and over from All-Star players when they don’t want to step on toes if the trade doesn’t happen. I’m underrated and underappreciated, I’m tired of hearing trade rumors, I can’t get an extension, etcetera.

Here’s an excerpt from a conversation I overheard between Mike D’Antoni aka Morpheus and Shawn Marion aka the Matrix…

Morpheus: Have you ever had a dream, Shawn, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from the dream, Shawn? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? If “real” is that you play with a two-time MVP point guard, and that you are the highest paid player on the Suns then “real” is electrical signals your brain cannot interpret. What are you waiting for? You’re better than this. Don’t think you are, know you are. Come on! Stop trying to get a trade and work on getting the Suns a championship!
Matrix: I thought it wasn’t real?
Morpheus: Your mind makes it real
Matrix: So if I leave Phoenix, my career dies?
Morpheus: You cannot prosper without Phoenix. You have to see for yourself what the Matrix is. The Matrix is your game, Shawn. But when you’re inside the Matrix, you look around, what do you see? You are the highest paid player on the Suns, you just received a seven-time All-Star in Grant Hill to play alongside with, and Steve Nash is still your point guard.  You have to understand, you are not ready to be unplugged. And you are so inert, so dependent on the team that Phoenix will fight to protect it. If you are not one of us, you are one of them. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire career, that there’s something wrong outside Phoenix. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that’s not far from the truth. I’m trying to free your mind, Shawn. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. [Morpheus mumbles, "You better walk through that door Monday for training camp."]
Matrix: Why do my eyes hurt?
Morpheus: You’ve never used them before. And there is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
Matrix: What are you trying to tell me? That I can’t coexist with Kobe?
Morpheus: Shawn, I’m trying to tell you if you couldn’t coexist here with this perfect system for you then there is no place you can. (Especially the triangle offense or Jerry Sloan) Your game (The Matrix) is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. You don’t have to create your own shot here with Nash spoon-feeding you and Barbosa and Hill slashing to the paint getting you dunk after dunk. What makes you think you will get a shot up when Kobe’s shooting 30 times a game. And what’s better… Running the floor next to Andrew Bynum or Amare Stoudemire? You’ve been living in a dream world, Shawn. Don’t wake up!

So after taking the tap off the phone (teasing), I encourage the Matrix to listen to the immortal words of Morpheus (the architect of a style and system that every athletic player loves to play).

Playing in the NBA is the ultimate dream job. Take my advice: don’t wake up! If you do, you will be real disappointed that you took the red and blue pill (if I got any Matrix movie fans!) because that one thing you won’t touch as much in L.A. or even Utah is the pill.

But if you won’t take my advice, speak to Neo (Joe Johnson). Everything worked out fine for him… Or did it not?