Belated but Deserved
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by RipPT
It's a week late, cuz this is my first post on this site. Anyways, Happy Birthday to The Black Mamba. That means happy 29th birthday to Kobe Bryant, for those of you who weren't aware of NBA's preeminent player's self-proclaimed nickname. The black mamba is the 2nd largest venomous snake in the world, making the moniker appropriate due to Kobe's deadliness on the court. Now when Kobe first came into the league I wasn't a fan at all.
This baby faced kid was just that. Actually I thought he was a pussy, with his can't do anything wrong persona, growing up abroad in France and being fluent in the romance languages, along with taking Brandy to his prom and being the son of a man nicknamed "Jellybean." As Kobe came around and started to gather up his 3 championship rings, along with becoming a first team all-NBA defender, and a lights out, unguardable force on offense (i.e. his turnaround 3 while being double/triple teamed in a 65 point performance against Portland on 3/16/07), I started to come around on him.
Then came the rape accusations, the tattoo's and the fiery "F you" attitude that he adopted. Honestly the rape accusations/pre-trial saga, made Kobe a little hungrier and a lot more selfish. Combined, those two factors made him a more dominant player. In trying to keep this from turning into an unending diatribe on why kobe is great, I'll end it with another Happy Birthday Kobe, and wait til december when he drops 50 on somebody and gives me even more reason to defend why he's better than LeBron James, has a better 3 pointer than MJ, and still may eclipse the greatest of all time, Michael.
