Even if he’s not standing directly in the spotlight anymore, Kobe Bryant is keeping busy in retirement. Too busy, in fact, for any nonsense about whether he’s somehow pulling the strings behind the Kyrie Irving puppet show in Cleveland.
Not that it’s totally off the wall to think so. Irving has admitted in the past that he’s idolized Bryant since he was a youngster. After sinking the dagger in Game 7 of last year’s Finals, he credited #MambaMentality, then promptly FaceTime’d with Kobe in the locker-room.
And you don’t have to squint too hard to see the resemblance between Irving’s current situation with LeBron and Shaq’s messy divorce from Kobe all those years ago. But for those who think Bryant is somehow instigating all this, the Lakers legend had a simple, cheeky response, and because this is 2017, it came in the form of a GIF.
https://twitter.com/kobebryant/status/889540897527832576
Even if Bryant isn’t directly involved in Irving’s thought process, the Cavs’ superstar point guard certainly has taken heed of how Bryant eventually wanted to step out from under Shaq’s (considerable) shadow. Yet it makes you wonder whether he’s sufficiently studied the growing pains that accompanied those first few dark years in Los Angeles before the Lakers climbed their way back into contention.
Still, it’s fun to imagine what Kobe might say to Irving if he were to call him up. Probably something about how a cheetah helped him improve his fade-away jump shot.
