Mitzkrieg

well, you're bringing up a whole other can of worms, bravo. the subject here was Kobe. i believe he deservers the bashing he gets. the boy brought it on himself.

now as far as Shaq goes with the whole leaving the lakers thing.... i believe that Kobe, Shaq, Phil and even Jerry Buss are all to blame for the lakers falling apart. Kobe and Shaq both acted imaturely with the whole thing. Phil could have handled it better. and Jerry Buss has got too much damn pride if you ask me(although i like that he wants his team to be succesful) hell, even Mitch Kupchak should share some of the blame. he said some pretty stupid crap when all the splitting up was about to go down.

anyways, that wasn't the point of this thread. it's about the drama that follows Kobe since he became an alleged rapist. you can't tell me that Kobe's rape court case couldn't possibly have had any emotional stress factor on the lakers as a team. take away Kobe being accused of rape and going to court, missing games, practices and such, and the lakers core might still be together. shit, look at what Phil wrote in his book about Kobe.