First and foremost, fuck the internet and it's inability to leave well enough alone. There was nothing more well enough than the perfect two-second encapsulation of Kobe Bryant's indomitable desire to do nothing more than defecate all over the will of every opponent that crossed his path. The fact that we're now questioning the legitimacy of that clip by way of the most egregious case of what's become social media's most obnoxious habit - the "well, actually..." - more than eight years after the fact is as belated and unnecessary as it is a huge stretch. Admittedly, the above angle does take some of shine off what was a glowing example of the serpent-like cold-bloodedness of the Black Mamba. The infamous GIF makes it seems as though Kobe Bryant refused to so much as react when eskimo-kissed by the Spalding that was relentless in coming onto him with the quickness, and apparently that's not the whole truth. That said, it's definitely not entirely false. If you're ready to denounce Kobe Bryant's casually stoic non-reaction to having a basketball thrust full force within a couple centimeters of his face just because said face was slightly off-center at the time then you have a half-witted understanding of human instincts. The average asshole would be sitting on his if any projectile came that close to contact, so let's slow down in acting as if our sports' worlds were just shattered by a small variance in vantage point. Even more to the point, to believe that GIF was the solely the result of convenient camera work you'd have to believe that Matt Barnes, a player prideful enough to leave training camp and speed 95 miles to beat the piss out of the former teammate that was courting his estranged wife, has sat silently by for damn near a decade letting his entire existence get mocked by millions for a momentary misunderstanding...
Since that one instance is far from being the only time in which Kobe Bryant led us to believe he was a goddamn lunatic, I'm going to continue viewing that confrontation the same way it was always meant to be viewed, as a face-to-face failed attempt to intimidate a person who trained himself to kill the spirit of his competition. To be honest, I resent the internet for shamelessly trying to make me think otherwise.
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