harveycmd

Jerry West's 1996 draft-day acquisition of Kobe Bryant—drafted 13th by Charlotte and traded to the Lakers for Vlade Divac—is widely considered the greatest draft move in NBA history. It secured a 20-year Hall of Fame career, five championships, and cleared cap space to sign Shaquille O'Neal.

Yes, during the 2001 playoffs, then-Los Angeles Lakers head coach Phil Jackson stated that Kobe Bryant had the best all-around court game he had ever seen from any of his players—even better than Michael Jordan.

@Gerry Hamilton Because you mentioned Kobe Jerseys to me after my previous post, I'll never watch another OTF video in my life.

Gerry, why do you love Freeman and Notre Dame so much? Is it because had lunch with goober in Florida? I mean, talked with Cormac McCarthy in San Marcos in 2009.

That's true. This be like Kobe talking to LeBron in actual battle.

Next time Notre Dame wins a Title I'll give @Gerry Hamilton everything I own.

We're still talking about soccer, right? It's not tiddlywinks or badminton?

Another connection worth mentioning here is the status of Odysseus as the second greatest hero in Greek mythology after Achilles. Socrates argued in several Platonic dialogues that Odysseus was superior to Achilles and should be recognized as such by the Greeks. He based this argument on the contention that Odysseus was more "intelligent, skilled and worked harder" than Achilles. Sounds like the Jordan/Kobe stuff.

I should add that Odysseus means "enemy" in Greek, which was also a role that Kobe embraced.

I have more stuff for you @Jordan91. When my daughters were growing up during the 2000s, I'd wake them up at 6:00 AM to read classics in the mornings during the summer (Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Homer, Virgil, Herodotus, etc.), and then we'd watch the Lakers in the Finals at night. We were reading The Odyssey during June 2009. The day we read book 22, in which Odysseus kills the antagonist Antinous (which means "anti-mind" in Greek) by shooting him in the throat with an arrow, and follows it up by telling his 20 year old son Telemachus (which means power crossing over or moving to) not to celebrate because the fight isn't yet over yet, Kobe made his famous statement after taking a 2-0 lead over the Magic in the Finals ("What's there to be happy about? Job's not finished. Job finished? I don't think so."). I let them stay up late that night to watch the postgame stuff. My youngest daughter immediately made the connection between Odysseus and Kobe. Yesterday, she called me and said we need to go see the film The Odyssey next week when it's released and wear our Kobe jerseys. That's the power of admiring greatness when you grow up.

Not only nice seeing the Lakers destroy the Mavs summer league team, but Arthur Kaluma making Morez look like a chump.

That's true. He was winning it while the young man (17) was performing the greatest draft workout in sports history and telling everyone he'd never back down from "black Jesus."

Mavs strike another blow for Che Guevarra and Bolsheviks.

Plug my boy here. We're a long way from the Inglewood YMCA in June 1996.