Kobe Bryant

I'm a huge Lakers fan(and some of you may or may not know that)and as a Lakers fan I am currently upset at the whole "Kobe Bryant" situation. As you all know when the Lakers were winning championships I was a huge Kobe Bryant fan. Then we lost the 2003 Western Conference Semi-Finals to the Spurs and it all went downhill after that. In the off-season we managed to nab Karl Malone and Gary Payton...but we also had controversy. It was in the Summer of 2003 Kobe Bryant was accused of raping a girl at a hotel in Colorado.
In that case I supported Bryant and claimed that she was just trying to get money. When the 03-04 season started the Lakers were dominant and the rape accusations were dropped(due to evidence she was with 3 other men that weekend). The Lakers started with a huge win streak(total cannot remember but I remember them being 15-0 at one point) and made the playoffs. The problem was we practically weren't stable going in. Nearly every star player on the team(Bryant,O'Neil,Payton,and Malone)had issues with one another and the Lakers collapsed in the NBA Finals losing 4-1 to the Detroit Pistons.

Just when I thought things were already bad....it got worse. I witnessed the dream dynasty die as Shaq was traded,Payton was traded,Malone retired,and Phil Jackson retired. Right there I jumped on Bryant and blamed him for the Lakers problems including Shaq's departure. Rudy Tomjonavich was named coach but heart problems ended that in January 2005. Since then Phil Jackson has been re-hired and Shaq has won a championship...and the Lakers haven't made it back to the Finals since. Recently the Lake Show was knocked out in Round 1(again) by the Phoenix Suns.

On Sunday night I was sitting in my cousin's friend's house and his friend got a message on his cell phone stating that Kobe wanted Jerry West back as GM or he wants to be traded. Now while I hate Kobe to no end, I believe trading him would kill the team. In March I finally accepted that the team was no good and Kobe was the only thing keeping the team in contention and I've seen this(he scores all the points and the rest of the team don't even play defense). People call Kobe a ball hog but when he doesn't score over 40(or in some cases 30)the team loses 95 percent of the time) whereas we win 99.9% of the time he does.

I can understand frustration, the team has made a piss poor effort at giving him talent to help him(See:Brown, Kwame). Bottom line is I hope we can keep him here and try to get some talent to assist him. But at the same time I am tired of his bs(claiming that he didn't run Shaq to Miami)and want to trade him for a "Steve Nash" type of player or two. I'm torn and all I can hope for is a Lakers revival and not the bizarre offspring of Post-1997 Baltimore Orioles and the Post-Lovie Smith era Saint Louis Rams defense.