. The Transom .

Friday, April 11, 2008

Kobe Bryant makes image blunder - le'ts focus on the real problem

We already knew that Kobe Bryant's judgment wasn't the greatest after his Colorado-mistress reputation and relationship disaster. In the face of that situation, and the need to rebuild his brand as a reputable and trustworthy sports figure, you'd think he would go out of his way to not put himself in a position to look foolish. However, numerous jokes and one-liners about the kind of players that populate today's NBA aside, Kobe has done it again with this video released on YouTube.

In it we see Kobe hawking his latest sneaker (doesn't EVERYONE have their own shoe these days??). He straps on his boot and mutters "don't try this at home" under his breath. He then walks a few steps away, signals to someone and leaps over an Aston Martin as it tries to run him over. After much celebrating and chest bumping with his boy, he looks in the camera, says "that's how we do it" and then again, "don't try this at home," as he walks off camera.

Amazingly, the online debate right now is whether or not the video is real and whether or not he actually pulled off the stunt. To me, the discussion should focus around a professional athlete seemingly putting himself in the face of death and giving a lot of good kids a really bad idea about recreating the stunt. How long will it be until we read about some young boy killed after getting run down by a car attempting to do the same stunt? It's just stupid on the part of Kobe to use his reputation for this. Sure it's impressive. Sure it's a cool trick. But he's a finely tuned professional athlete that jumps for a living. The high school kid that has half Kobe's vertical leap and probably twice his brains is gonna get flattened.

Bad move, Kobe. By showcasing your ups, you highlight your judgment, or lack thereof.

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