I know that pretty much everything is wide open in the sports blogging world but the owners of “The Kobe Video” seem so shady. While they purportedly have been offered “a lucrative offer” to destroy the tape, they feel to need to make it public because information wants to be free… or $1.99.
The big story in the tape apparently is that Bryant rips on the Lakers organization for not trading for Jason Kidd because they wanted to bold onto Andrew Bynum. OK cool. And Kobe probably curses and bunch and talks about all the assholes in the Lakers organization. For this, I’m supposed to part with $2? Especially since someone will watch the video and post it or the transcript of it anyway?
What I’m afraid of is that these opportunists will actually benefit from this and then athletes will no longer talk to fans candidly for fear of being videotaped and posted on the internet.
The video was taken around June 10th which means it’s already old news. I don’t know what it is but it just seems like this is a mildly interesting story that’s getting a lot of play for no reason. And these guys are trying to make a cheap buck out of it. I don’t begrudge people who try to make a fast buck but it should be at least clever or amusing. This is just a guy talking to Kobe while Kobe was clearly agitated about his situation. I’m not here to defend Kobe but this whole thing is cheap.
Here’s an interesting take on the Kobe video on Sports Law Blog.
Links:
[Lakers Blog]: Obviously, there are worse “amateur videos” to pop up in
[Hoops World]: Lakers: Video – Bryant Frustrated
