To the surprise of few, NBA great Kobe Bryant wrote a basketball poem about retiring that’s now to be found resembling Michael Jordan’s.
By Robby Sabo
Los Angeles Lakers and NBA great Kobe Bryant has announced he will be retiring at season’s end, via The Players’ Tribune.
He announced it in an original, beautiful, well-thought out way. He did it through a basketball poem.
Or at least we initially thought it was original.
Check out this piece done by Larry Brown of Larry Brown Sports. He compares Kobe’s retirement poem to one done by Michael Jordan back in 2003 and printed in the Washington Post, New York Times and L.A. Times (after he retired from the Washington Wizards).
MJ:
Dear basketball, it’s been 28 years since I saw you in the back of our garage. 28 years since our parents introduced us.”Kobe:
Dear Basketball,
From the moment
I started rolling my dad’s tube socks
…
As a six-year-old boy
Deeply in love with you
I never saw the end of the tunnel.—-
MJ:
So I practiced. I hustled. I worked on my game. Passing. Dribbling. Shooting. Thinking.
I ran. I did sit-ups. I did push-ups. I did pull-ups. I lifted weights. I studied you.
I began to fall in love and you noticed.Kobe:
And so I ran.
I ran up and down every court
After every loose ball for you.
You asked for my hustle
I gave you my heart
Because it came with so much more.—-
MJ:
I love you, Basketball. I love everything about you and I always will.Kobe:
You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream
And I’ll always love you for it.
The two poems are so eerily similar that it makes you think Scottie Pippen was dead on a few years back when he claimed Kobe models literally everything after MJ.
Quite honestly, it’s a little sickening. The guy plays like Mike, moves like Mike, shoots like Mike, walks like Mike, talks like Mike, and has even stuck his tongue out like Mike.
For further evidence just head to YouTube and look for the many videos comparing the similar movements between the two on the court. Click here for one stunning example.
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Mr. Sabo, where exactly did you study sports journalism? Just how many minues have YOU yourself logged on an NBA court? What do you know about a "pick and roll defensive schemes and high post triangle offense quick hitters? What do you know about basketball skillsets and work ethic? I ask these questions because while we, lifetime hoopeheads, superfans, players, coaches and FIBA and NBA journalists are celebrating the storied career of one of the game's brightest stars, you're sophomorically preoccupied with how closely Kobe Bryant's touching farewell poem resembles MJ's farewell poem. Every great NBA player patterns their game offensively after greats that preceded them, as the old hardwood adage goes, "you learn from the greats." He got his pull-up jumper by copying Jerry West's, he got his post spin move from the same source Jordan himself did; Oscar Robertson, and of course, his post repertoire is an admixture of Hakeem's and a dash of Jordan's . It's not unlike a jazz musician transcribing a John Coltrane ii-V-I phrase and making it their own, with their own melodic and rhythmic variations for their own personal improvisation. It's this kind of facile, pseudo journalism by people like you, who know nothing when it comes to the actual game itself, the X's and O's, the matchup strategies, defensive principles and schemes, continuity offenses and, who, in an era in which anyone can create their own "sports journalism," devoid of any real substance.