Kobe is named after steak

Yeah, we knew this already and you probably do, too – in fact, it’s kind of hard not to know it, since Kobe isn’t anything else but meat and Laker guards.

Anyway, yesterday’s Indy-Philly halftime on ABC had one of Ahmad Rashad’s in-depth interviews, and he asked his interviewee, Mr. Kobe Bryant, about his unique name. Bryant’s response was, paraphrasing:

It’s steak. My dad saw it on a menu.

Ahmad, as we all know, is the biggest softball interviewer in this space quandrant, and even he had a reaction like “huh, that’s it?”

Kobe was like “well yeah, I mean, what do you want?” So Ahmad doesn’t know what to say, and the two of them just laugh and laugh and laugh, you know, because remember, Kobe is a great guy now.

The truth of the matter is we thought the same thing Ahmad did – even if there’s not more to that story than “my dad likes meat”, you really need to make something up. It doesn’t even have to be particularly realistic, but there needs to be something.

Aliens from the planet Kobe, or the Kobe steak wasn’t cooked all the way, and dad had to send it back, and while they were waiting, that’s when they conceived Kobe, and everyone was watching, and they started cheering, and it just so happened that everyone in the restaurant was having Kobe beef also, and they’ve never known for sure if it was because they were having sex in the middle of a restaurant or because the beef was so delicious, but the whole place started chanting “Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe!” and it spread throughout the city of Tokyo and farther, so that the entire country of Japan – no, all of Asia – was chanting “Kobe! Kobe! Kobe!” while his dad pulled his special “roundabout go Philly smoothness” move, and then it ended and they ate steak. And that’s how Kobe got his name.

Would it be so hard to toss something like that back to Access Ahmad?