YAYsports! NBA

One of our favorite things to do is hear the opinions of Laker fans about almost anything - last week’s kick-ass Smallville, Tom Cruise, bacon, politics.

While Boston fans are unreasonably bitter and feel some strange sense of entitlement, Laker fans are, for the most part, quite simply passionate. It often leads to unbelievable levels of irrationality, but when it’s rooted in passion, it’s pretty readable stuff.

Take this LakersGround thread about Kobe’s number change announcement, already sitting at nine pages long as of this word-writing thing. Two things to note here - the various reasons people are attributing to the change are cute - Shaq, math, and Michael Jordan are all allegedly involved. (Some people are flat-out angry - also lots of fun.)

The other notation to make - apparently a longtime poster known as “da ocho” knew about this last week, and created a thread about it. It was quickly dismissed as nonsense and deleted. Well, he’s back in the new thread (one of four, btw) to drop completely unimportant yet totally awesome tidbits, as are a few others who are allegedly in the know.

pjiddy wrote:
If it’s just for jersey sales (which I’m sure it is), that’s kind of sad. C’mon, Kobe. You’re better than that.

da ocho wrote:
there are other reasons but that is one of them.
it should also be noted that the league is NOT happy about this.

msb212
It is not about Jersey sales. Kobe has a deeper, more personal reason. You will respect his decsion and reasoning…I was told Kobe chose 24 to remind himself to get the most out of every minute, 24 hours a day. Every time he looks down, or looks around the arena at everyone wearing the number 24, it will remind him to give everything he has to that moment.

If that’s what it is, we implore you stop now, Kobe. You’re not on an episode of American Idol. If you actually come out and say these words or anything 70% close to them, we’re not going to be able to control ourselves any longer. All the 81-love we’ve built up after years of hate will crumble away in a mess of Photoshopping madness.

There’s also a very, very vague reference to this possibly being about he and Vanessa losing a baby, in which case we’ll feel like an ass, but that’s nothing new, so blah-blah-bleh-blah.

Hopefully he talks about it tonight before the game, which will allow us to get right to work.