Eat My Sports: No legitimate Air

The past two months have brought about the best and worst about the NBA. A validation for Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, Puff pieces about bit players like Sasha Vujacic and Glen Davis, non-stop promotion of 3 Doors Down by ABC ….

But my personal favorite storyline of the playoffs has been the comparisons of Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan. Questions like: Is Kobe better? Who will be remembered as the greatest player? Will Bryant end up with more championships than Jordan? Is it worse to have a compulsive gambling problem, or have a tarnished image because of rape allegations?

Well, the Finals have answered all of those questions emphatically. Comparing Bryant to Jordan now is like slapping a recent photo of Lindsay Lohan on a chastity poster. Morally wrong and just … morally wrong. Fun fact: look up “Lindsay Lohan” and “chastity” on Yahoo! and there are no results!

I was never a fan of Jordan. Growing up a Knicks fan, you learn very quickly the pain number 23 could cause. But I knew what I was watching: the single greatest basketball player to ever live. Jordan commanded games, he turned players like Steve Kerr and Luc Longley into NBA Finals heroes. Kobe, well, Kobe has actually made the players around him worse as the Finals have gone on.

Cue up split screen of Pau “My parents were too lazy to add the ‘l'” Gausol and Big Bird. Gasol should have become an intimidating big man these Finals, but instead he’s vanished like a lifeguard at a Tommy Lee pool party. You can blame his soft defense or his offensive attack that is about as intimidating as Rachel Ray with a butter knife. Or, you can look to Bryant. The best players turn the players around them into legitimate scorers in the regular season, but they make them gods in the Finals. Hell, even Tim Duncan has made Bruce Bowen and Manu Ginobili the second comings of Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman.

The irrevocable “this guy will never be Jordan” moment came in Game 4 last Thursday, when Bryant and the Lakers choked away a 21-point lead in a game that would have knotted the series at two games each. Jordan would never have let that happened in the playoffs, much less in the Finals, much less on his home turf. Watching Jordan breeze through an NBA Finals was much like watching Titanic, there may be some explosions and some nudity to keep it interesting, but we all knew the end result no matter how many times you see it. That’s where Jordan earned his legacy. We expected him to be great, and every time he delivered, and was better than we expected.

Bryant is more of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” of the playoffs, but instead of keeping his thumb on the page to go back in case it was a bad decision, the guy just wings it until a once promising Lakers squad is about to go back to Boston and get crushed. This is a death sentence. It’s seeing Fredo go out on to the boat, cut and dry, dead and gone.

So to Kobe and all of the Lakers faithful, know this: Bryant is not the second coming of anybody. The only reason he has three championship rings is because The Big Cactus willed his way to all three of them. And I’m pretty sure I know what Kobe’s theme song should be wherever he plays next years once he demands a trade to a “better team,” cue up “No Air.”

Top five things that annoy me in sports this week:
5. 18-hole playoff
Seriously could’ve done with an extra hole on Sunday.
4. Phil Jackson’s “genius”
You’re getting outcoached by Doc Rivers, a guy who couldn’t even score 10 points-a-game.
3. ABC
Get some different music in the background. Tell me that cutting to a Boston bar during the game while playing Dropkick Murphys “Kiss Me I’m S#*&faced” wouldn’t make for some great television.
2. Mark Jackson
Is the guy going to just start writing his resume up on the screen with a Sharpie during timeouts?
1. Stephen A. Smith
Words cannot explain ….