Kobe Bryant has been a top notch elite player for 17 seasons, entertaining crowds for many years. Coming in at just 18 years old, he was a hall of famer waiting to happen. But now with Kobe Bryant calling it a season after his knee injury, one has to question many things about the Lakers and their approaching plans? And one has to look at Kobe as well.

Kobe has claimed he’s all about winning championships. And he has won his share, evidently with 5 in his back pocket. But yet, he took a tremendous contract at the ripe age of 35 for his 48 million and fundamentally handcuffed the Lakers organization with no room to get any talent around him. Tim Duncan showed more than his share of winning teamwork mentality for the Spurs by accepting less money so they could spend for talent around him, and they have been a changeless winning team for years, winning 55 games a season, like clockwork. Maybe Kobe should of thought about the team instead of taking that extension at his age. Realizing that taking a pay cut may have been the best thing for the team itself, and then getting pieces around him to be able to get closer to winning that ring he claims he is all about, but what does he do? The selfish thing, and takes the huge contract. For Kobe lovers and Lakers fans, can you conceive of his Lakers legacy if he had? He would have been the “Golden Child.” But Kobe more than anything proves again, Kobe is about Kobe.

But he is not just to blame, of course, the Lakers organization was implausibly foolish when they did it in the first place. And now the Lakers and Kobe both shot themselves in the foot with that very same contract. They are seeing now, the actuality off having him take up half the cap space isn’t the way you build a challenger. I would have thought the team would have been smarter than that. They should never have splurged the money to him in the first place, particularly to a player towards the end of his career.

He has been a great player, but no superstars in the league had ever wanted to play with him, going back for years. And until Kobe is retired for good, no superstar will come to Los Angeles. He seems to perpetually blame everyone else and never himself for anything that has gone awry with the team. Maybe the fact that he has shot the ball roughly 9-10 shots more than even the 2nd option scorer on the Lakers team when he plays full time. The Lakers have become a Circus and Kobe is the main attraction. “Come watch our aging player score point on 25% of the teams shots, while we lose by 12.”

This is going to take time to heal for Lakers fans. It’s going be a 2 to 3 year operation. With or without Kobe, they are going nowhere for sometime. The West is way too powerful for them. They are truly in reconstruct mode in every aspect of the word. I would not expect much from them till Kobe’s contract is done and over with. An aging player with way too many miles on those knees. Father time has caught up to Kobe, like he does to every person.

Written by TonyK of VegasTopDogs.com