450 Players In The NBA And You Pick This Guy? Kobe Doin' Work

I can't believe I sat through this horrid piece of shit. There are a ton of problems with this movie. And they're blatantly obvious. It's a completely uninteresting hour and a half look at two and a half hours in the life of basketball's second best player.

Spike took 30 cameras to a Laker game (Already sounds like a bad math riddle) and focused each one on Kobe who was mic-ed up for audio as well. After, he took all the footage, edited it together and sent the tape to Kobe to do voice over commentary months later. The movie shows one man playing one regular season NBA game. (It ends up being a 20 point Laker blowout, in which Kobe sits the entire fourth quarter. Kobe went on to win MVP that year, but watched his team drown in a pool of Kevin Garnett's sweat in 6 games of the Finals.)

Kobe Bryant is the least interesting professional sports celebrity. He never sounds genuine in interviews, commercials, articles, on the court, anywhere. He has the most calculated, boring and completely contrived public persona in recorded history. He's more careful about what he says than politicans. Not only does it make him boring, it makes him kind of despicable. Sorry LA.

Dwayne Wade plays videogames with Charles Barkley. Dwight Howard does dance-offs against Shaq at center court. LeBron James sets up his own players like bowling pins before games and knocks them all down for strikes. Yao Ming points at Ron Artest after a playoff win and says, "I'll see you in the club." Kevin Garnett sticks his jaw out and yells "pussy mother fuckers" to the crowd at least 20 times a game. Assholes, showmen, frontrunners, call em what you want, at least these are people with personalities.

What does Kobe Bryant do? He grins snidely at the cameras. He uncomfortably laughs at things that aren't funny. He says all the normal basketball things: "It's all about team play. We just need to play aggressive and come out ready to compete. Phil Jackson's a great coach. We get along really well with each other." Not once have I thought, sure, everyone says that, but this guy means it. I really hoped this documentary would get him in the locker room bitching at Jordan Farmar for skipping his last set on the bench press, undermining Phil Jackson's game instructions, listening to Nas before the game, doing a bad Tim Duncan free throw impression, something, anything. Instead it makes him look more packaged than ever. I guess that's what you get from a guy named after a steak.

"See on this play I'm thinking I've gotta get Vladimir Radmanovich involved. He's such a good three point shooter. So I take the double team and pass it to him for the open three. So important to get those guys involved..."

"The Spurs are such a good defensive team. They make it hard to score in the paint. And then on offense they've got Tony Parker who's so quick. And they can pass to the corner shooters. They've got great corner shooters."

Okay, so Kobe knows less about basketball than I do. And the movie is about 90% in-game commentary. There are a couple minutes of Phil Jackson talking at halftime and a couple minutes before and after the game of Kobe walking to the locker room or leaving with his wife and kids. Those are the same shots we already get from ESPN cameras. And there's about 30 seconds where he speaks Italian to Sasha Vujacic on the bench for no reason except that he knows there are 30 cameras on him. No one else on the team seems to like him very much. He doesn't seem to like himself very much.

The only good thing about this movie is the quality of the picture of the game. Spike's got some good camera angles and great quality cameras. His editing is over the top. On jump shots it cuts to black and white still shots and shows 5 replays. It's not even as well done as the "where amazing happens" commercials the NBA runs, which themselves have gotten tired after the second straight season. ESPN puts microphones on players. They give you coach's halftime speeches. They put a microphone in the huddle at timeouts. And none of it's very interesting there either.

Part of the problem is that Spike picked a bad game. It was a blowout win. That was out of his hands a little. The other problem is the marketing. This isn't a day in the life of Kobe Bryant at all. It's him playing the Spurs for two hours and nothing else. He should have mic-ed the other players. He should have shown 75% behind the scenes. But most of all, he should have picked any other player than the one he did. You get made MVP for scoring points, not for being interesting. We can see him make jumpshots every Saturday on TNT and get way better commentary from Charles Barkley at halftime. Pick anyone else and you've at least got something to work with. Pick Kobe Bryant and you're screwed unless you show that this guy is something other than what we already think.

There's apparently a LeBron documentary about his upbringing that's doing the festival circuit now. I've heard good things and I have little doubt it'll make this highlight reel look amateur.



1 lonely star