After watching the second half of the Lakers-Rockets game last night, I couldn’t help but realize that I can’t stand Kobe Bryant.  Its disappointing to me that a guy that has that much talent can be such a dirtbag.  I loved when he got T’d up for taunting - reminded me of this.  The taunting was minutes after he got away with a cheap shot elbow.  You don’t see LeBron James pulling the same stunts as Kobe.  You don’t see Tim Duncan, Dwayne Wade, Dirk, or Steve Nash, doing it either.

Basketbawful pointed out that if the league is going to be consistent, they will suspend Kobe for the next game for his intentional elbow to Ron Artest’s throat.  Of course they won’t do this but a guy can dream right?

Jalen Rose just went on The Herd on ESPN radio and claimed that if you think Kobe is a dirty player, you can’t possibly be watching the NBA.  His reasoning was that there are guys whose job is to be an enforcer/fouler that do much worse. So according to Jalen, you can play dirty, but as long as there is someone worse than you, you are not considered a dirty player.

Cowherd and Rose went on to give Kobe an assortment of excuses:

• Being arguably the best player in the league he has guys doing the same type of things to him every night
• There are unknown guys in the NBA trying to make their names off of Kobe
• Tiger Woods gets “chippy”, MJ got “chippy”, Larry Bird got “chippy”

I agree that everybody is trying to stop Kobe and I know there are guys that take cheap shots at Kobe. It would not surprise me if Ron Artest got Kobe earlier in the series and it wasn’t caught on tape or went unnoticed.  Even if Ron Artest deserved an elbow to the throat, that doesn’t make it a clean play.  A dirty play is a dirty play.

What do you think? There’s a poll under the two videos.

Here are two instances that I believe prove that Kobe is a dirty player. These are just examples from the last 2 games:

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