ESPN NBA

• Lang Whitaker saves me having to explain: "Look, I just watched the video of the Kobe/Jaric incident again and it’s pretty obvious that Kobe is trying to create contact with Jaric. I think we can all agree on that, no matter if you’re a Lakers fan or not. Creating contact is something that really good players do. Michael Jordan did it. Shaq does it rather forcefully. And Reggie Miller was probably the best of all time at doing this on the hush. Kobe’s problem is that instead of doing this on the hush, he’s doing it flagrantly and obviously. (Insert tenuous Kobe Bryant psychological parallels here.) You can try to draw contact and create a call, but you can’t elbow people really hard in the face. And if you do elbow someone really hard in the face and get caught doing, you definitely can’t do it again a few weeks later and expect to get away with it. Was Kobe trying to hurt Marko Jaric? I don’t think so. Kobe was trying to hurt the TWolves by getting a foul called against them. Jaric’s face just got in the way."
• Marcel Mutoni (NSFW--language) says "People's faces need to stop attacking Kobe Bryant's elbow."
• Marko Jaric tells Chris Sheridan: '"I haven't seen the replay, but if you ask me what I thought about the play when it happened, I don't think he did it intentionally, and I don't think players should be suspended for things that happen unintentionally,' Jaric said. 'I think he was trying to draw a foul, and he swung his hand out to make it look dramatic, and he hit me by accident. He apologized right after.' Jaric said the pain from the strike was only a '2 or 3' on a scale of 1 to 10."

My main thought about this whole thing: I want to see video footage of the practice sessions when Kobe Bryant practices this move. Because you know he must practice it.



Regular bullets to follow.