Remembering Kobe Bryant

​What happened to Kobe, his daughter and the rest of those families was terrible. There is no other way to say it. It was just simply heartbreaking when the news broke that everyone died in the helicopter. Since that moment, everyone seems to be in love with Kobe and everything that he did, like he never did any wrong. I am not saying that he was a terrible person or whether he did some of the things he was accused of doing but when he was taking over the league, he was not a very likeable guy due to his intensity and competitive nature.
 
Everyone seems to forget that he was accused of rape in 2003. Now whether you believe that he did or did not do it, having this allegation brought against you is still very serious and did not make him very popular around the league or in society in general. Over that past year a lot of things were spoken to be later false and ultimately the case was dropped after the accuser would not testify in court.
 
Kobe has also cursed out a lot of teammates over his time as an NBA player and did not get along with his SuperStar teammate Shaq. You could make a very good argument that he was the reason Shaq was traded from LA to Miami. You could also make a strong argument that he did not help young players on the team feel comfortable or even liked at some moments while on the team due to his nature of wanting to win. Another argument that you can make is that because of his bully nature to his teammates, it hurt their ability to succeed in the NBA and ultimately not playing in the NBA anymore. He was also not a very likeable player outside of his own team. Jalen Rose for a long time did not like Kobe, probably from him dropping 81 on his team, the Toronto Raptors, at the time but that he was also so cocky about it. Shaq is another person that did not like Kobe too for a while because of comments that Kobe made towards him. I know that Celtics fans did not like him at all due to the fact that he beat them in the NBA finals and mostly because of the hatred each franchise has towards each other.
 
There are also a lot of other individual stories around the league that are just like these ones. But going back to my main point, everyone seemed to forget all of these stories and the allegations when Kobe died. Why? He's not a bad person for these stories, it's just who he was. When someone dies, we should be honest about who the man was, not glorify him into something he wasn't. He wasn't very liked and that was okay with him because he wanted to win, he wanted to be a killer, and didn't care about feelings. Why do you think he's called the black mamba?
 
It seems to me that after he died there were a lot of fake fans that started to show up to pretend like they knew what kind of a person he was or knew his reputation around the league. A lot of people who didn't support him while he was alive, started to support him after he was dead. That just doesn't sit right with me. I wasn't a Kobe fan while he played, I respected how he won and wanted to win but my guy will always be Dwyane Wade. It won't ever change. When Kobe died, I knew it was a great loss to a lot of people who looked up to him and played against him but I wasn't all of a sudden a fan. I didn't go out to buy a jersey, buy his shoes or all of a sudden to care about everything he did. I remembered him exactly the way he was while he was alive, a cold blooded killer who had bad accusations brought up against him and who was not liked because of how much he wanted to win. Simple.
 
In conclusion, I would not say that he was not a very likeable person outside of Lakers fans. He was very competitive while he played the game which is why he was one of the greatest players to ever touch a basketball but when it came to his likeability around the league and with fans around the US he was not liked by many.