Kobe Bryant Made The Tough Decision

Kobe's back...get it?

Tuesday was a big deadline in the NBA.  The time for certain players to decide whether to opt out of their contracts and seek more money or to stay loyal to their signature.  Carlos Boozer decided to continue being an oddity in a sea of Mormons (’look honey, an African.  Well, cross it off the race-watching list’).  Hedo Turkoglu decided long ago to use his new found stardom to leverage a new Bentley outside of old people central.  For Kobe Bryant, the decision was especially tough.  One the one hand, he could opt out and listen to the people of Los Angeles beg him to sign with the Lakers again and heap praise on him.  The Black Mamba proved to be too humble to allow that to happen, so he decided not to opt out.  Either the humble thing or the $20+ million, one of those made him stick around. 

Had Kobe become an unrestricted free agent, a number of teams would have likely started throwing obscene amounts of money at him and he would’ve ended up with the most lucrative contract professional basketball has ever seen.  Instead, he did the moral thing and stuck with his current contract and will end up with the most lucrative contract professional basketball has ever seen. 

See, Kobe and his agent will negotiate a contract extension to ensure that the Finals MVP remains among the top paid players in the league even after he’s no longer among the top players in the league.  Essentially, his choices were become a free agent and get paid or stay with the Lakers and get paid.  Like a fat kid deciding between cake and ice cream, Kobe went with what was closer.   

Don’t you wish your decisions were that easy?  Initially, I wanted to compare Kobe’s dilemma to you buying a house.  One house’s selling point is that Megan Fox will blow you if you buy it, while another house’s selling point is that Marissa Miller will blow you if you buy it.  That, however, could be seen as a tough damn choice.  How would you ever decide between those options?  The obvious answer is that you ruin your credit in order to buy both houses, but then it kind of ruins the comparison to Kobe because he couldn’t choose both.  I mean, he could buy two houses, but he couldn’t… well, screw it.  Kobe Bryant is a lucky, rich bastard who will hopefully be in need of an inexperienced, over-paid ghostwriter for his autobiography.

Tags: basketball, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, NBA

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