Still Being Kobe

If, like any upstanding American citizen, you despise the Los Angeles Lakers, I highly recommend that you take two minutes out of your day to bathe yourself in the warm glow of LA Times Laker beat reporter Mike Bresnahan's twitter timeline.

The tweets spell out (in the most diplomatic way possible) how doomed the Lakers' pursuit of LaMarcus Aldridge was from the jump. Bresnahan reports, for instance, that Aldridge and Kobe Bryant "didn't quite gel" and while the Blazers free agent was wowed by the Rockets' basketball presentation, it was apparently "not so with the Lakers." As for why Aldridge and Kobe didn't get along, Bresnahan offers this: "It's a little vague, but Aldridge apparently didn't quite get answers from Kobe he was seeking."

That probably has something to do with the one seemingly not-so-damning piece of information contained therein:

Kobe spoke for about three minutes in the presentation, said he envisioned LaMarcus Aldridge working with him the same way Pau Gasol did.
— Mike Bresnahan (@Mike_Bresnahan) July 1, 2015

Now, there are a few ways for thirsty Laker fans to rationalize this themselves as not entirely terrible. Hey, Kobe liked Pau! Hey, Kobe kinda, sorta tried this time! Hey, even Kobe probably can't act like a total sociopath in only three minutes!

But re-read that tweet again. In what probably represents the Lakers' best chance to add a franchise player this offseason—quite possibly Bryant's last one as an active player, if you believe the retirement talk—the best elevator pitch their iconic player could muster was, "Remember that time when I was great and that other great player, who kind of plays like you, was my sidekick? Let's do that again!"

Just like Bresnahan's tweets, it's a fair bet that this was put a lot more delicately inside the room. But Kobe Bryant is still the un-self-aware dolt he has always been, the same busted-ass 37-year-old who can spout off with a straight face that it's totally congruous to still be super, duper serious about winning while pocketing $23.5 million in salary in the December of his illustrious career. No matter how fervently anonymous Laker officials try to get his back, it's more believable that Bryant would try to wedge himself into the center of the Lakers' frame than gently let Aldridge accede to the foreground.

Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski expounded on Bresnahan's reporting, saying that Aldridge "felt too much of Lakers presentation focused on outside opportunities." Which, of course; it's a bad idea to waste time discussing the termite-infested foundation of the house you're trying to sell when it sits 20 feet from the ocean. But as Grantland's Zach Lowe and ESPN's Marc Stein discussed earlier this week, Aldridge is the rare free agent whose eyes don't glaze over at the prospect of appealing to history. He might actively embrace it; Stein believes that the pressure of being the heir to Tim Duncan in San Antonio or Dirk Nowitzki in Dallas appeals to him. No team can sell history quite like the Lakers and they were all too eager to flaunt it in their re-recruitment of Dwight Howard two years ago. Once again, they had Bryant in the room, a walking totem of why the Lakers are Important with a capital 'I.' Even at his most petulant, Kobe did his damndest to sell Howard on the significance of winning as a Laker. Now, more than ever, this is the argument he is singularly qualified to make.

That Aldridge left the meeting with gripes about Bryant, in particular, could speak to front office ineptitude, which can never be ruled out with Jim Buss at the controls. But it's also exactly what could transpire if an aging star spends his allotted time speaking in present tense. Three minutes isn't a whole lot of time to speak about a legacy as rich as the Lakers', after all, and if Kobe can't even agree with Mitch Kupchak about his own future, how can he speak to the organization's?

LaMarcus Aldridge isn't coming to the Lakers for the same reason that Kevin Love and DeAndre Jordan aren't. He sees Kobe Bryant for exactly what everyone but Kobe Bryant does: A dying star desperate to maintain his centrifugal place within the Laker orbit. It isn't remotely surprising that Kobe couldn't provide the answers that Aldridge was hoping to hear. How could he? He hasn't even stumbled onto the questions.