Kobe Admits Who He and Wade Really Are

Seems like Wade is doing just fine as a scorer, Kobe.  He’s averaging almost 30 and shooting 48 percent in the process. 

And the point of this article is?

One of the best scorers of all time. One of the 50 greatest players of all time.

And the point of your comment was?

Very sloppy.  The text makes it clear that Kobe was comparing the roles of each during the rebuilding process.

A clear example of some sloppy journalist twisting words around and taking them out of context.

There you have it, Shoals. Lawstash, the foremost voice on journalism amongst anonymous internet commenters, hath spoken, and you sir are SLOPPY! Please submit your formal resignation by close of business today.

Lawstash: Saving the world from word-twisting, one comment at a time.

Thank you cmot.

I especially liked that you could do nothing more with my comment than attempt to trivialize my credentials.  Way to lose credibility yourself by responding to a valid point with a completely irrelevant and personal attack. I especially enjoyed your last line.  Do you want to compare degrees?

Cmot, instead of wasting time defending poor pieces of work, why not make sure that only quality blogs are associated with SN?  (Point of reference, in another recent blog, shoals uses "too" instead of "two."  Again, sloppy journalism. 

Kobe rapes better than DWade

What am I twisting around in the quote "I am more a pure scorer?"

Also, lawstache, you need to learn what "blog" means. You seem to have it confused with a "post," an error far more egregious than the too/two typo.

So what? Kobe makes a valid point and you have nothing better to write an article on? If you spent more time on your work (assuming your actually any good at it), and less time defending it, you might not need to defend it.

Nate, you have to understand your audience.

Understand that Lawstash (check your spelling again on his handle; it was either a typo of a jab, neither of which are cool in the context of your retort) bleeds Purple and Gold, and has been one of Kobe’s most ardent defenders during his ballhoging – um, pure-scoring days.

He’s used to defending the Lakers’ star against attacks, even perceived attacks, and in this case what he hears as your insinuation that Kobe now has the gall to proudly declare himself more an evolution of Dominique Wilkins than anyone else.

Especially when, as you say, in years past Kobe would have scoffed and glowered at any attempts to pigeon-hole him as a one-dimension scoring machine…

..OK, so in that vein your post – er, blog – does sound like it’s injecting Kobe’s statements with a little more gravity than the words themselves hold.

Or is it?

All I read, without reading my own bias into his quote, was Kobe saying that while both he and Wade share a common experience with rebuilding woes, their approaches differ greatly because of their contrasting personalities, and mentalities towards the game. Kobe tried to shoot his team into contention, and Wade’s trying to pass his way there.

An oversimplification, sure, and Kobe shows more than a little hubris in stating that he had to score 35 a game to win, while Wade struggles because he has a distributor’s mentality.
 
On he flip side, there’s also a reluctant compliment to Wade in there, somewhere. Kobe might be admitting that although Wade’s struggling with the role of passer in the absence of quality receivers,  well,  Wade’s approach is working just as well, if not better than Kobe’s pure-scorer tactics.

If, of course, you choose to twist it that way.

You could also choose to see Kobe’s comments on Wade’s trials with Miami as a validation of his scorer’s mentality, because he himself always believed he had no one in LA to pass to. Kind of a ‘look, D-Wade got no one to score, and Miami’s barely .500 in the East. Told you I had to shoot."

Which would also invalidate Kobe’s current style of playing in LA, because even with a gallery of talent, his more communal approach isn’t giving him the season Wade’s having. But then, his numbers don’t tell the whole story, do they?

If they don’t, what’s the story?

As you can see, whichever way you bend his quote, it’s also twisting words.
 
It’s taking a simple quote from a controversial player, throwing Chris Farley double-quotes around it, Weekend Update style, and ballooning it into something it’s not.

And what it’s not is a good blog entry. Or post. Or post in a blog.

So take it easy on ‘Stash. He’s just defending his guy, and in doing so trying to point out a weakness or two in your work.

You must realize, given the philosophic auto-ramblings that your posts often become, that in defending yourself from Stash’s accusations of word-twisting, you yourself assume that his interpretation of your post is faulty. Which means you believe he has… twisted your words!

Or twisted your twisting of Kobe’s words.

Or something like that.

You also should realize that your space here isn’t ‘just a blog’, and isn’t perceived as one.

Just as your five stars are gold compared to our regular red ones, your blog is a featured section on the official Sporting News website. This isn’t FreeDarko, this is something people believe is at least an esteemed position and at most a paying job.

As such, they expect a little more than elusive statements like, "This classic case of non-parallelism makes all the stranger the following quote.."

Here’s where I take a stab at providing the detailed criticism that Stash and others have gestured at. 
 
Classic case of non-parallelism? Really?

Even if we indulge you a little here, how is ‘non-parallelism’ strange when juxtaposed with a quote from Kobe trying to elaborate how his and Wade’s rebuilding situations are topically similar, but very non-parallel in each player’s approach and execution?

Sounds like you’re looking for a contradiction that isn’t there, which can get you critiqued for word-twisting, you know.

Even in introducing tonight’s showdown between Miami and LA as a non-event, a potential duel that time and trades made trite, you fail to note that over the years Wade has been one of the few NBA players who has consistently matched Kobe head-to-head in their meetings.

And many nights, like tonight, surpassed him.

Basketball heads know this. We watch for these matchups, we understand that Miami’s a potential dark horse, that Wade’s been a bit of a Kobe-bane over the years, that this is a game to circle on the calendar, whether or not Shaq’s in town or Miami’s any good.  We know Team USA made these guys both friends and more intense rivals. We know both players take it personally.

To be utterly pedantic, exactly how would a modern player glowingly say his first name followed by, "I am a pure scorer"?

"Gilbet I am a pure scorer."?

"Allen. I am a pure scorer."?

"Kobe: I am a pure scorer."?

"Ray I am, pure scorer I be"?

In your article’s (or post’s, or blog’s)  summation, you again meander away from the reader with the almost impenetrable, "Provided they keep coming to meetings and find a way to satisfy their drives that harms neither themselves nor others."

I think I got your gist here, but to break it down a little, this closer begs and screams the following:

Which meetings are you talking about here, if  you took the trouble to go with that phrasing? Is that a generic suit-and-tie metaphor for the NBA as a business first and game second? An oblique Iverson ‘practice?’ reference? Kobe and Phil’s annual year-end pow wows? 

In the second part of that statement, your phrasing is about as cumbersome as, well, mine usually is.  It would be more clearly read as, "…find a way, that harms neither themselves or others, to satisfy their drives."

Even so, we’re left unclear whether you consider Kobe’s scoring drive harmful or not, past or present. Or even if you’re talking about Wade’s drive to play a more all-around game. You say the ‘familia’ criticisms of Kobe’s scoring weren’t ‘particularly accurate’ in one breath, but in a previous gulp of air say he earned an MVP by playing out of that very character.

It’s that sort of  neither-here-nor-there, hesitant to take a stand, thinking out loud approach to your featured blogs that leave a lot of readers mystified. It leaves so much open to interpretation, and word-twisting, even, that you can’t really blame fellow SN members for being critical.

And yet, when they are, Chris jumps on them immediately with the snark, and you follow up later with snoot.

Leaving your musings as open as you do is fine, except for how offended, and defensive, you and your cohorts become the second anyone doesn’t ‘get’ you. If you post like you’re merely talking to yourself, don’t get in a tizzy when the public you’re actually writing to talks back.

Rest assured, there’s some jealousy at play. Many of us consider bloggers like you average Joes who could easily be one of us. Or vice versa. This is an open forum where SN writers, even those who ‘post’ and don’t ‘blog’, routinely get taken to task by the readers here, many of whom operate their own, less visible blogs. 

In the end, we’re all twisting words. We just expect Bethlehem Shoals to do a better job of it.

"Rest assured, there’s some jealousy at play. Many of us consider
bloggers like you average Joes who could easily be one of us. Or vice
versa."

That pretty much explains all the extreme negativity from SN members towards us. And, sure, we’re just normal dudes, but there’s a reason we’re here, blogging for a living for SN: Because we’re good at it. And we’ve worked extremely hard to be here; blogging for the last five years all over the internet. SN didn’t just randomly pick us to be their bloggers. If you, or others, don’t like our style, then that’s fine. Not everyone likes everything. But there are certainly more people who appreciate our work than those that don’t. And if you don’t, there’s a constructive way to let us know, and an ugly way, the latter of which most SN members seem to employ.

Bad article the Heat are not that bad, just a young small team. Most sports writers don’t completely understand everything about the game just have a college degree and try to get things stirring. It is obvious by the article this guy is one of them. By the way the Heat won and kobe will always try to rise to a challenge D. Wade has pretty muched owned him over the years, blocking his shots, scoring on him and winning the games, check the games and stop writing blind articles 

THIS IS NOT AN ARTICLE AND THE AUTHOR OF THIS IS NOT A SPORTS WRITER.

/slams head into desk

Kobe is crazy that team was bad one year and then got things turned around. He just wanted to be the leader and score a lot of points. He was young and thought leadership meant being the one with your name in the papers for scoring and winning MVP’s. He has learned that it takes a team to win a chapionship. How can he say he has been on bad teams has he even ever looked at the teams he has been on. Especially compared to Wade.

C-Mot:

Look, I appreciate what you guys do, and I like a lot of what Shoals writes, when he gathers himself. I’m about 50-50 on his SLAM articles, but that’s just accounting for taste.

You latched onto my ‘jealousy’ quote, and I really did have to throw that one out there. I’ve read enough senseless bashing of guys like you and Friedman for it to be evident that there’s some jealousy at play.

But I’ve also read some blog entries (is that a more acceptable term?) of questionable quality, and I took exception to how you guys gang up and diss anyone with a gripe. Maybe I just haven’t read enough comments, and my sample’s skewed, but I’ve rarely seen SN member complaints greeted with honest dialogue, even if some come off as abrasive.

Like you say, you blog for TSN for a living; you’re going to be held to a higher standard, like it or not.
 
If the only response to the negative feedback you’re getting is to slam your head into the desk and think, "these people don’t fricking understand!", you’re not listening to what is essentially the audience you’re being paid to write for.

Of course there will be stylistc differences, of course not everyone’s going to like everything. And of course there will be the a-hole heckler in the crowd. But jealousy aside, think about taking some of this feedback with a grain of salt, and consider what screws you can tighten up in response.

Here’s the thing: Our audience isn’t just SN members. In fact, the VAST majority of our readers don’t have SN accounts at all. So, no, I’m not going to change what we’re doing based on a few negative, attacking comments from members.

Again, you say we aren’t engaging in a dialogue, but if you look at the tone of the comments, these aren’t people with whom you can have a rational discussion.

Are all of our "blog entries" homeruns? No, of course not. That’s to be expected when you’re writing 10-15 different items a day. But overall, the quality of this blog is second to none, in my biased opinion.

Not members, but SN readers in general, unless TheSportingBlog gets redirects from somewhere other than SportingNews. It may, I really don’t know. As far as the vast majority being fans and the minority being critics (which I remember someone writing here, but it seems to have disappeared), I also have no idea because I only have the ability to read what’s written under the post itself. If it’s overwhelmingly positive, across the board, for every blogger here, I’ll take your word for it.

But here’s another thing: I’ve butted heads with Lawstash more times than I can count in the past, and you know what? He’s an excellent debater, and intelligent writer, and he can hold a rational discussion.

Even if I hardly ever agree with him, and have my own issues with his approach to discourse.

I just think it’s bad practice to do a quick judgement of a commentor’s ‘tone’ and write off what he has to say. From the little I’ve seen, that’s exactly what frustrates you with some of the SN posters. Vicious circle, no?

And I’m only saying this because you guys are the ones wearing the pants here, the professionals. How does it look when a poster sends you some sass, and you reply in kind? Or appears to dislike the work being presented, and receives the proverbial ‘shut up’ in return?

That’s like a teacher being hit with a spitball, and throwing chalk back at the student.

Look, I don’t think this discussion is going anywhere. I thought the least we could get out of this is that maybe the commentors here could ease up on the judgemental tone a little, and the writers could spend a little more time dotting the ’i’s and crossing the ’t’s and leave less opening for criticism.

But if there’s nothing to be learned, I guess I have nothing else to add.

While I understand the point you’re making, I obviously disagree with you. You do not start a comment with "very sloppy" and expect us to think you’re looking to provide constructive criticism. That said, his comments weren’t 1/10th as aggressive and hateful as most. If nothing else, at least you, unlike most commenters here, seem rational.

As for redirects from elsewhere, you should know that almost all of our traffic comes from outside of SN. In other words, people going directly to this blog before ever going to SN, or people being redirected here via links on other, non-SN sites. So we do consider our audience to be different than that of most SN articles.

I think part of the confusion is that SN will put up a link to a story about a game, or some piece of sports news, and then place a link to a semi-related blog right next to that story’s link. SN users come here expecting some sort of analysis or reporting, and often end up getting something very different.

As for the ‘very sloppy’ comment – if you consider a post well-formed, concise, and polished, then of course ‘sloppy’ comes across as an baseless attack. The catch is, what happens when sloppy blogs are posted? Are commenters not allowed to call the poster on it? That’s a general question, outside this particular piece.

It’s good to know where the traffic comes from. Like I said, I see 19 posts here, and they’re all SN members. I can only comment on what I see. Are the comments opened up to non-members?

You must sign up for an SN membership to comment, which is a bit of a process. Hence, many readers don’t ever comment. This is one of many changes we’re making to this blog in the coming months.