FanHouse Coby Karl

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded NBA Correspondent, brings his exclusive NBA reporting to FanHouse. Check back here regularly for more videos.

In this video we visit the basketball camp of NBA MVP Kobe Bryant. Kobe tells which NBA stars he met as a child and why he enjoyed those moments. Around 2:30 into the video we ask Kobe about the MMA style of basketball he will face in the upcoming Olympics.


Youtube link.

Kobe Bryant has said all along that he has his teammates to thank for winning the MVP this year. Luke Walton asked Kobe at the press conference if said teammates would be receiving any gifts for their help in getting him the award, and Kobe answered by dropping over nine grand per teammate in getting them custom-made Swiss watches.

... Bryant dropped some serious cash on luxury watches for his teammates as a sort of ``thank you'' for helping him win the MVP award this season.

The watches, each hand made by Jaeger-LeCoultre watchmakers, were flown from Switzerland straight to Los Angeles and personalized with an engraving of the year and each player's name.

The price tag on each watch was over $9,000

This is certainly a nice gesture from Kobe (in addition to picking up those expensive dinners), but I have a question. Did everyone get one of these watches? Like, even Ira Newble, Coby Karl, and Chris Mihm? I'm guessing they did (for the sake of team unity and all), but it would have been funny if Kobe decided to stiff them like Tom Brady did with a few of his linemen when he was passing out the Audis.

UPDATE: Nate Jones sent me this link to Kobe's site, which has pictures of the team dinner and the actual watches. He also mentioned that based on the press release at the bottom of the page, it's clear that the watch-maker is getting plenty of publicity from this, so much so that Kobe might not have even had to pay for the expensive gifts.

History has shown that Phil Jackson has always been reluctant to give rookies any sort of significant playing time on his teams. One might have speculated that this was due to the complex Triangle offense, or maybe Phil's insistence that his players play at a certain level on the defensive end of the floor before they are awarded any serious minutes.

It turns out that neither of those things are the real reason. The fact of the matter is, Phil just sees rookies as some sort of lower life form, which he happily told us about in discussing whether he would be sending Coby Karl and/or Javaris Crittenton to play in some D-League games this season:

"I tell kids when they come into the team that rookies are lower than plankton, and they have to understand that. That's the lowest point in the world. There's an entitlement about this game. There's a learning process. We've talked about that."

I guess it's kind of cool that Phil still goes with that old school mentality that players have to earn their playing time as opposed to getting it just handed to them. But it's much easier for him to stick to this philosophy when we're talking about players like Crittenton and Karl. I mean, if Kevin Durant were on the roster, I have a feeling that Phil would have no problem changing his way of thinking.