Recently Brandon Jennings of the Milwaukee Bucks has been taking several shots at Los Angeles Lakers’ guard Kobe Bryant.
Jennings began his anti-Kobe campaign after Bryant emphatically capped off his Drew League debut by hitting a game winner over James Harden when he tweeted “Kobe drop 45pts with the game winner. Yea where he at next I’m playing I need THAT,” accompanied by a picture of him wearing a black shirt that read “Nobody Likes a Snake.”
A couple days later, Jennings retracted his tweet; praising Bryant as the best player in the NBA and claiming he was joking.
As the storm began to settle, the very much one-sided Jennings and Bryant feud took another twist when the face of Under Armour basketball took to Twitter once more: “He [Kobe] wasn’t born and raised in LA. You gotta be from LA to play for Drew. Show me a birth certificate.”
By questioning Bryant’s hometown in his latest quip, Jennings has sparked a whole new issue, one I’d like to discuss.
Where is Kobe’s true “home”?
For those who don’t know, Bryant was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and spent seven years of his childhood in Italy before returning to Philly, becoming a legend at Lower Merion High School.
But ever since Bryant was passed up by his hometown Sixers when they selected Allen Iverson with the first overall pick and Bryant dropped down to #13 where he was swooped up by the Hornets and traded to the Lakers; Los Angeles has been Kobe’s town.
To dispel Jennings’ theory, let me ask you this: which athlete do you instinctively associate with the city of Brotherly love. For me, it’s Allen Iverson, the man who was able to grind out a decade of individual excellence for the city, rather than Bryant, the man who was born in the city. Similarly, when you think Los Angeles, Kobe Bryant, the life-long Laker, comes to mind and not Brandon Jennings, who was born and raised in Compton, California.
Bryant’s love-hate relationship with his hometown was documented in a poignant E:60 segment. Kobe believes his personality derives from the city’s hard-working nature: “the humor, the thick skin, all that stuff comes from here.” In the interview, Bryant revealed he still considers Philadelphia home after all these years.
Unfortunately, Kobe’s love for Philly is unrequited, partially because he was an instrumental part of the Lakers standing in the way of the Sixers’ championship aspirations in the 2001 NBA Finals. Throughout the segment, Lisa Salters, the narrator, and Bryant discuss why the city of brotherly love shows their hometown hero no love, with neither never truly finding a concrete answer.
Next: Athletes and Their Cities
Conventional wisdom argues that the city will be eternally bitter Kobe has won five championships for the Lakers and not the Sixers.
The reality is that once an athlete is drafted by a team, he assumes the city’s hometown as his or her own. Take the recent Stanley Cup final between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins for example. One of the Bruins’ best players, Milan Lucic, was born in Vancouver, yet the Bruins’ faithful did not have any qualms cheering for a player born in the opposing team’s city, as he was now one of them.
An athlete’s hometown is of little-importance unless he or she is playing there. Few remember that Michael Jordan was born in Brooklyn after he brought six world championships to Chicago. I can bet my life’s savings that even fewer Mavs’ fans cared that Dirk Nowitzki wasn’t even born in the United States of America, nevertheless their city, last June when he extinguished the Heat. And the final example may be the most blatant of them all. Boston Celtics guard Paul Pierce might be one of the most hated athletes in Los Angeles, yet Pierce grew up in L.A. as a fan of the Lakers.
When it comes to team sports it’s not about where you’re born, it’s about where you’re at and what you’ve done lately.
The ambiguity of an athlete’s home is one of the more mystifying ideas to accept in sports. But as a loyal sports fan, you throw away any previous allegiance you might have when you decide to support a team through thick and thin anyways.
What I’m really trying to say is with everything the Mamba has done for the City of Angels, while his birth certificate may not state he’s born in Los Angeles, he’s an honorary citizen in everyone’s book. Except, perhaps, for Brandon Jennings.