The 2012 NBA All-Stars had their first mass media availability session of the weekend on Friday, and everyone who was named to the team managed to show up and tolerate the wide-ranging and sometimes-inane questions from both traditional and non-traditional media outlets.
Everyone, that is, except Kobe Bryant.
Bryant was a no-show to the festivities, which was a disappointment to the 50-75 media members who had camped out at his table since the beginning of the Western Conference’s scheduled time, and stayed all the way up until the very end. About two minutes before it was all over, an NBA spokesman informed those waiting that Bryant was “ill” and would not be in attendance.
The delay in notifying the waiting masses of Kobe’s absence was supposedly due to the fact that Bryant was unreachable until that time, the spokesman said.
Bryant has been what you might call “fashionably late” to the past couple of these sessions that I’ve covered, regularly rolling in 10-20 minutes after the event’s scheduled start time. It’s tough to blame him, as many of the questions are either soaked in silliness, or are simply requests for shout-outs to fans living in faraway foreign lands.
There’s also the fact that all is not great in Laker-land right now, beginning with Bryant’s rant less than a week ago that the organization make a decision on whether or not to trade Pau Gasol, and, most recently, the Lakers loss in Oklahoma City last night that had Bryant and James Harden jawing for an extended period near the game’s end.
It’s fine, and honestly, completely understandable for Bryant not to want to show up to this circus, especially with everything swirling around the Lakers at this point in the season. If he is indeed ill, then hey -- we wish him a speedy recovery. It just would have been nice to have a little more than a two-minute head’s up.
