By Ken Berger
With the news that you won't see Kobe Bryant at the Garden tonight because he's been suspended for one game for clubbing Manu Ginobili in the head -- unintentionally, Bryant says -- this seems like as good a time as any to start Newsday’s NBA blog.
I won’t waste your time with pleasantries or introductions; I’ll get right to the news, because one of my goals for this blog is to bring you news and reaction from around the NBA during the many hours of the day when Newsday’s presses aren’t churning. So here we go:
Kobe got off the plane last night in Newark and the team had a message that NBA security needed to speak with him. For those who didn’t see it, Bryant hit Ginobili in the face with his shooting hand while following through on a missed jumper with 2.7 seconds left in regulation of L.A.’s 96-94 overtime loss to the Spurs on Sunday at the Staples Center.
I saw the play, and I’ve never seen a player go quite as out of his way as Kobe did on that follow-through in an attempt to draw contact. Ginobili was really shaken up, missed the beginning of overtime with a bloody nose, and frankly I was surprised that more of a big deal wasn’t made of Kobe’s errant follow-through. I’m not saying he deliberately tried to hurt him, but let’s just say you would’ve thought Kobe believed it was cheap-shot artist Bruce Bowen coming at him from his blind side rather than Ginobili.
Anyway, here is some of what Kobe said at the Lakers’ shootaround today at the Garden:
“I’m extremely disappointed. I’ve been waiting to play here. This has always been a fun place for me to play, and I’m surprised and shocked by it, actually. I don’t know what to say.
“I unintentionally caught Manu Ginobili. What do you say? It’s a basketball game. You unintentionally catch people with elbows every once in a while. After the play, I just felt terrible about it. I went over to him, checked with him to make sure he’s OK. When we started overtime, I saw he wasn’t out on the floor. I went over to Tim [Duncan] and asked Tim, ‘Is Manu OK?’ I looked over at the bench, checked with him to make sure he was all right. He came back in the game, and I said, ‘I’m glad to see you’re doing all right. Is everything OK?’ I checked with him three times. It was unintentional, man. I felt horrible about it.
“I haven’t see a precedent for this. There are unintentional elbows that take place during the game all the time. I’m blown away by it, man. I really am. This makes no sense.”
Lakers coach Phil Jackson hinted that perhaps the Spurs had drawn the league’s attention to the play, because that is what teams do after reviewing the film and seeing something potentially punishable. But why would Gregg Popovich, one of former Knicks coach Larry Brown’s best friends, want to cut Isiah Thomas any slack by getting Kobe suspended for the Knicks game?
“Nothing shocks me anymore with the NBA,” Jackson said. “We’re amazed. … Clearly when a guy is going up for a shot and he’s being contested, you want to draw contact. That’s part of the game you play. And we see that every day with Gilbert Arenas and all our great guards that go to the basket. When their shots are getting contested, they’re trying to get contact to make the foul, especially in the game with a shot like that.”
Jackson also referenced the Knicks-Nuggets brawl of Dec. 16 as a possible explanation for the heightened attention on what was mostly an innocuous play, and also took some shots at league disciplinarian Stu Jackson.
“That’s somebody making a judgment out there that doesn’t really know basketball or know how the game’s played – just how it looks,” Jackson said. “I think that’s the problem.”
So the Lakers’ one appearance of the season at the Garden will be without Kobe, and most fans certainly would agree with Jackson’s next point.
“To miss this game cheats the fans,” he said.
Hopefully, I can inform you a lot, entertain you a little, and give you a place to post your own opinions. Occasionally, I hope to hit you over the head with news or observations even harder than Bryant hit Ginobili.