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Kobe Bryant is one of the most legendary competitors the NBA has ever seen, so it's fitting that his 19-year career has been filled with mostly accomplishments and winning. Bryant has won one regular season MVP, two NBA Finals MVPs, appeared in 17 All-Star games (winning MVP of four of them), and won five championships.
This season has not seen anywhere close to that level of success, either for Bryant individually or for the Lakers as a unit. Until a recent stretch of solid play, Bryant was having inarguably the worst season of his career, and the Lakers' record sits at 5-24 as the team careens towards setting a new franchise low for wins for the third consecutive year.
All of these struggles have led many observers to wonder why the famously competitive Bryant seems so at peace with all of the Lakers' losing. Bryant explained his thought process after the Lakers' latest loss at the hands of the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night, and the answer was a doozy:
Kobe is smiling and laughing during games, even though the Lakers are losing. He explains why: pic.twitter.com/i6zCF0n7io
— Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) December 24, 2015
Kobe is right here. No one with reasonable expectations for the Lakers, who are a bad team, should have expected many more wins than the team is currently getting. The way he went about explaining that is pretty hilarious however, and it also can help us confirm that Kobe has never attempted to train a cat to bark (which apparently is possible, courtesy of Bill Oram of the O.C. Register):
Sorry, Kobe. https://t.co/AeAYUdqXKg
— Bill Oram (@billoram) December 24, 2015
So really the only conclusion we can draw from this is simple: if the guy in that video can teach a cat to bark, he has to be able to teach the Lakers to win some games. The team at the very least needs to bring him in as a consultant. What's the worst that could happen?