Okay. I find it completely unfair that the world is blaming Kobe for Shaquille's departure. Let's think about this....Shaquille, in the very first exhibition game this past season, yells at Jerry Buss demanding more mone given that he was: 1) Overweight....again!, 2)Out of shape. . . again!, 3)In the first year of his extension as it was, and 4)the highest paid player in the league. Enough to satisfy Shaquille? Nope!!! But Kobe forced him out?!?!? Through all of this, has the media reported any Kobe pay demands? Not that I've seen. Even as he tested the free agent market, you never heard of teams not being able to afford Kobe. But Shaquille couldn't be happy be the highest paid player in the league...a mantra he won't deserve when his current contract is up.

Now I have intentionally not spoken of the Phil Jackson situation because honestly I haven't seen the media harp on this as much. At least nothing more than mentioning that Kobe wasn't a fan of the triangle offense which he wasn't but so weren't players! And let's face it, Phil was out coached in the finals, his theory of not calling timeouts to stem runs by the opponent didn't work in this scenario and he didn't do the X's and O's adjustments necessary for the Lakers to win (and yes I still stand by my statements concerning the one-sided officiating earlier, but Phil's approach didn't help matters).

All in all, the Kobe dismantled the Lakers theory is a media created soap opera. Kobe has made no public statements until he announced which team he was playing for yesterday. The Media created a story, and ran with it. Strangely enough, the 'story' that the media has been running for the past weeks about Kobe's evil plan to take over the Lakers is actually an editorial; an editorial is supposed to be an opinion since it's basically based on what one reporter thinks; yet, this editorial has been repeated over and over again by reporters from the smallest, most unconnected news sources to ESPN.com as if there opinions were based on factual conversations held between Kobe and Buss and Kupckak. And still, there is no documentation that Kobe had a thing to do with this 'breakup'. The media, as it often does, has decided to steer the public's perception because it makes for a good story. It's really as simple as that....unfortunately, the public has shown once again they would much rather be told what's going on than to think about it and opine on their own. Groupthink is a terrible fashion to wear........