Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

I really never thought it would come to this. It seems surreal. Despite all the writing on the wall, I still held an innate hope, I guess. My head could see it coming, but my heart would never believe it. Now it appears almost imminent and there is a sadness hanging just off in the horizon like an ominous, mysterious fog threatening to envelope the town.

Kobe is going to be traded.

I've been through a couple of difficult breakups in my time and while I won't be so melodramatic as to directly compare the weight of those situations to what ultimately amounts to a cheap soap opera with insanely rich players, I do feel like there are similar types of emotions at stake here. Reflecting back to the days when Lakers' championship parades through Los Angeles seemed as regular as traffic jams and wildfires, when the preeminent images of Lakerdom were Shaq whooping up the court after alley-ooping the Trailblazers or Kobe leaping into The Diesel's arms as confetti rained down around them, it's difficult to comprehend that we've come this far. Today we somehow find ourselves a franchise and a fandom exhausted after our first game of the season. We're dazed and unsure of who we are anymore or where we're going. We look for something to lean on, but find ourselves standing in a house built of ashes where the slightest touch to a single wall could bring the entire structure collapsing on top of us. This course we're on, to trade the legend of Kobe Bryant for a new collection of neophytes, seems now to be inevitable. Inescapable, yet still senseless and disorienting. Like a breakup, blame can be easily thrown about at the moment of separation with much of it being valid, but the true, meaningful understanding of just what exactly went wrong and how each person involved is responsible will only come with the crawl of time and the settlement of maturation.

In this early stage, emotions are powerful, raw, and vague. Tonight I feel angry. Is it because I as a fan have vigorously defended Kobe all these years only to be selfishly abandoned? Is it because the Laker organization stood loyally next to Kobe through criminal charges of rape only to be labeled liars and incompetents? Or is it that in Kobe's threats to veto any trade including Luol Deng for sake of leaving Chicago with an opportune wingman, he is subsequently ensuring that our Lakers will be left in as bad of shape on the court as we are now off it. Perhaps it's all or none of the above. As of now, the only thing we can count on is uncertainty and inconsistency. Tonight's bitterness may preclude tomorrow's peace of mind. Tomorrow's excitement for a new and better life may only give way to a crippling obsession with our past and a fossilized sense of identity.

As long as our hearts' fate is held in the balance by this volatile mix of pride, pain, and this facade of "business," we just can't know.