Excerpts from Scoop Jackson's ESPN article:

Truth is Kobe Bryant will never win the MVP of the league. He is hated too much. Hated by those who cast votes. Hated too much by those he plays against.

A man averages 35.4 ppg, the eighth-highest average in the history of the league; he gives you 5.3 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.8 steals; he has 27 games of 40-plus points, has one month where he averages 43.4 ppg, scores 81 in one game and outscores an entire team in another (the 62-point game against Dallas where he sat out the fourth quarter); he is on the all-defensive first team (something not one of the other players in the MVP running is included on); and he leads a CBA-built team to the playoffs. The man has a season that no one is likely to see for another generation and he comes in fourth in the MVP voting that year.

That same man, the very next year, averages 31.6 points, 5.7 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.4 steals for the "fedora trick"; he has 10 games of 50-plus points, only the second person in NBA history to do so in a single season (including a four-in-a-row stretch that hadn't been seen in more than 20 years); he makes the all-defensive first team again; and this time he takes a YBA-built squad to the playoffs. In a season that many claim is more "complete" than the season before, the man this time comes in third in the MVP voting.

In sports, in the end, whether we want to acknowledge it honestly or not, athletes put their legacies in the hands of those who have the power to hate them. And in the past five years in professional sports, no athlete (with the exception of maybe Bonds or T.O.) has been more hated and hated on than Kobe Bryant.

Scoop is right . . . and it pleases me at some level.

Comment below and tell me what you guys think . . .