Kobe Bryant Is the Hero America Needs

Kobe Bryant, currently sporting the highest usage percentage in NBA history, is also the league's highest paid player. In fact, many blame Bryant's salary and ornery disposition on the Lakers' inability to draw top notch free agents. Despite suffering multiple knee and achilles injuries, Bryant is owed $48.5 million over the next two years, a crippling percentage of the salary cap. While Bryant is a historically great player, his salary restricts Los Angeles' ability to maneuver and build a competitive team around him.

In contrast, aging stars Dirk Nowitzki and Tim Duncan have both accepted less than their market value from their teams in order to free up salary cap space for other players. Bryant flatly refuses to do so. But while the selflessness of Nowitzki and Duncan has facilitated signings like Chandler Parsons and Boris Diaw, it also plays right into the hands of the NBA's owners. If they can get the public to view players who give up money as heroes, then they can easily crucify those who don't. After all, the only reason for these discounted contracts is the fact that the NBA has a salary cap.

Quoth Kobe: "I think it's a big coup for the owners to put players in situations where public perception puts pressure on them to take less money. Because if you don't, then you get criticized for it."

The owners were able to win the 2011 lockout and railroad the players into taking a shitty deal because they won the PR war. To an American public skeptical of labor, millionaire players fighting for more money are not exactly sympathetic. Owners, meanwhile, are cast as benevolent, paternal figures being shaken down by their ungrateful employees—but in reality, owning an NBA team has never been a more lucrative racket. There's a reason Steve Ballmer wrote a $2 billion check for the Clippers of all franchises.

The way players can reclaim their image is by reminding everybody that they are the sole creators of value in the NBA, and emphasizing just how filthy rich they are making team owners. Old Man Kobe sees this and is the perfect flagbearer for the movement. His status as a legend and champion is assured, and he has little to lose by calling out capitalist hypocrisy (even if he mainly wants to serve his own capitalistic ends). Sure, Bryant makes an ostentatious salary, but the family that pays that salary makes five times as much every year from the Lakers' local TV deal alone.

Players are "encouraged" per new CBA to take less to win or risk being called selfish+ungrateful while nbatv deal goes UP by a BILLION #biz

— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) October 7, 2014

In an NBA headed toward a potential labor war in 2017, the players' side is sharpening their knives right now. New NBPA executive director Michele Roberts is already establishing aggressive positions on issues like the age minimum and max contracts. Last time around, the NBPA was toothless and players were not as united as the owners. As a result, they gave up $3 billion in basketball related income.

If the players want to leave the table with a fair deal in three years time, stars like LeBron James and Bryant have to continue to flex their muscles and leverage their popularity. They need to invert 2011's narrative of rich players asking for more money, and remind people that it's actually the players who generate money for the owners. Sports fans don't typically think of owners at all, but when they do, it should be as the greedy billionaires they generally are.

So, good on Bryant for taking the Buss family for all they'd give him. It's not his job to sell himself short. If Lakers ownership didn't believe Bryant's production warranted $24 million per year, they shouldn't have offered him that kind of contract. Maybe he isn't overpaid—maybe the rest of the league is underpaid, and Bryant's salary makes him a perfect hero for the upcoming labor struggle.

For what it's worth, Nowitzki's Mavericks waxed the Lakers 140-106 on Friday. Bryant went 6-22, Nowitzki scored 23 on 10 shots. The Mavericks could go deep into the playoffs while the Lakers could easily have a franchise-worst season. But Bryant is being paid nearly as much as he could be. If you are going to moralize about how a player should be prioritizing competitive ambitions over his paycheck, then you should realize that a system in which players have to choose between the two is a broken system. Bryant is in an ideal position to use his stature to advocate for every NBA player, and protect their rights to a fair slice of revenue. Most important of all, Bryant doesn't care what anyone thinks about his paycheck.