By: Jacob Christner
You all know Temu. The ads were all over the Super Bowl last year. It’s pretty much Chinese Amazon, and it offers heavily discounted items direct from China.
Temu is also a running joke. Merchants use it as a clearing house to get rid of their low quality crap. They also are known to have undelivered packages, false advertisements, and horrible customer service. In other words, when you see Spencer Rattler or Trey Lance in any meme, it usually involves something along the lines of “Patrick Mahomes from Temu”, or at least something that involves playing Patrick Mahomes in a Lifetime movie about Andy Reid.
So this is where we get to LeBron and Kobe.
This doesn’t have to be explained, but I will anyway. This is not a basketball comparison. My opinions of LeBron do not take away from the fact that he is one of the greatest players of all time, and fans will be debating Kobe vs LeBron on the court till the end of time, and the debate will roll on forever.
No, the Temu comparison is off the court.
We know Kobe’s on court accomplishments…now I’ll bring up the off court accomplishments.
Spoke English, Italian, and Spanish fluently, even doing a lot of his interviews in Italian.
Multiple time recording artist, both in a group and single.
Opened up a production company and won an Oscar for the animated short Dear Basketball. Also wrote and produced Detail.
Founding donor of the National Museum of African American History and Culture
200 Make A Wishes granted
And on and on and on.
Kobe and his daughter Gigi were killed in a helicopter crash on January 26, 2020. Some say that time froze at that moment, and they probably weren’t wrong. Two months later, COVID came, and for the better part of two years, the world locked down. That’s another really large story for another day.
None of this was supposed to happen. The potential Kobe had from a hypothetical long life and an eventual death of natural causes was astounding. As I mentioned, he spoke three languages fluently, so he could have been an ambassador. He already had an Oscar, so his production credits would have gone up. Gigi would eventually join the WNBA, and she’d be joining the starpower of Caitlin, Angel, Juju, and the next stars, with Dad’s face promoting the league. The possibilities were endless.
Now we have LeBron. It’s not the same.
Truthfully, it doesn’t have to be this way. He is one of the greatest ever, and he has a very very astute business mind. Warren Buffett met him at 19 and was impressed with his business acumen. You can’t get a better reference than that.
But there’s a lot of phony to LeBron James. He has photo ops of reading, and he’s always on page one or two. He plays tough guy and runs away when there’s a real situation. During the summer of 2020, he had a Malcolm X suit made, complete with shorts, and then put it away when it wasn’t a story anymore.
Most of all, he created the I Promise school, then essentially left it for dead. Not one thing wrong with the idea…more kids need that kind of help in this world. Problem is that it was supposed to eventually add a grade level every year, but it stopped at eighth, and doesn’t start till third through a lottery system. 8th graders test at bottom five in Math, two percent of sixth graders are proficient in reading. Keep digging and it gets worse. All this after a strong start before COVID.
Does anyone think Kobe lets this happen to his creations? Especially a school?
Kobe was involved. He was a natural teacher(watch Detail on YouTube to see that), a real scholar(Google his book collection…exceptional diversity of thought), worldly(languages, foods, and different interests), and in the least important part of his being, he could be a tough guy also(Matt Barnes no flinch and standing up to Shaq said it all).
Kobe’s death left a devastating void. The example for a new generation should be shooting two free throws when the Achilles is shredded…finishing what you started no matter what. Instead, we see three hundred pound linemen, and huge basketball players flop and act like victims to get a cheap call. That’s one of so many examples.
LeBron is frustratingly phony considering his skills and accomplishments.
Kobe was real.
The end.
