Kobe Bryant’s ‘Mamba Army’ Fans Were as Relentless as He Was

All of this meant that as Bryant’s career progressed, published opinions weren’t limited to cranky newspaper columnists. Instead, fans got louder. And louder. Suddenly, there were N.B.A. message boards and Reddit posts where fans could have at it. Twitter amplified those discussions and democratized the assessment of player legacies. It wasn’t just up to shows like ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” and “Pardon The Interruption.”

“We had to spend so much time defending him,” said Anthony Irwin, who hosts a podcast called “Locked On Lakers.” (Until recently, Faigen was his co-host.)

“It became such a habit,” Irwin said. “You saw it even after his career. Any time some player did something incredible on the basketball court, there was always somebody out there who referenced it back to, ‘Wait, is Russell Westbrook better than Kobe now?’”

Bryant deftly used the digital age to enhance his own brand, targeting international audiences and rapidly expanding his fan base. Part of the reason Bryant devotees seemed to loom large in discussions is that there were so many of them all over the world, especially in China. But that relationship with his enthusiasts was compromised after he was charged with raping a 19-year-old woman in 2003. The case was dropped before it went to trial, and a separate lawsuit the woman filed was settled out of court. Even then, many of Bryant’s fans stuck by him.

“For better or for worse, you get an ‘us against the world’ mentality,” Irwin said. He added: “Over the course of Kobe’s career, especially the latter half, if you brought it up, it was, ‘Well, he didn’t actually get convicted of a crime.’ That was the starting point of that conversation. It got kind of gross.”

For his aficionados, Irwin said, what Bryant “did on the court now carried over to off the court. I’m not saying Lakers fans or Kobe fans handled that well, but where it came from was just, ‘He’s our guy.’”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/sports/basketball/kobe-bryant-fans.html?emc=rss&partner=rss