ManBalm: How Pop Stars Affect Kobe Bryant’s Scoring
How’s it goin’, lippers of the gloss? I’m Matt Sussman, sports editor of BC Magazine and proprietor of the sports blog The Futon Report. After responding to an adult personal in Maxim Dawn’s e-mail, I’m now the curator of a not-necessarily-weekly feature on GlossLip known as ManBalm.
What’s ManBalm? It’s the time in all our lives where sports and celebrity collide, leaving a magical, translucent substance between our chin and nose. It’s entirely natural, so don’t be nervous. Trust me: the word “ManBalm” sounds rather disgusting at first, but with time I’m fairly confident it will deviate from gross-sounding to merely disappointing. Much like a date with me.
Nobody’s quite sure if we’ll evolve from athletes’ encounters with non-athletic train wreck celebrities to simply making up goofy shit about ballplayers (”Brett Favre once ate an entire feral pig!”). It depends on how the mood strikes us. For ManBalm’s maiden voyage, we’re just gonna play it safe with athletes and celebrities by tabbing one from each column — ones with whom their fans are on a first name basis, but probably not vice versa — Britney and Kobe.
Part of Britney Spears’ integration back into the world of celibacy — pardon me, that should be “celebrity” — is to do what many a Los Angelian do: attend Lakers games. The Staples Center has been a staple of Jack Nicholson’s routine for some time now, and how many of you dare make fun of Jack? (Besides the eight of you that saw Mars Attacks?)
So she’s giving it a whirl. Last week she and a couple friends watched the Lakers lose to the Houston Rockets on March 31. The mere fact that she was seen in public isn’t news. What is news, however, is the effect her presence had on Kobe Bryant’s game that night:
• Bryant shot the ball 44 times. The rest of his team? 44.
• Bryant finished with 53 points. The rest of his team? 51.
• And, as I said, the Lakers lost.
She then went on to attend the April 1 game against the Sacremento Kings, this time wearing the official Bryant jersey. This time the Lakers won 126-103, but at what price? Bryant only scored 19 points.
More mysterious coincidences:
• Kobe Bryant’s jersey number (which he changed this year) is 24, which is oddly enough how much time each day, in hours, Britney Spears doesn’t spend on yard work.
• Spears is a female, and Kobe Bryant, a male, is married to a female, who he cheated on with a different female.
• Spears kept asking her friends how Lakers forward Luke Walton is in well enough shape to be in this game, when that show was “like, 25 years ago.” This isn’t really a coincidence, nor does it apply to Kobe, and to boot I just made it up. But this joke fit nowhere else in this post, and I refuse to cut punch lines that only I find funny.
At this point in history I cannot come up with any certifiable conclusions about Kobe Bryant based on Britney Spears attending Lakers games. I will need more evidence than I currently have, which is zero.
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Finally something funny and interesting on this site! Nice job Matt!
Comment by dmdo1016 — April 9, 2007 @ 11:43 pm
I’m going to support your theory because
A) I dont know anything about basketball
B) This is less terrible than Britney’s real life.
Comment by Amrita — April 10, 2007 @ 2:26 am
Sussman, you so crazy.
Comment by Josh — April 10, 2007 @ 7:47 am
[...] first one is up, and how original! Britney Spears and Kobe Bryant. I really went out on a limb with two virtual [...]
Pingback by Doing My Part To Revive The Dying Art Of Unsubstantiated Rumors -- The Futon Report — April 10, 2007 @ 11:25 am
[...] than Brit Brit - Daily Stab Tom Cruise’s Scientology detox plan coming soon - Celebitchy Something interesting sounding about Kobe Bryant and lip gloss - Glosslip Check out a clip from Bravo’s “Workout.” I remember I watched the [...]
Pingback by poponthepop.com — April 11, 2007 @ 4:49 pm
You forgot to mention that they both have the same haircuts. Pretty weird…..
Comment by D-Bomb — April 14, 2007 @ 5:17 pm