The inimitable biographer and now gossip sleuth Ian Halperin at Ianundercover.com, points to a video showing rapper Nelly (one of my favorites) talking shoes and some smack Why? Well, apparently growing up in the hood of St. Louis, you were what you wore, and for poor Nelly, what his family could afford was lacking in “style.”

Apparently, so are the shoes NBA great Kobe Bryant created. Watch the above video to hear the hurtful words hurled at Bryant’s not-so-fly footwear, Hyperdunks. Sort of sounds like meth-donuts if you ask me.

On a side note, before the 2008 Olympic U.S. Basketball team brought prestige and glory back to the infamously poor-spirited franchise of previous Olympic teams, I kind of though Kobe was a tool. What, with the whole Shaquille O’Neal in-fighting, the rape/adultery charge and just a general sense of over-inflated self, there wasn’t much to like about Kobe. That said, I think he has matured quite a bit, and has greatly improved his image — as well as — his wife’s jewelry collection.

Just sayin’ is all.

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.