The Los Angeles Dodgers pulled out all of the stops for his or her Shohei Ohtani pitch. That included bringing again Kobe Bryant from the lifeless.
According to a report from ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the late Lakers Corridor of Famer made a key video look throughout the Dodgers’ presentation to Ohtani, telling the Angels dual-threat star that “there’s no better place in the world to win than Los Angeles, and there’s no better team in baseball to win with than the Dodgers.”
Bryant recorded the video as a favor to the group again in 2017, when the Dodgers have been making ready a recruitment plan for the then-Nippon Skilled Baseball switch.
“That was one of the highlights of the whole meeting,” Ohtani advised ESPN via his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. “I was really surprised to see it. It was a strong and touching message.”
This isn’t, I don’t know, macabre to anybody else? Kobe Bryant has left a complicated legacy behind since his dying in a January 2020 helicopter crash. It appears the five-time NBA Champion is just remembered in flowery recollections and rose-tinted anecdotes: Loving father, clever mentor, the last word competitor; these are the one methods you’ll be able to describe Bryant. But we know that’s not the case.
This pitch simply took issues to a different stage. No matter humanity and identification Bryant had left posthumously has been stripped from him. He has simply change into this simulacrum for Los Angeles sports activities tradition and advertising. If the Dodgers hadn’t already recorded this six years in the past, it feels just like the sort of video that may have been made with AI.
Hell, it was bizarre when Bryant recorded it in 2017. It’s all the time odd when athletes from different sports activities become involved within the star recruitment. The yr earlier than the Dodgers had Bryant file that video, Tom Brady got involved within the Boston Celtics’ recruitment of Kevin Durant. Brady’s involvement within the pitch is definitely what swayed Durant to finally be part of the Golden State Warriors. A shared metropolis doesn’t dictate tradition. Involving different gamers is simply an promoting tactic distracting from the team-specific particulars that basically matter.
Bryant’s video clearly wasn’t the one consider Ohtani’s choice to signal with the Dodgers. No different group in baseball may supply him the record-setting $700 million contract. Los Angeles’ roster does supply Ohtani the very best likelihood to win a hoop by advantage of pure expertise. Simply let Bryant relaxation.
