Uh oh.
It has just been reported that Kobe Bryant of your Los Angeles Lakers has verbally agreed to play for Italian basketball team Virtus Bologna. And the source isn’t something like mediatakeout; it’s a report from the Los Angeles Times.
The owner of Virtus Bologna told a basketball news site that a “deal is done at 95%”. Kobe has said many times this summer that playing overseas in Italy - where he grew up for much of his childhood - is “very possible” and has maintained that he was thinking about it.
But 95% is not a confirmation. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reported through his twitter that no deal is imminent. To add to that, today, the NBA Player’s Association and the league are holding the biggest meeting of this lockout. It is do or die time for the NBA, if a deal is not agreed upon this weekend, then we are guaranteed to miss a portion of this upcoming NBA season. Every single NBA fan is praying right now that an agreement can be made today and that we can go about enjoying the 2011-2012 NBA season right around the time we go trick or treating.
What we do know for sure is that Kobe will not be missing any NBA games that will actually be played. It would be foolish for him to agree 100% to a contract in Italy right before the biggest CBA meeting so far. Perhaps he won’t be playing in Italy after all, since we’ll be hearing news today that the NBA is back.
Or perhaps he knows something we don’t, that the NBA will indeed miss some games, and he’ll get to play a few games in his home away from home in Italy.
I’m hoping for the former.
