It's definitely a rough read/listen in light of Kobe's passing.

I'm at a part where he's discussing the Chris Childs incident, and so far, Pearlman doesn't even try to look at anything from Kobe's perspective with anything resembling sincerity.

There are a handful of quotes about how impressed people were with his work ethic, but that's about it. There's a Kobe quote here and there about Shaq's free throws or general lazyness, but it's heavily slanted toward siding with everyone's gripes with Kobe.

I.e, Pearlman, like countless others, tells the oft-told stores of Kobe's isolation from a standpoint of him simply being arrogant. He'll point out that he was still a kid on a team full of grown men, but still lean heavily into the arrogance narrative as the reason for him keeping to himself.

Stories about Kobe living in his headphones are emphasized as him walling off everyone else.... but in other passages, he writes about how the entire bus would have their headphones on.

Another examples of this is the way he paints Kobe's lack of small talk as yet another character flaw.

As someone who goes to work and largely keeps to myself for multiple reasons, among them the fact that I really don't have anything in common with most of my coworkers, I think it's incredibly narrow to make the leap to arrogance for this behavior.

There's enough credible and obvious "Kobe's an asshole" moments that he doesn't need to add the extra sauce on shit like this. The way he describes Kobe's treatment of Jimmy King is downright abusive.

To be fair, the book is about the craziness of this team, and despite what I see as a standout divide in the overall narrative between Kobe in the rest of the team, pretty much everyone gets portrayed in a negative light- but he definitely spends a disproportionate amount of time highlighting people's issues with Kobe, Shaq in particular, while the moments where he'll touch on Kobe's perspective are treated as an aside.

What irks me is that the only people he portrays in a positive light seem to be coaches. He COMPLETELY glosses over the incident where Del Harris pushes Nick Van Exel, like that's not an egregious line crossing, despite elaborating a great deal about Shaq bitch slapping Ostertag. He gushes about what a genuis Del Harris is, how nice he is, how much he just wanted Nick to like him. So far I don't think anyone else gets that sort of superlative treatment.

Of course, when Shaq smacked the soul out of Ostertag so badly he was, allegedly, on the ground in a fetal position, he makes sure to tell us how Jerry West reacted by getting in Shaq's face, calling him an embarrassment, and threatened to trade him if it ever happened again.

But we get exactly zero idea of how West reacted to Del putting his hands on a player and telling him he'd beat his ass.

Maybe I'm reading into it, but he seems to relish pointing out the missteps of players, while shrugging off those of the coaches.

Certain other shit rubs me the wrong way. He portrays the 99 lockout as "millionaires arguing with billionaires over money neither of them deserve", which is a moronic comment I expect from average, rat racing Joe's, but it was a little jarring to see here.

I lost count of how many times he refers to Rodman as crazy, or caling him a freak. He could have told all of the Rodman stories, detailing his eccentricities and general instability, without taking that extra step. It's not like the market for this book is unfamiliar with Dennis Rodman. We'd have gotten the point just by telling the stories.

He talks about Phil's "The sheep hears his masters voice" comment to Horry.... but, as with Dell, he sort of brushes it off. He says this didn't sit well with the African American players, but that Phil was speaking from a biblical context (doesn't make it any better, or less tonedeaf IMO), and that Phil was embarassed.

Conversely, he really amps up Horry's missteps in Phoenix, royally trashing his character before explaining that he was dealing with his daughter's illness.

Conversely? Ainge got zero scrutiny for the towel incident, and we even got a quote from Ainge saying it wasn't his fault in the slightest.

I love the book because it's about my personal golden age of the game, favorite team, and favorite players, during an era where I was highly engaged with the team and the league, but there are elements of Pearlman's angles that make me question his character.