Former Los Angeles Lakers head coach Pat Riley may be running the show for the Miami Heat these days, but his ties to the Los Angeles franchise still run deep. Riley was recently spotted by TMZ Sports and asked about ESPN being hard on Kobe Bryant recently.
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Riley immediately responded saying the following:
“Kobe is going to be hard on them before the year is over.”
It seems Riley feels confident Kobe will quiet his critics this year as he attempts to bounce back after consecutive season-ending injuries.
ESPN recently ranked Kobe as the 40th best player in the league heading into the 2014-15 NBA season, which created a lot of debate about whether it was too high or too low to rank the five-time NBA champion.
Shortly after Kobe’s ranking surfaced, ESPN’s Henry Abbott wrote a highly controversial article about the superstar guard that sparked even more debate. Abbott quotes a lot of unnamed sources claiming a number of different things about the face of the franchise and how he’s made it tough for the team to rebuild over the years.
[divide]Lakers’ Kobe Bryant Comments On ESPN Article