It's been a tumultuous season for Kobe Bryant and all of his defenders.
While the 36-year-old Los Angeles Lakers superstar recently passed Michael Jordan on the NBA's all-time scoring list and is averaging 24 points, many argue that Bryant has done so at the expense of his teammates. The Lakers are 9-22 and appear destined for another appearance in the NBA draft lottery.
The debate regarding Bryant's utility rages on during many of the Lakers' games, and as Los Angeles took on Chicago on Christmas Day a few Twitter users got especially passionate. The two men, whose Twitter handles are "@MyTweetsRealAF" and "@SnottieDrippen," engaged in an ugly back and forth regarding Bryant's true value. The language in the tweets is quite vile and not fit to be printed here, but if you're interested in reading the entire exchange, you can see it here.
The dispute culminated in "@MyTweetsRealAF" driving half an hour, to Temecula, Calif., in the hopes of meeting up with "@SnottieDrippen" for an in-person fight. Alas, "@SnottieDrippen" was nowhere to be found. He claims he was in Arizona the entire time.
The Twitter dispute earned lots of publicity and resulted in @MyTweetsRealAF recording a diss track.
After the Lakers' 116-107 loss Sunday to the Phoenix Suns, ESPNLA's Arash Markazi even showed the tweets to the Black Mamba himself:
Showed Kobe the Temecula tweets and he started laughing. Couldn't believe something like that would actually happen.
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) December 29, 2014
I asked Kobe about Temecula. He hadn't heard about it so I told him. "Mamba Army don't f--- around."
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) December 29, 2014
At this point, the future Hall of Famer is getting used to seeing his name defaced on the internet. And Bryant was probably glad to see that on this occasion he didn't have to provide the comeback.