NBA All-Star fan voting, the annual fiasco that everyone loves to hate, opened Thursday and commissioner Adam Silver is already pushing for Kobe Bryant to play in the midseason showcase.
With The Black Mamba on his way out, it makes plenty of PR and business sense for the League to want him in Toronto next Febuary—Silver points to Bryant’s worldwide popularity, and the impact he’s had on the game over a brilliant 20-year run:
“I hope to see him there,” said Adam Silver on Sirius XM NBA Radio on Thursday. “I think he deserves to be there.”
“He’s going to retire as one of the NBA’s greatest players,” said Silver of Bryant. “We’ll see what the fans and the coaches decide, and then we’ll go from there.”
For those a little bent about Adam Silver's comment that Kobe Bryant deserves to be at All-Star game: good chance he's voted in by fans.
— Jeff Zillgitt (@JeffZillgitt) December 10, 2015
Kobe’s numbers—15.9 points, 3.9 assists, 3.2 assists and a career-low 30.9 percent shooting average from the field—are obviously not All-Star worthy, but you can almost be sure that he’ll make his 18th appearance at the NBA’s markee weekend in 2016.
