To set this up: I was browsing the ESPN app on my 360 and after passing by all of the "Greg Oden's out for the season" videos, I came across a video of a few ESPN personalities discussing whether or not Kobe's decision to do that Black Ops commercial was a good or bad decision and how it affects the league. Well, actually they pretty much all decided that it was a bad decision and it was bad for the league. I don't agree; I think it was fine. Here's the video:
To me, Kobe participating in this ad does nothing but sell games. It's not offensive to me, and I actually think it's a pretty great commercial. I'm glad the woman starts to come around a bit towards the end, while trying to explain that it's just a video game. This whole thing just comes across as a "FOX News" type story. Skip's biggest problem seems to be that he is connecting video games with real war, which seems to happen a lot in the media, mostly with people that don't actually play video games. He says at one point:
I just thought "What?!""Does Kobe Bryant really need this money, this badly? Doesn't he have a couple of daughters last time I checked?"
No he obviously doesn't need money. He probably did this commercial because he likes the game and wanted to support it, or Nike wanted some publicity since he's wearing the Nike shirt in the ad. Maybe it's a bit of both. Also, what was Skip's point with the daughters? Is he saying that Kobe's a bad role model for his daughters for being in a commercial for a video game? I just don't know. Come on, Skip.
I don't think that this will hurt the league or, really, anyone other than people like Skip that can't seem to realize that not everything has to be taken extremely seriously.
What do you guys think about this? Was Kobe's decision to participate in this commercial bad for the NBA, or even bad for the public in general? I think that most people here would probably see it the same way I do, but maybe I'm wrong.
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