The Los Angeles Dodgers pulled out all of the stops for his or her Shohei Ohtani pitch. That included bringing again Kobe Bryant from the lifeless.
According to a report from ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the late Lakers Corridor of Famer made a key video look throughout the Dodgers’ presentation to Ohtani, telling the Angels dual-threat star that “there’s no higher place on the earth to win than Los Angeles, and there’s no higher staff in baseball to win with than the Dodgers.”
Bryant recorded the video as a favor to the staff again in 2017, when the Dodgers have been making ready a recruitment plan for the then-Nippon Skilled Baseball switch.
“That was one of many highlights of the entire assembly,” Ohtani instructed ESPN via his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. “I used to be actually stunned to see it. It was a powerful and touching message.”
This isn’t, I don’t know, macabre to anybody else? Kobe Bryant has left a complicated legacy behind since his demise in a January 2020 helicopter crash. It appears the five-time NBA Champion is just remembered in flowery reminiscences and rose-tinted anecdotes: Loving father, clever mentor, the final word competitor; these are the one methods you possibly can describe Bryant. But we know that’s not the case.
This pitch simply took issues to a different stage. No matter humanity and identification Bryant had left posthumously has been stripped from him. He has simply turn into this simulacrum for Los Angeles sports activities tradition and advertising. If the Dodgers hadn’t already recorded this six years in the past, it feels just like the sort of video that will have been made with AI.
Hell, it was bizarre when Bryant recorded it in 2017. It’s all the time odd when athletes from different sports activities become involved within the star recruitment. The 12 months earlier than the Dodgers had Bryant report that video, Tom Brady got involved within the Boston Celtics’ recruitment of Kevin Durant. Brady’s involvement within the pitch is definitely what swayed Durant to ultimately be part of the Golden State Warriors. A shared metropolis doesn’t dictate tradition. Involving different gamers is simply an promoting tactic distracting from the team-specific particulars that basically matter.
Bryant’s video clearly wasn’t the one consider Ohtani’s determination to signal with the Dodgers. No different staff in baseball might provide him the record-setting $700 million contract. Los Angeles’ roster does provide Ohtani the most effective likelihood to win a hoop by advantage of pure expertise. Simply let Bryant relaxation.