Kobe Bryant must have the planet’s BEST pr people on his payroll, because merely four days have passed since his infamous on camera slip-up using a gay slur during the Lakers vs. Spurs game this past Friday night, and already the NBA star is spinning this highly negative situation into a real positive.
In a surprising move, Kobe, his Lakers organization, and a few NBA executives have agreed to sit down and work with gay media watchdog group GLAAD to help fight homophobia in basketball.
“What happened in Tuesday night’s game is not representative of what the Lakers stand for,” said Lakers spokesman John Black. “We want to reaffirm our commitment to all our fans and our appreciation for the support we receive from all segments of society. We also understand the importance of positive messages in helping us convey this. We appreciate the input we’ve received from GLAAD the past two days and will look forward to working with them on ways to help educate ourselves and our fans, and to help keep language like this out of our game.”
For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past few days, during Tuesday night’s match-up against the league leading San Antonio Spurs, Bryant was seen on camera calling a referee a “f**king f**got” after the ref penalized him with a technical foul. As a result, Kobe was fined a whopping $100,000 by the NBA.
Gotta give the bean-head his props though, Kobe not only apologized for his outburst, but he said in an interview with ESPN radio that he was also hoping to meet with gay groups to turn his mistake “into a positive and raise as much awareness as we can to say that it is not OK to…insult and disrespect.”
