These basketball loving Italians really want Kobe to play some hoops over there bad. As if the reports yesterday of their offering $2M to Bryant for one exhibition game wasn’t groveling enough, now the owner of Virtus Bologna is writing letters to President Barack Obama thinking that will in some way help him get Kobe over to Italy for a few days.
He’s not emailing Obama either, nor is he texting, Blackberry messaging, or hitting the President with tweets. The method of communication Claudio Sabatini is going with is the same one Thomas Jefferson relied on while he had his feet up on the same desk Obama does now.
This from the website Sportando.net:
“Claudio Sabatini said via La Gazzetta dello Sport that the conference call with Kobe Bryant’s management scheduled for last night failed. The owner of Virtus Bologna also added that he wrote a letter to the White House and US President Barack Obama, who hoped yesterday that the NBA lockout would end soon.
‘I wanted to make clear to the White House that I don’t want to steal the best NBA player putting the league into the shadows. My intention is to give the opportunity to the city of Bologna and to the Italian basketball movement to have Kobe for few days’ said Sabatini.”
I respect the effort of any “basketball movement”, but I really don’t get what Sabatini thinks will happen if Kobe plays in Italy for a “few days”. There’s no doubt that Claudio knows more about the Italian basketball scene then me to be sure though, so I’ll freely admit that he may know something I don’t know. Maybe Kobe would do for Italy and basketball what Beckham did for soccer in the United States. Err, I don’t know, there’s gotta be a better example than that out there I just can’t think of it right now.
Anyways, very honorable of Sabatini to be up-front with the President of the United States on this matter. That would really blow if Kobe left the NBA in the shadows for a few days, and it’s good to hear that’s not Virtus Bologna’s intention.
—
Photo: NJ.com
