Kobe Bryant: ‘I Don’t Take Charges’

During his pow-wow with the press yesterday, Kobe touched on a number of subjects, including his reluctance to take charges, and Bryant offered his thoughts on FlopGate 2012. Per the AP and ESPN: “Based on his own analysis of NBA greats from Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, Bryant believes there’s too much of a health risk to get run over by an opponent and go crashing to the floor repeatedly. ‘I learned from my predecessors, man,’ Bryant said. ‘Pippen had a (messed) up back taking charges. Bird had a (messed) up back taking charges. I said, `I’m not taking charges.’ I figured that (stuff) out at an early age.’ […] ‘I’ve seen them take charges and lay there with a messed-up back. I’ve seen Michael not take one … charge and he’s healthy his whole career, and the same thing with Magic,’ Bryant said. ‘I might not be the smartest guy in the room but I can figure that (stuff) out.’ […] ‘There’s a difference [between taking a charge and flopping]. We all know what flopping is when we see it,’ Bryant said. ‘The stuff that you see is where guys aren’t really getting hit at all and are just flailing around like a fish out of water. That’s kind of like, where are your balls at?’ Lakers coach Mike Brown said that it will be difficult for the league to enforce some sort of anti-flopping policy, however. ‘It is [a problem],’ Brown said. ‘I don’t know how you clean it up though because everything is a judgment call and when it happens, and it happens at the speed that it does, how do you clean that up? Because, it’s human error. You see somebody get hit, a lot of times you’re told to make a strong call. You’re told to be strong with your calls and so you’re going to hit that whistle real hard. You hit that whistle real hard and by then, it might be too late. It’s like, man, he might not have done that but it’s too late.’”