Kobe Bryant Wants Metta World Peace to Become an Enforcer and ‘Psycopath’ Again


The Los Angeles Lakers are reeling, and desperately searching for answers. According to Kobe Bryant, one thing that could help jumpstart the team is a much more aggressive Metta World Peace. Kobe encourages MWP to re-discover his inner psychopath. Per Yahoo! Sports: “On his way out of the Lakers’ fourth straight loss, on the way out of the kind of beat-down he had forever thrust onto the New York Knicks in the past, Bryant started to speak about champions. His conversation on Wednesday with Magic Johnson was still on his mind, and a parallel that Johnson had raised stayed with Bryant. In the Lakers’ moment of crisis, Bryant summoned the toughness and leadership and serious-mindedness of those who had raised banners with him. In his own way, he’s challenging Dwight Howard. Steve Nash. Even Mike D’Antoni. ‘A lot of responsibility is going to fall on me and Pau [Gasol], but we need Metta [World Peace],’ Bryant said. ‘Metta has a big presence on this team. I really encourage him to take that role head on – and to be an enforcer with it. But Metta, he’s done it before. We’ve won before together.’ Bryant stopped in the hallway on the way out of a 116-107 loss to the Knicks, his eyes widening and his voice – scratchy, tired from a night, from a season, of screaming – became a little louder, a little surer when he said again, ‘It has to be the guys who have done it before.’ He let that hang there for a moment – who have done it before – and finally smirked and said, ‘Metta’s just as intense as I am, and he’s got a lot of that psychopath attitude that I do. That’s something Magic and me talked about, about how [Michael] Cooper and him did that a lot, how they played off each other.'”