Welcome to the Ringer NBA show. I'm Chris Vernon joining me. He does every Tuesday from the Ringer.com is Kevin O'Connor aka Kevin O'Connor.

A.K.A. Kevin O'Connor aka Kevin O'Bomber. Two new ones aka via Instagram Kevin O'Conn test and aka via bills dad Kevin O'Connor former

Patriots 3rds for in quarter back. Chris, I don't know about you, but I'm still basking in the greatness of last night's games.

That was unbelievable. What a night. It was an unbelievable night. The biggest event of the evening was for sure coverage wise.

The Kobe Bryant night that they had in Los Angeles. How about the stars that were out there? I mean, Kareem Bill Russell.

Iversons out there holding up his phone. I mean, there was there was celebrities. There was Hall of Fame basketball players. It was quite the night in Los Angeles.

And well, first things first, what do you think about the retiring of two numbers? I've never seen that before.

I think both numbers should be retired. I just wish there was a way where both spots wouldn't have to be taken up.

You know, up for all the jerseys are that's all I'm very happy both were retired because both should be retired.

It would be weird if a player ever wore eight or 24 again for the Lakers.

So you think maybe that what they should have done is like put one banner up and then have eight slash 24.

I don't know, but then that might look really tacky. Right? If you do that. So what the point is it's like it was the right decision or retire both.

I'm happy they did that. All right. Last night, obviously he does the speech, which got a lot of good feedback. I think.

And then it gets weird because even if people dislike Kobe Bryant over his time in the NBA, it is one of those things where now when he's having that moment, there's a level of respect that comes from everybody. Right?

Like it's like he was a fun guy to hate. There's no doubt about that. And I do think that in this day and age, it has been lost a little bit, right?

He always felt like he didn't mind being the villain, right? He didn't mind being the bad guy. He knew that he was on one hand, extremely popular on another hand, extremely unpopular.

And I do think that there's a bit of a drought of that. I think it's almost like when I'm watching them last night, and I'm thinking about it, it's like there's not a ton of guys that are intensely unlikable at this point.

And people found reasons not to like Kobe Bryant, whether it was the scowl, whether it was, you know, the way carried himself, whether it was him and shack having the falling out.

Some people don't like the way played and then obviously the indiscretions off the court that took place in Denver, that one hung on his head that for a long time. And so there are a myriad of reasons that people could find not to like Kobe. And I do think there's a bit of a drought of that throughout the NBA right now. Generally, most of the players that are extremely high profile players are rather likable. And so it's almost like I don't want to say he was the last one. He was like this Uber competitor and all this.

But you look around and like it's like, I don't know, like the especially the young ones, the honest and porzingis and all these guys that are all like super likable. And even with LeBron. And I get people, you know, didn't like him during the Miami thing, but then he went back to Cleveland.

And he once so that was a kind of redeeming thing. And the other thing is like the second you start really hating LeBron, like you see some story about him, like building a hundred schools or something.

Like, really not a bad guy, right? Like, I mean, if you hate him as a basketball player, that's five. He's clearly not like some kind of jerk or some kind of bad guy, whereas Kobe would could many times give off that vibe and not care. Like he didn't care if you thought he was a jerk. All he cared about was winning.

...