Happy Mother's Day from Kobe

I found it ironic that, while the rest of the country was celebrating Mother’s Day by taking mom out to eat, Kobe Bryant was serving papers to his mother.  At issue was her receiving a $450 k advance to auction off mementoes from his high school basketball days.

Now don’t get me wrong.  As someone whose mother gave away his dog while he was doing reserve duty with the Great Lakes fleet, I know mothers can be cruel.  Even saintly Mary, my wife of many years, had to be stopped from throwing away Sean’s baseball cards.  She did get rid of most of his Matchbox cars before I could stop her.

Kobe claimed that he never gave his mother permission to sell the items; just that he tacitly gave her possession of them after he left the house to join the NBA Lakers sixteen years ago.  Of course the value of $450 k in Kobe’s mind might be relative.  While we’ll never know the cost of settling the civil suit with the Colorado girl, we do know that the kiss-and-make-up ring he gave Vanessa likely cost at least that much.  I believe I saw somewhere that Kobe’s current salary is $38 million and I read that in 2010 his endorsements were $48 million, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he let his mother keep the advance when he negotiated with the auction house to relinquish their rights.

While I looked at the matter as one of property rights, Mary had a different take on things.  As the mother of two grown boys both of whom live within a mile of our home, she wonders why we still call their bedrooms “Sean’s room” and “Tim’s room”?  And why do we still have so many of their possessions?  Tim’s is a little more understandable because, not only is the principle object in the middle of the room his tennis racket stringer, but this week he will be sleeping in that bed as we have to take him to St. Edward at 3:00 A.M. to catch the bus to LAX and start his annual Eighth-grade trip to the East.  Tim has taught at St. Edward for ten years and was there when Kobe’s daughter, Natalia was in Kindergarten.  Coincidently, Kobe and Vanessa were married at St. Edward and, their children probably would have continued there had the Bryant’s not moved to the Newport Coast.

Mary hypothesized that Pamela had probably reminded her son that his high school jerseys and such were still in the home sixteen years after he left.  Kobe perhaps had even  told her that he would pick them up “when he got around to it”.  What mother would not have drawn a line in the sand?  Especially when her son has his own, very large house.

So, if Mary is right and all it took to get those things out from under her roof was to put them up for sale, I think Sean and Tim had better start monitoring e-Bay for activity from their mother.

In my next post I will bring you a little information about tele-medicine and tele-dentistry.  I just returned from a meeting where that topic was relative and I find the subject intriguing.  Please plan to stop on by.