Retweet of the Day - February 25, 2013

As I have emphasized several times in the past, the Retweet of the Day is generally intended to take a clever, pithy tweet from a regular guy or girl in the Twittersphere and give that person his 15 minutes of fame for the creativity and entertainment. Every now and then the Retweet will go to someone in the public eye if what that person had to say was so profound or interesting that the content trumps the interest of recognizing a “regular guy”. Usually such a retweet is of a media member or a garden variety athlete.

Rarely is the Retweet of a superstar; it defeats the general intent of Retweet of the Day. However, Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant hit the bullseye with a barb fired at Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban via Twitter. I couldn’t justify anything else sports related from the Twittersphere receiving the recognition today.

Earlier in the week Cuban suggested during an interview that the Lakers could free up salary cap room and reduce their luxury tax exposure by applying the amnesty clause of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement to Bryant. For the 90% of you who probably don’t keep up on all things collective bargaining, this means the Lakers could waive Bryant, while Kobe still gets his money (another team would bid for Bryant’s services and the Lakers would pay the difference) , but the salary (expected to be approximately $30 million next season) would not count against the Lakers’ salary cap or luxury tax totals. In two words: “cut Kobe”.

Cuban later explained that the example was hypothetical. He said that when trying to explain the CBA, often an example is necessary to clarify the explanation. That is completely true. WHY would you choose the Black Mamba as your example leading into a nationally televised game against your team, Mr. Cuban? He’s a colorful character, but has the worst case of Foot-in-Mouth disease of any NBA owner.

How did the Mamba respond? Bryant put on a clinic, grabbing 12 rebounds, dishing out seven assists and scoring 38 points, including a perimeter jumper in the final minute to give the Lakers a two possession lead en route to a much needed win over the Mavs. Bryant (@kobebryant), who is new to Twitter, wrote two words that spoke volumes.  Those two words are today’s retweet.

"Amnesty THAT"

Do you really want Kobe to have something to prove when he plays you?

Image from http://sports.yahoo.com