Following the Laker’s loss to the Nuggets last night, I watched Spike Lee’s documentary Kobe Doin Work for the first time.

Perhaps I was feeling slightly guilty for hating Kobe Bryant so much while others seemed to like him, and was looking for any level on which to lend him sympathy.

Spike Lee, with an obvious and announced bias towards hero-worship and idolizing Kobe, put 36 cameras on him and got us a HD widescreen 90 minute commercial free front seat to following Kobe’s every move in what turns out to be an epic game against the Spurs last year. The context and pre-interviews give way to Kobe’s warm-up and game play. We watch every second of game time and having never been much of a basketball guy, I felt converted if just for a little while. It gave me so much insight into how the game is played (insight I could’ve used for my rare moments on the asphalt and wood - what should I be doing?) and I learned a great deal just by paying attention to a true scholar of the game.

The good? Sports movies should pay attention. All of the action was beautiful - I’ve never watched basketball, in a NBA game or classic movie, in such an authentic and appealing way. This style needs to be studied lest we suffer through more terriblly filmed sports flicks.

The bad? I still don’t like Kobe, much less understand him. The whole movie couldn’t shake the PR/Marketing lense in which Lee and Kobe worked so hard to keep in the backseat. Kobe’s commentary often felt like excuse after excuse, justifying why he mishandled that pass or got caught whining to the refs and some things aren’t meant to be rationalized in postscript. There were no hard questions, only lobs and soft openers and I came away still not knowing who Kobe really is or why I should care about him.

In the end I saw Kobe Bryant as basketball’s Tom Cruise. You may not agree with who he is off the court/screen and even flat out dislike his personailty and the way he carries himself, but you can’t deny he’s been in some epic shit and looked good doing it.