My favorite Nike puppet

If you've been watching any playoff basketball this season, I'm sure you've noticed the Nike ads featuring the "Most Valuable Puppet" avatars of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. If you haven't, here and here.

What I like most about this ad campaign is how the puppets' personalities truly reflect their human counterparts. Lil' Kobe's projects a mellow arrogance, flaunting his extensive playoff and championship experience. Lil' Lebron cannot contain his enthusiasm for the post-season, Ohio, and Chinese food.

I'm assuming these commercials will run through the end of the post-season. Over the course of the next week, we'll see if the real LeBron and Kobe can outlast their marionette mini-me's by meeting in the Finals.

The focus of this article, however, is my favorite Nike puppet - puppeT, singular. It's not about Kobe and LeBron. Flash back about 13 years, and you may recall a loud-mouthed, smack-talkin' figurine by the name of Lil' Penny!

In my mind, the Lil' Penny ad campaign represent some of my greatest memories of the '90s: Anfernee Hardaway's potential, Chris Rock one-liners, Tyra Banks, Gheorghe Muresan, and the most comfortable pair of shoes I've ever owned, the Nike Air Penny 2 (photo below). If all that doesn't give you a warm fuzzy feeling, I feel sorry for you.

Unfortunately for Penny, we remember little else from his career besides an eastern conference championship and the emotional scars from Shaquille O'Neal's departure for Hollywood and a series of less-than-mediocre comebacks after injury. At least we can still watch the commercials.

Hats off to Nike for creating a series of new (and likely more successful) puppets, but I'll never forget Lil' Penny and the puppet empire that could have been. "If the Academy don't recognize this, we got a problem."

Kobe Bryant: The black mamba or the harmless black garden snake??

The Lakers have the most talent of any NBA team, a proven system, and a Hall of Fame Coach. So why are they tied 2-2 in a series where the Houston Rockets are playing without the top center in the league and a prolific scorer in Tmac?

It’s this simple: The Lakers don’t have the desire to show up every night and crush the other team, and that is going to cost them later in the playoffs. That lack of killer instinct, leadership, and determination falls on the shoulders of Kobe Bryant. He claims to be the “black mamba” (which by the way can inject up to 400 mg of neurotoxin in one bite, of which only 100 mg is needed to kill the average man), but Kobe Bryant looked more like the “black garden snake” on Sunday night (which by the way carries such a small amount of venom that a bite would leave us in no more pain and danger than a simple insect bite).

On that crucial game four, any one of the five brown guys (Mrinal, Tarun, Jigar, Apat, or Gijo) could’ve come off the bench and guarded Kobe Bryant. Here are his “potent” stats: 7/17 on 15 points shooting and -12 net points given up while he was on the court. Unacceptable for the so called the best player in the NBA.

I’m tired of this constant comparison to Michael Jordan. He is nowhere near Michael Jordan. Jordan would have scorched the Rockets for 50, crushed their spirits, and would be going back to Chicago with a commanding 3-1. Now Kobe Bryant is going back to LA with the series tied at 2-2 and a depleted Rockets team replete with confidence. Until Kobe can find a way to bring out his passion and killer instinct EVERY single night against any team, I think it’s fitting that we call him the “black garden snake”

And in the meantime, we can give the term “Black Mamba” to Lebron James until Kobe can prove himself.