KOBE: ALL BRYANT, ALL THE TIME.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

MEDIA

Radio station 1450-AM in Las Cruces, N.M., has ownership of the call letters KOBE. For some reason, it failed to stray from its playlist of Kelly Clarkson, Fergie or Maroon 5 to bring Kobe Bryant on its airwaves Wednesday.

"I think he needs to start his own radio station," ESPN Radio's Dan Patrick said of the Lakers' self-inflicted, grief-stricken star just before going on the air for his show Thursday morning. "It might have been easier to get his message out."

Easier, but not much clearer.

Patrick's show, beamed locally on KSPN-AM (710), was one of at least four chaotic radio stops No. 24 made Wednesday during his frenzied quest to eclipse Jeff from Tarzana's record for most stations visited in a 24-hour period.

After a quasi-demand for a trade was coerced out by Stephen A. Smith on his New York-based ESPN radio show Wednesday morning, Bryant was backing off a bit with Patrick at 12:20 p.m. That segued into a confusing, half-hour live confessional (12:45 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.) that included a talking-off-the-ledge monologue by Vic "The Brick" Jacobs -- not a doctor, but he plays one on the radio -- on KLAC-AM (570).

Earlier in the day, Bryant was somehow able to do an interview with Big Boy at the hip-hop station, Power 106-FM. Greg Anthony also said Wednesday on ESPN's "Outside The Lines" that he, too, talked to Bryant, and the subject dominated ESPN's pregame show to the Spurs-Jazz Western Conference final game that night.

Why Bryant needed to do all this a day after he already tried to embarrass the Lakers' front office with a so-called "exclusive" interview first with 710-AM's Steve Mason and John Ireland in the afternoon (3:20 p.m.) and then with 570-AM's Matt "Money" Smith and Petros Papadakis during drive-time (4:30 p.m.) before he declined to go on with Joe McDonnell for his late-night show on 570-AM.

In what became a mesmerizing two-day train wreck, listeners could hear the changing tone in Bryant's voice -- depression, lethargy, confusion, anger -- that isn't picked up in the black-and-white of newspaper or Internet accounts. Unfortunately, it also allowed for an immediate diagnosis from hosts and callers.

"My head is spinning right now," Kevin Kiley said at one point on his 710-AM afternoon show with D'Marco Farr, echoing what most listeners were experiencing. "This is a mess."

Ireland, who echoed several others in calling the whole experience "surreal," noted that his station received 40,000 Podcast downloads from the interview he and Mason did Tuesday. There were also 177,000 downloads for Stephen A. Smith's interview and 61,000 from Patrick's interview. KLAC reported some 25,000 Podcasts requests for its interviews.

"That's insane," Ireland said. "But that's the world we live in now."

Neither KLAC's Smith nor KSPN's Ireland said they felt manipulated by Bryant in his Emotional Rescue Tour. It was quite the opposite for Smith.

"To some degree, I felt bad for him," Smith, who also does the Lakers' pre- and post-game talk shows for KLAC, said Thursday morning. "You could hear radio producers saying to Kobe, 'C'mon, we're your guy, you gotta give us this to us.' So he felt he had to parade around to every show and, to some degree, his message got diluted."

"We felt fortunate he came on with us," Ireland said. "I think most of the media in town have a good relationship with him, which is why they were trying to cash in on his goodwill."

Case in point: The half-hour mish-mash between Bryant and the "Loose Cannons." a Radio 101 textbook case in how sycophantic a sports-talk show can turn. A conversation that could have been drawn to a crisp close in 15 minutes was extended at all costs by Jacobs doing asking Bryant to "take a deep breath" and "purge himself of negative energy," while Steve Hartman did his usual high-volume, rambling statements, hoping a question would spill out of it in order to keep Bryant on the line. At least Mychal Thompson added some semblance of abbreviated sanity, whenever he could jump in..

But, oh, the Kob-manity. Especially as it was replayed seemingly each hour through the day. Maybe the show hosts felt it got the short end of the Kobe Marathon by bringing in the caboose Wednesday instead of beginning at the front end Tuesday.

An interesting twist to the news updates throughout the day on 710-AM and 570-AM was that the proprietary sound bites each station had for Bryant didn't seem to acknowledge how his story kept changing elsewhere. Ireland said he finally saw an ESPNEWS crawl on television at some point Wednesday afternoon change from "Bryant demands trade" to "Bryant backs off trade request," causing him to ask producer Dave Singer to look into it.

Ireland, a sideline reporter on KCAL-Channel 9's Lakers telecasts who has known Bryant since he signed with the team in 1996, referred jokingly to Wednesday on the air as "Armageddon," but he now calls it "unlike any day I'd ever had on radio." He said he appeared on at least a dozen other shows to talk about Bryant on Wednesday, "and I don't think this story is over."

Maybe the only place Bryant forgot to stop along this radio journey Wednesday was a sit-down with the owner of the local furniture company who he does ads with, complete with the lame barbershop quartet.

It all caused Patrick to wonder: "How would you feel if Kobe wasn't on your radio show Wednesday?"

Which also begs the question: Where was Jim Gray in all this to add some real news credibility?

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Kobe Bryant couldn't be accused of being anti-media during his many public sports-talk show meltdowns that took place this week.

Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images

Box:

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