Disrespecting Kobe Bryant’s Tribute, Portland Player Slammed By Twitter For Being A ‘Moron’

The first rule of trying to be a comedian is to know your audience and to read your surroundings. You can’t be joking and fooling around in a stadium at the time when everyone is grieving the loss of one of the greatest athletes of all time in Kobe Bryant .

But clearly, Portland Trail Blazers center, Jusuf Nurkic was unable to do either of that and went on a hippity-hoppity ride during Damian Lillard’s post-game interview after he led his side to victory against the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center.

By turning up his inner ‘Mamba Mentality’ to dominate LeBron James and Anthony Davis' Lakers in their own building, Lillard was in the middle of a heartfelt message for the Bryant family and the fans of the Purple and Gold legend when Nurkic glided his way through the crowd to interrupt him and maybe even get some screen time after being out since March 2019 with a serious injury in which he “sustained compound fractures to his left tibia and fibula”.

Sure, the win was big especially with no Carmelo Anthony in action and while Portland is fighting to make it to the postseason, but Nurkic’s juvenile behaviour caught by the social media and he instantly became the villain.

Having said that, after having himself a 48-point game, Lillard ended the night with a heartwarming goodbye to Kobe and his daughter and the rest of the seven people who died in the helicopter crash:

"I think everyone had a lot of emotions coming in and then the videos, the music, it was one of those moments," Lillard described the ambience of the stadium during the game. "It was one of our legends, icons in the world not just our game passing away."

Ahead of the game, the Lakers prepared a wonderful tribute video of their hero which was followed by a touching speech by LeBron James who was clearly overwhelmed with emotions.