It's truly one of the stupidest things in sports. People actually act like they have some kind of knowledge about what kind of pain a player is playing through and are so inconsistent about whether they praise or criticize the injury card. I could give a fukk less about a player's injuries no matter who he is. I'm judging players by what they do on the field.
Kobestans routinely fellate Kobe for being an ironman and playing through all injuries. Kobe will let rumors circulate that he is going to miss the game and then he'll come in and play and they'll be like "
how can he play through this? everyone else would have sat!" But what is this based on? How can you measure his level of pain vs. what levels of pain other players have played through.
They routinely bring up LeBron missing games for a finger injury even though LeBron playmakes, rebounds, and generally plays a more demanding role than Kobe does yet he misses games at a much smaller rate than Kobe historically has. Beyond that, Kobe's injuries are minor (he has even admitted that he is lucky to never have any injuries that would get worse by playing through them) yet they seem to linger forever. He jams his finger on a touch pass and people are talking about it years later. He "breaks his wrist" while getting his shyt stuffed and it lingers all season and the excuses continue longer after he says it has fully healed.
I honestly don't care if people celebrate Kobe's resilience. Even though he plays everything up, he undeniably plays through a lot of shyt and you can pretty much guarantee he's going to be out there every night. I just think it's dumb when people are so inconsistent about it and get so upset when other players are guilty of the exact same antics.