Ugly Story Emerging

[Te tutava nei matou]

stories are starting to emerge from vegas and offshore that huge amounts of wiseguy money came in on sacramento at the last minute, and these wagers are linked to the intentional food poisoning of kobe bryant...connecting the dots, it appears someone with acccess to the hotel kitchen intentionally spiked kobe's room service order with salmonella in order to sicken/weaken him for last nite's game while in tandem in-the-know bettors wagered huge sums vs. the lakers

conspiracy theory or no? these are the same type jokers who fixed the 1919 world series, i wouldn't put this past them

[Blowfish]

Nothing would surprise me. Although just like in the point shaving scandal, if this is truly the case then the Gaming Comission in Vegas should become aware of it and start taking a look. In this day it seems dumb to move your money from one location, and to try to affect an extremely high profile game.

[brink]

Makes for dramtic reading. But I doubt it's true.

[The Prophet]

Kobe's cheese-laden meal...

Here's something I've been wondering but haven't heard reported anywhere--did anyone else staying at the hotel order room service and get sick?

My wife is a culinary school graduate, has been a professional chef, and once owned her own business making deserts for restaurants (primarily cheesecake). I'm sort of a vicarious authority on the subject.

Kobe's cheesecake: Was either bought premade from a large food service concern or made from scratch. Either way, the liklihood of spoilage is low. Philadelphia Cream Cheese--which is the primary ingredient in cheesecake--is a pretty resiliant product and not particularly spoilage-prone. Furthermore, cheesecake is usually a big seller and has quick "turnover". It's doubtful that Kobe's cake had been sitting around the hotel kitchen for very long.

Kobe's burger: Unless Kobe is more of a gourmand than I'm giving him credit for, he probably had cheddar or American cheese on his burger. Once again, not cheeses that spoil easily (like blue cheeses). A more likely source of contamination would be the meat, but most of the meat bourne cooties (like e.coli) would have made Kobe a hell of a lot sicker. Additionally, they typically occur in fast food establishments that don't take cleanliness and hygiene as seriously as they should. Since the Lakers were staying at a decent hotel, and not a Comfort Inn off of I-5, this is sort of odd. If Kobe had mayo on his burger that would be perhaps the most likely source, particularly of what sounds like a minor case of salmonilla.

The bottom line with most food bourne microorganisms, however, is that some sort of cooties or another is in just about anything we eat. Fortunately, most people's immune systems are sufficient to deal with it. That's why the majority of food poisoning deaths occur in young children or old folks. Guys Kobe's age aren't exactly the high risk group and particularly guys in the kind of shape Kobe is in.

What inquiring minds should be asking is "were there other people in the hotel who got sick?". That would pretty much take care of the conspiracy theory--even the best restaurant can get a bad jar of Hellman's mayo. If Kobe was the only person in the hotel that got sick--a young, highly conditioned pro athlete eating a fairly basic meal in a swanky hotel--it might be time to get Mulder and Scully on the phone. Whether it was opportunistic sports gamblers or just a sandbagging Kings fan, something could be rotten in Denmark--and I'm not talking about a bad wedge of Havarti.

JRM
THE PROPHET
www.netprophetsports.com

[Te tutava nei matou]

no one else got ill

[sportshobby]

Isn't it also possible that some wiseguys got wind of Kobe's condition and capitalized on it, rather than caused it?

[The Prophet]

I played the Lakers and waited to get down because I figured the line would move in my favor--this was before I knew about Kobe's food poisoning. My thinking was that since the Lakers won game one the public perception would be that the Kings were in a "must win" situation (along with the ol' "zig zag" theory pointing to the Kings). The line opened at Sacto -2' and didn't really get higher than -3 until the Kobe story became widely reported midday. The line moved some more as Kings money came in--the highest I saw was -4'--but around 6:00 PM Eastern it started to move back toward the Lakers. I got the Lakers +4 at Carib, and about an hour later it was down to 3 there. The line closed at 3' or 3 just about everywhere I'm aware of offshore, and at the Stardust in LV(3'). Not sure what closing line was at the other major Nevada stores.

Personally, nothing about the line movement strikes me as particularly strange given the circumstances. Some movement toward Sacto early was expected (by me at least) and the later line movement can't really be attributed to "smart money"--the local news here in Charleston was even reporting the story at 6:00 PM and if they know about it then everyone in America knew about it. If someone was privy to Kobe's condition earlier (or caused it, if you want to get conspiratorial about it) I would have expected more than a 1/2 point line move on the Kings. There may have been some more profound swings in the line at the Nevada stores, but offshore things didn't look very suspicious.

JRM
THE PROPHET
www.netprophetsports.com

Originally posted by sportshobby
Isn't it also possible that some wiseguys got wind of Kobe's condition and capitalized on it, rather than caused it?