Kobe Bryant's new nickname is "Vino," and it's understandably leading some to (wrongly) believe that he's partying hard after games.
It all started last Thursday, when a nameless friend came up with the nickname after the Lakers beat the Timberwolves:
The origin of the nickname is pretty simple, he explained: He's getting better with age, like wine, and "vino" means wine.
BUT, since Kobe does a lot of his tweeting after games (that's when athletes have free time), he has sent out a lot of tweets between the hours of 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. (1 a.m. and 4 a.m. on the east coast) with the hashtag #vino.
For instance:
Understandably, a lot of people saw that Kobe tweeted "Vino" at 10 p.m. at night, and assumed he was drunk:
Look, Kobe can drink wine and tweet about it all he wants. But this isn't what's going on here.
It's just an unfortunate mixture of nickname and context. "Vino" is a fine nickname, but out of context it gets really confusing.
Kobe might want to save this nickname for daylight hours, or maybe even go back to his other nickname ("Mamba") to stave off future confusion.
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