Every Lakers playoff game, I’m glued to two things — the tube and the Twitter. I won’t deny being a Lakers homer. I won’t even deny being a Kobe Bryant apologist. I admit it. Hell, you kind of have to be if you’re a Kobe fan with all of the bandwagon Black Mamba bashers out there. Dude can’t even hug or kiss his wife after the game without drawing criticism from the Kobe haters. Given how many fans despise Kobe, you’d think that he was the leader of the Third Reich and not the Triangle.

Despite the approximately the equivalent of India’s population having a hate hard-on for KB24, there’s one Kobe hater who blows all the others to smithereens Rambo style — Bill Simmons, aka the Sports Guy.

Hey, again, I admit to being a homer at times. I bitch about calls incessantly (often I’m right, but other times I get frustrated and go too far). I fling insults at the other team about 50 percent harder than I should, usually trying my best to keep things above the belt. I maybe even tend to overrate the guys in Purple and Gold a bit. But one thing I don’t do is refuse to give credit where due, especially to the extent where a shrink would label it OCD and write you a prescription. Simmons goes even further than that. He constantly writes ridiculous things in an attempt to conveniently re-write the  legacy of hands down the second-greatest two guard the league has ever seen.

For example, Simmons once compared Kobe Bryant to Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female.

Stage 5: “I’m going to pretend to be Michael Jordan to the point that you will feel creepy.”

(Best example: Kobe’s game-winner against the Suns in 2006 that recently made the slew of cool playoff commercials. We haven’t seen an imitation that uncomfortable since Jennifer Jason Leigh got Bridget Fonda’s haircut in Single White Female.)

You know what makes me feel creepy? Your personal quest to destroy and discredit one Kobe Bean Bryant. I haven’t seen anybody this obsessed with bringing a rival down since Principal Rooney tried to ruin Ferris Bueller. See, Bill, I can turn around and do that to you, too.

Simmons also routinely states that Kobe is a bad teammate with teammates who dislike him. Sure, he and Shaq had some riffs, but they’re two huge stars with two huge personalities. They also won three titles together. As for Kobe’s current teammates, Simmons is talking out of his Boston-lovin’ ass. 3,000-word columns yet no concrete evidence to back up your Kobe claims. Look at the smile on Lamar Odom’s face in tonight’s post-game press conference when he’s asked about Kobe, then listen to how he raves about him afterward. Watching basically all the Lakers games this season, you can literally see how much Kobe’s teammates like and trust him. We also saw the bond between him and his teammates, including an instant one with Pau Gasol, in Kobe Doin’ Work (which I’m half surprised Simmons didn’t quit over ESPN showing).

And as for the whole Jordan impersonation, his fist-pumping was closer to a Kirk Gibson impersonation if you ask me. I just saw an excited basketball player who hit a huge shot, with exciting teammates rushing to celebrate with him. Can no basketball player ever pump his fists in celebration after hitting a game-winning shot because Michael Jordan did it? Should Kobe hire Ocho Cinco to keep his celebrations creative, making sure none even come close to “Jordan impersonation” territory?

Then there are Simmons’ personal attacks, where he suggests that Kobe is some monster of a human being who just masterfully manages his image. Are you his neighbor? Do your kids go to the same school? Does the Sports Gal have girls night out with Vanessa? How in the the hell would or even could you know this? Besides, the rest of L.A. seems to totally disagree with you, so it looks like you’re pulling clam-chowdery “you know what” out of your Beantown butt again?

Simmons has been the, well, Kobe Bryant of Kobe Bryant bashing for a long time. More often than not, it’s made him look clueless. Tonight, however, Simmons tweeted a statement that took even his anti-Kobe bias to an unprecedented level.

Here’s what he had to say about Bryant (circled in red):

Baffled, here was my immediate response (circled in red):

Look, I’ve been a Bill Simmons reader and fan for about a decade now. His NBA MVP and Trade Value posts, along with his NBA Draft diary are as good as it gets. But Simmons isn’t as good as he used to be, and his personal crusade against Kobe hit an all-time low.

Simmons stated that he “enjoyed Kobe’s prime” during an 18-point fourth quarter. A quarter where Kobe scored 15 of the Lakers’ final 23; hit six straight clutch free throws down the stretch; played lockdown defense on a hotter-than-Satan’s-crotch Carmelo Anthony; beautifully assisted Derek Fisher on a key three; and yanked down the game-clinching offensive rebound in the waning seconds. Kobe did all of this despite dislocating his finger at the start of the fourth and having to pop it back into place.

If he’s out of his prime, then I’d like to see what he was like in his prime. Overall, Kobe had 40 points, six rebounds, four assists and a block, while playing lockdown defense on Anthony and Chauncey Billups. His defense on Billups for most of the first 40 minutes was probably the key to the game. Simmons made his Palinesque statement because Kobe misfired on one contested fourth-quarter shot. How about you give that Jump to Conclusions Mat back to Tom Smykowski now, huh, buddy?

Would an established national journalist like Bill Plaschke write that he’d “take Kobe Bryant right now” over LeBron James if Kobe was washed up? I don’t think so. You’re on you own on this one. I’ve already established that I’m both a Lakers homer and a Kobe apologist, but if Bryant’s got one foot in the glue factory as a player than so does Leonardo DiCaprio as an actor.

Look, I can’t stand Paul Pierce and the Celtics, but last year when he shredded the Lakers I admitted that he was an MVP-caliber player, and that his Celtics were a better team than my Lakers. I can stand Ron Artest even less, but during the Rockets series I called him a top-10 NBA player when his mental facilities allow him to be one. In the Nuggets-Lakers series, I don’t like Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith one bit, but K-Mart is a great defender and Smith is one of the best scorers in the league (although not in Game One).

Even when I’m being the ultimate homer, I still put my personal feelings aside and give credit where credit is due when it comes to what a player can do on the hardwood. For some reason you can’t even come close to doing that when it comes to Kobe Bryant.

It’s not even just the Kobe stuff either. I read your articles less than half as much as I used to, and skim twice as much when I do. If I wanted to hear never-ending rambling about Boston sports, then I’d go down to some dive bar in the Southie projects and load up Sully the Sox fan with round after round of booze. Your overselling of the Bulls-Celtics series as the greatest thing since the baptism montage in The Godfather (he might have literally done that) was just the latest ridiculous example. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great series. But it was still a first-round series between two teams that had no prayer of winning a championship.

Back to Kobe. You can talk smack about Eagle, Co. You can conjure up chemistry problems with his current teammates. You can even push your wannabe Jordan conspiracy. But when you say Kobe Bryant is past his prime, what you’re really saying is that you, the Sports Guy, are. You know that high-mileage point you always talk about, the one NBA players hit and — BOOM! — there goes the knees? Keep making out-of-touch statements like this latest gaffe and we’ll all be calling you the Jermaine O’Neal of sportswriters here pretty soon. We’ll be laughing at you like we do Jason Whitlock when he begs for the Chiefs to sign Jeff George.  But, hey, we enjoyed your prime while it lasted.

(Adam Best is the senior editor of the FanSided.com Sports Network and the twisted mind behind Fan Addict. Follow him on Twitter.)