FanHouse

So last Thursday, TheHype unveiled his Kobe Trade Alert Meter. This ingenious device drew inspiration from this country's Terror Alert Levels, right down to the sequence of colors. We were all quite proud of it, and trotted it out to address the latest one.

Then over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times introduced their Kobe Bryant Advisory System, visible on the front page of their online sports section. It too uses the Terror Alert colors, in order, to humorously gauge the ebb and flow of Kobe rumors.

Now, I don't mean to accuse no one of nothing. There are scores of Terror Alert parodies on the internet, and something this involved might well have taken days to conceive of and execute. But humbly, let me say the following: FanHouse has a pretty enormous audience. It's not so outrageous to think that someone at the Times might have seen our little creation, and been inspired to follow suit.

Again, I don't presume to know exactly what happened. But until someone tells us otherwise, I think we're justified in assuming the worst.