A couple of weeks ago, the Los Angeles sports radio airwaves burned with anger as Southern California's massive Armenian-American community expressed their anger with a hero: Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant. Seemed that Bryant had signed an endorsement deal with Turkish Airlines, a company partly owned by the government of Turkey, a government that refuses to call its genocide of Armenians back in the 1910s (when the Ottoman Empire existed) a genocide–and Armenians and the Turkish government are about as cordial as Barbara Coe and MEChA.
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Armenian activists vowed to protest Bryant wherever the Lakers may play, and the first one happened this weekend. The Armenian-American Azbaraz Post reported that Canadian fans protested before the Lakers took on the Toronto Raptors, urging Bryant to drop his endorsement deal. For his part, Bryant has told reporters he was unaware of the Armenian genocide issue, which only proves that athletes aren't always the sharpest basketball needle in the packet.
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