Lakers General Manager Claimed Kobe Bryant Had Dinner With Heath Ledger For Inspiration, Social Media Says That Is A Lie

Los Angeles Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka is being accused of fabricating a story about #KobeBryant and late actor Heath Ledger.

An old video of one of the team’s March 2018 Genius Talks” featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson reportedly shows Pelinka telling a lie about Bryant getting dinner with Ledger.

“There was one time when Kobe, who I worked with for 18 years, was going back to play in Madison Square Garden, and he had just seen ‘The Dark Knight,'” Pelinka told the Lakers alongside Johnson. “Obviously, you guys saw that movie, and he’s like, ‘Hey, hook me up with dinner with Heath Ledger because he got so locked into that role. I want to know how he mentally went there.’ So, he had dinner with Heath, and he talked about how he locks in for a role,” said Pelinka. “And Kobe used some of that in his game against the Knicks.”

But social media users called it fake news, saying there’s no way there could have been a dinner, as Ledger died in January of 2008, six months before the release of “The Dark Knight.” On Tuesday, ESPN reported that Pelinka’s “penchant for ‘storytelling’ is viewed as disingenuous” within the Lakers’ staff, and this anecdote is an example of his flawed truths. ComicBook.com also highlighted the inconsistencies in his story, saying Bryant would have only had 42 days to see the complete version “The Dark Knight” (which hit theaters in July 2008) before Ledger’s death, which only could have been done if Bryant was given a special screening.

“With a six-month time gap between Ledger’s death and the premiere of the movie, some are assuming that what Bryant saw was an early screener. When Ledger died on January 22, 2008, The Dark Knight was in the process of being edited, but that might not add up, either. The Lakers game against the Knicks that Pelinka references in his story took place a month earlier on December 23, 2007, but the movie didn’t fully complete filming until around mid-November with scenes in Hong Kong,” reads a 2018 article from ComicBook.com