L.A Lakers star Kobe Bryant is showing fans why he's the poster child for being an a**hole by kick starting a heated online debate when he made comments about the death of slain Florida teen, Trayvon Martin.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Bryant questioned the idea of defending Martin just because he was black and blames the teen for his own death.... basically siding with Martin's killer George Zimmerman, who walked away scot-free after a Florida jury found him "NOT GUILTY."

"I won’t [react] to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American. That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well, we’ve progressed as a society, then don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won’t assert myself."

35-year-old Bryant also made it known via Twitter that Martin was "wrong" for strolling through his neighborhood in a hoodie:
Bryant, who grew up in Italy before playing high school basketball outside of Philadelphia, later endured a torrent of online abuse stemming from his refusal for not backing the teen.

Per Fox News, Jim Brown tells the New Yorker:

“[Kobe] is somewhat confused about culture, because he was brought up in another country.” Jamilah King at Colorlines lambasted Bryant for this “stingy insistence on clinging to a ‘post-racial’ identity, this very old, conservative notion that black people should not be treated differently in this country—despite all of the evidence, like Martin’s death, that they are.”

17-year-old Martin, a basketball fan, was reportedly killed on his way back to watch Kobe Bryant in the second half of the 2012 NBA all-star game.

Here's an interesting piece of information from the Urban Daily:

“Over the span of Kobe Bryant‘s career….we’ve seen him do and say some very smug, cavalier and even cornball things at times but the comments that he made regarding the Miami Heat’s support after Trayvon Martin was killed…by far takes the cake!”