Kobe Bryant jumps off 40-foot high dive into pool in debut Vine (Video)

As recently as last August, Kobe Bryant remained resistant to the draw of Twitter and Instagram for social networking and marketing purposes, preferring to limit his online presence to his very popular and self-maintained Facebook page. The Los Angeles Lakers superstar has changed his tune quite a bit over these past 12 months, though, rejoining Twitter in January and becoming quite active on the service, and launched an Instagram account in April to better document his recovery from Achilles tendon surgery (and, also, sometimes, to get emotional).

Based on how well Bryant's social media expansion has gone — he's now up to more than 3.3 million followers on Twitter and nearly 1.5 million on Instagram — it seems only natural that he'd be interested in taking Vine, Twitter's six-second looped video sharing service, for a spin. (It's even less surprising considering his decision came after visiting Twitter's offices.) The only question was: What would Bryant do for his maiden Vine voyage? We knew it wasn't going to include talking cats or twerking, but beyond that, everything seemed up for grabs.

Well, late Thursday night, we found out:

So that makes Kobe the second Laker legend to take up high-diving during the summer months, right? Next time, Mamba, at least throw some kind of flip in there, or else you're never going to stop hearing about it from Kareem at the next club meeting.

Then again, maybe Bryant decided to stick with the straight-up pencil from a 40-foot board because, y'know, he's four months from having surgery to repair a torn left Achilles tendon. I'm sure the fact that there wasn't any particular derring-do on the dive is calming the nerves of Lakers fans still mentally preparing for the Nick Young/Wesley Johnson/Jodie Meeks wing troika in the event that Kobe's rehab isn't shattering timetables quite that much.

Personally, I don't think we'll know that Kobe's really ready to resume full-fledged basketball activity until we see him nail a Triple Lindy. That's when you'll know he's got his bounce back. Might be too long for Vine, though; he could have to switch to Instagram for that one.