hahaha...the angle is very misleading....from another angle, it was shown that Kobe wasn't as closed as it seems....
I don't find it to be misleading. Even Matt Barnes said he pumped the ball right in Kobe's face. The Twitter "debunking" is fake news.
If you watch the video you can see that KB is rocking side to side so if you screen cap it at one point it looks very close and if you cap another frame it doesn't look that close. All in a split second.
Here's the ball during the pump fake.

...and this is after he pulls the ball back in and turns slightly to the left. This is what Twitter idiots are using to debunk the "Kobe didn't flinch" story. They're wrong.
Barnes said Bryant’s reaction “wasn’t even human” in 2010. He opened up more about the play on the “Lunchtime with Roggin and Rodney” podcast in August, saying the play helped propel him to join the Lakers later in 2010.
“It wasn’t planned, it just happened,” Barnes said. “If you watch the film, I’m just letting the play behind him transpire, but I just happened to fake the ball in his face and I came as close as I am to the microphone [in the studio] and he didn’t even blink, which I loved after the fact, but I didn’t realize at the time.”