The Kobe we knew

Kobe Bryant once again upstaged a historic basketball moment with his last official NBA game, stealing some headlines from the all-time record-setting 73rd win of the Golden State Warriors. And it seems so fitting. After all, that is one version of the Kobe Bryant we’ve known. Through the two decades he contributed so richly to our stockpile of memorable basketball moments, he evolved, sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes willingly. And he would always light up a sports page or a close-up with that wide, fulfilled smile of a kid being allowed to do what he loved the most.

Kobe first burst onto the NBA trying to start a forest fire, saying out loud that he could outplay anybody, and taking every opportunity to prove himself right. Many of us found him arrogant, like a young Michael Jordan but without the polish. Some of us considered him a villain, since we guarded our own heroes’ legacies very jealously. And there might just be chance this kid could be as good as he said he was. Even so, many of us were sympathetic and felt a pang when – gasp! – Del Harris would bench this brilliant but impulsive do-it-all rookie. We could relate. After all, who among us has not had a moment when someone we respected held us back and had little faith in us?

In 1998, Kobe first came to the Philippines, as the endorser and showcase of the adidas Streetball Challenge. There was this famous story of how he and a friend had eluded his security detail and explored Glorietta mall unaccompanied. When some kids recognized him and a crowd started following him around, he sought refuge in a store until his bodyguards could depart the Manila Peninsula across the street and secure him. Those of us who watched him remember him dunking up to his elbow against local pros and granting every wish for a highlight move. 

Back then, our concern was that he was so prodigiously talented and believed in himself so much that he would just turn off so many people and nobody would want to be his teammate. He was relentlessly driven to succeed, and kept fueling his own faith in himself, even when other people were already doing it. But he was always a great shot-maker, if not yet a leader. And like all great ones, he needed help. There weren’t enough touches in a game for him to shoot the Lakers to a championship. Eventually, fans knew that some of those unassailable scoring records would fall at his hands, but they also wished more for him, as they wished the same for previous prodigies like Julius Erving and Jordan himself: the supreme achievement for any NBA player.

Then came the love-hate, love-hate spitting contest/romance with Shaquille O’Neal, a man whose own personality was larger than even he himself was. In a tedious, never-ending drama, they showed each other, ripped into one another, and somehow found a way to start winning. It was a tense, exasperating time for Los Angeles hoops fans. You knew they had something great, but how long would it last? Two alpha dogs always have so much ego that they would end up biting each other. It must have been the most interesting experiment Phil Jackson had after Dennis Rodman in Chicago. But there was never a dull moment.

Gradually, Kobe Bryant grew up. With the right older teammates and Jackson and Tex Winter, he would start to listen, occasionally pass the ball, trust his teammates. He saw the Bulls get their rings, and he wanted his own. He deserved as much, and probably more, and said so. Once in a while, you’d hear him say he wanted to be traded out of frustration, like a mad scientist whose brilliance nobody seemed to understand.

I was in Staples Center the opening night when the Lakers were awarded their first championship rings under Jackson. You could see everyone had a smile on his face, even the players who were no longer on the team. But there was something behind the sheen of Kobe’s eyes that betrayed his dissatisfaction. He wanted, nay, needed, more. Thus began a struggle to find the right formula for success again and again that involved a revolving door and a platoon of NBA All-Stars and future Hall of Famers like Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash, Dwight Howard, Derek Fisher, Ron Harper, Robert Horry and others. That restlessness was both a blessing and a curse to the laid-back patrons of the Lakers, who had grown spoiled by Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. To Bryant, the word “chill” had no meaning if he wasn’t winning.

We know all the numbers: championships trophies, MVP, Finals MVPs, All-Star Game appearances, the 81-point game, consecutive 50-point games, the final 60-point outburst, and so on. In a career bisected between jersey numbers 8 and 24, we saw Bryant change over time to accept that he needed others to succeed, and that inevitably, time would catch up with him. But those moments, those glorious, breathtaking creative moments are what we are thankful for, that for a time, our harsh realities were suspended, and we were passengers on his impossible flights. Flights that gave us hope and inspiration and awe. But more than that, we saw a man who, not unlike Icarus, knew there was more, that he could soar higher, even at the risk of crashing and burning, which he did not fear.