I was taught early in my writing life that when you don’t know what to write, what to say, to write down 10 sentences with at least one fact about your subject in each sentence. When you get to 10, just don’t look up.
I’m doing this because, in large part, this is my job now: to contextualize, analyze and evaluate the lives of sports figures, our heroes, our villains, each other.
And so here I go, head down, on Kobe.
Kobe Bryant made 18 NBA All-Star teams in 20 years. (1)
From the age of 6 to 13, he grew up in Italy following his father, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant around the country as he played professionally. (2)
Along the way, Kobe became fluent in Italian only moving back to the States, settling in a suburb of Philadelphia, in time for high school. (3)
As a teenager, he smashed opponents and awes us so at Lower Merion High School that he was the 13th overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft at the age of 17. (4)
Kobe was the first guard ever drafted straight from high school into the NBA. (5)
He led the league in scoring twice and finished his career with 33,643 points, which ranked third in league history until LeBron passed him on the list last Saturday. (6)
He won five NBA titles, earned two Finals MVPs and was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player in 2008. (7)
In a pre-draft workout, he played 1-on-1 against then Lakers assistant defensive stalwart Michael Cooper. (8)
He cooked the 40-year-old so badly in front of Lakers general manager Jerry West that West left the workout early having seen enough. (9)
Following the workout, he said Kobe’s already better than anybody on our team right now, and Kobe wasn’t even old enough to vote. (10)
In February 2009, Spike Lee wanted to shoot a documentary about him. It’s called Kobe Doin’ Work, and Kobe was supposed to review it with Spike following a game against the New York Knicks.
He famously scored 61 on the Knicks in a 126–117 win at Madison Square Garden. At the press conference following that historic night, Kobe said he wanted to win in savage fashion because he didn’t want to hear Spike Lee talk noise later that night.
In his final NBA game in April 2016, he scored 60 points on the Utah Jazz on 50 shots. On that same day, the Golden State Warriors won their NBA-record 73rd game to cap off the best regular-season record in NBA history. We didn’t notice until the next day because Kobe had stolen that one like he did many before.
His legacy is so supreme that the loudest, proudest franchise in the history of the sport retired both his No. 8 and No. 24 jersey for him.
He touched so many folks that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban announced his franchise retired his jersey number on the day of his death.
No Maverick will wear 24 again, which is a tangible way we know Kobe won the respect of an adversary.
Last August he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. 2019 was also the first year he was eligible.
The Associated Press reported the Italian basketball federation said Monday it has ordered a minute’s silence to be observed for all games “in every category for the entire week” to honor Kobe.
The federation released the following statement: “It’s a small but heartfelt and deserved gesture to honor the life and memory of Kobe Bryant, an absolute champion who always had Italy in his heart. Kobe was and will always be linked to our country.”
The AP also reported Italian coach Ettore Messina worked with Bryant as an assistant for the Lakers. Messina said Kobe “was a supernatural.”
And he was.
He was my Achilles, my Hector, my Leonidas. He was of this earth, a boy among us, a man among men until one day he simply wasn’t. He became more. He was no longer the dream chaser. He became the dream we chase. But not once did he allow us to believe the dream was not within our reach. His legacy is work. His legacy is hustle. His legacy is stubborn belief and mustard seed faith.
It is important to remember how he got there, with suicide pushups — pushups so loud your fear leave the ground and your hands pop your chest before you hit the ground — running through the hills before dawn, daring his teammates to check him, relentlessly chasing perfection in a game designed to make naked your flaws.
He was so ambitious, so arrogant and so utterly unafraid of chasing and then being great — in the Olympian since of the word — that his veteran Laker teammates nicknamed him “Showboat.”
But that was because, as his first head coach in the league Del Harris said, Kobe’s goal was that singular.
In 2017, Harris told The New York Times: “Kobe didn’t care about night life or anything else. He only had one interest. His only focus was to be the best that he could be. And in his mind that meant challenging Michael Jordan.
“People can argue how close he actually came, but there’s no question that he fulfilled pretty much all of his dreams.”
Oh, Lord, I love that. We pray you welcomed him with arms wide open for he is not alone. He is holding the hand of one of his four girls, Gianna Marie. He calls her Gigi. They are two of nine we are locking hands in this prayer circle that their families might know we love them. We are thinking about them, and we trust in you. My head is still bowed as we say, “Amen.”
