13 ways to remember greatest Kobe Bryant basketball players ever.
Perhaps there is no truly adequate way to honor a gigantic figure like that of Kobe Bryant, because trying to outline it using words that also try to make sense of its tragic end is humanly impossible. On the other hand, every word, every memory, every reflection is destined to get lost in the streams of rivers of other words, memories, reflections. Everyone has had and will always keep their own Kobe: a champion loved and hated in equal measure, an icon of style and work ethic, a controversial character both on and off the pitch.
There is the 19 year old and sacrilegious Kobe who dares to challenge the last really dominant Michael Jordan at the All-Star Game ’98. There is the overtime of game-4 of the 2000 Finals with the Pacers, where Kobe becomes Kobe . There is the threepeat with friend / foe Shaq. And there are the two titles won by Leder Maximo at the end of the 2000s. And in between are the years of autocracy, with 81 points against the Raptors as an ideological manifesto; then the stubborn refusal to give the scepter to the new generation of champions, and the twilight of the career consumed between brutal injuries and a last round of the field that lasted an entire season.
There is the Kobe who learns to shoot with his left hand when his right hand is broken, the one who tests the tactical knowledge of his teammates during timeouts or who at the London Olympics, when he is the oldest in the company, joins them for breakfast after sweating in two hours of individual training. There is Kobe involved in the obscure case of sexual assault and the one who, with acuity equal to cruelty, divides his less gifted comrades into ‘quick learners’ and ‘intelligent idiots’. There is the Kobe who, after the fourth ring conquered, spends the summer with Hakeem Olajuwon to perfect his repertoire in the bass post or the one who claims to have learned by ear Beethoven’s ‘Sonata in the moonlight’. There is the Kobe who on the sidelines dispenses advice on backdoor cuts and exit blocks to his daughters and the one who without any embarrassment cultivates his huge ego even after retirement.
All this huge load of memories will remain in the collective memory, simply because Kobe was the epitome of the concept of ‘larger than life’ . Not only that: in a perfect definition by Ramona Shelburne Kobe was ‘the author of his own story’, even and especially when the role he had decided to play was that of the villain or, very often, the asshole. And that story would have brought him into the Hall of Fame, a logical and inevitable landing that would come next September. So to sum up the essence of what Kobe meant, it may be useful to borrow the words of another Hall of Famer such as Steve Nash, his teammate in a moment that was not very happy for both of them, who closed right from the stage of the Naismith Memorial. so his short speech 1you’ll never feel more alive than when you give something everything you have “.
And this is perhaps Kobe’s true legacy: a legacy that goes beyond victories, decisive baskets and personal records. The urge to devote oneself to something with absolute devotion, bearing the weight, the pain that comes from such self-denial and facing the risk of finding oneself on the wrong side of the story. Whether it’s playing basketball or playing the piano, it matters little: what matters is that Kobe Bryant will continue to be a source of inspiration for anyone who intends to offer themselves body and soul to their passion.
What does it mean to deal with Kobe Bryant
by Dario Vismara
When a famous person dies, the tendency to reduce his figure to a mere account of one’s experience with that character is as unbearable as it is inevitable. In the case of Kobe Bryant, however, one cannot really do without it: each of us has our own memory of Kobe – whether it is positive or negative, deep or superficial, rational or emotional, it really makes no difference – and the sincere need to sharing it with the rest of the world is irresistible.
Why really, how is it done? Kobe Bryant has represented so much to every sports fan on this planet that the amount of memories that have been poured on the Internet at the news of his tragic death, both from those who knew him and those who have only watched him on TV, are overwhelming. Some strange twist of fate has wanted that in the last two days Kobe has dominated my life even more than it normally happens, since I had the luck and the honor of commenting on LeBron James overtaking him in the scorers’ ranking every era.
In these days I found myself reading above all about the two of them, about their relationship so particular, without being able to be really rivals and not even without being completely in confidence, but respecting each other seriously because each one understood how much work the other had to face. just to get to that level, but to stay there for so long. Perhaps after Kobe had buried the ax of competition and obsession, the two could also have become friends: in the last few days they have done nothing but send messages of love from one part of the United States to another, and it’s a beautiful image. think of them together as they chat about what could have been great NBA Finals series that weren’t.
I’ve always said the NBA is a special league for a reporter because it offers a truly unparalleled amount of insight, and the NBA automatically became a more interesting place to watch with just Kobe Bryant being there. He was a character as huge as his ego and his desire to win, capable of dominating every discussion for years, making it difficult to write about him but for this reason even more satisfying, because he forced you to raise the level even if you didn’t have him with him. never exchanged a half word.
Whenever I happened to enter a 20,000-person arena, I thought about how much personality it takes to be able to perform at a high level in front of so many people, where players would find the courage to take responsibility for a decisive shot. with the very strong possibility of disappointing so much genre. I who am fearful of nature would have gone to hide somewhere in order not to face such a thing, and know that Kobe Bryant not only accepted those conditions but even went to look for themobsessively it has always fascinated me. How much personality does it take to be Kobe Bryant, to always want the decisive ball in your hands, to always want to be the reason why you win or lose? Many players don’t like this responsibility; he almost played more for what than for everything else.
Kobe Bryant represented so much to so many people that he became intimate with everyone. There is no person who yesterday did not experience the feeling of having lost someone dear , someone who has always been there and who – it was thought – would always be there. Even if he was no longer on the pitch, even if he was no longer so involved with the Lakers, his presence in our lives was tangible, close, real . Now it’s gone, and we all find ourselves together feeling a sense of loss that we can’t make sense of.
(Photo by Elsa / Getty Images)
Bring together haters and lovers
by David Breschi
It’s hard and heartbreaking to say something. With Kobe there was no middle ground, you either loved him or hated him. I am part of the second group, that of the haters who always had to point the finger at even after every goal they reached. But in my small way I was also a lover , because it was impossible not to jump from the chair after his impossible baskets, to be fascinated by his stubbornness, bewitched by the intensity with which he threw himself headlong into even the most complicated situation, often coming out as the winner.
His impact on the Game has been enormous: Kobe was the first basketball imprint of at least two generations of players, many of whom are in the NBA today, some taking up the baton. He was an example for many, he was also the hero of two worlds that made it possible to shorten the distance between American basketball and our basketball in the pre-social era.
I want to think that right now every hater and every Kobe Bryant lover are metaphorically embracing, because each of them has lost their point of reference. We will miss you, Kobe.
The poster in the bedroom we all had
by Marco Vettoretti
When I found myself in front of the yellow breaking news bar I had to read the news over and over again, before realizing.
Why come on, it can’t be true. Not him. Not in this way, so unexpected and devastating.
The news of Kobe’s disappearance fell on any Sunday evening in January like a thunder that pierces the silence of the first light of dawn. Time has stopped, dinner is left on the plate, the suitcase to pack, the lump in the throat. But why? Why does it hurt so much? After all he is a man I have never even seen live, my relationship with him has always been filtered by a screen. Then I started thinking about how many times, in his 20 years of career, I woke up and found myself dealing with him, with his victories, his defeats, his competitiveness, his obsession; the winning shots and the absurd ones, even taken with three men on. Twenty years is a long time, and he has always been there.
Always in yellow-violet, always with the collar of the tank top between his teeth. He just changed his number, from 8 to 24. And as Fred Katz wrote on Twitter last night, there is something poetic in the fact that the time infractions that can be committed, and with which all the teams took to the field in the night they decided to pay homage, they are 8 and 24 seconds.
In the end I went back so far in my memory that my earliest memory of him came back to me. It’s 1997, Kobe has just won the dunk contest. An adidas-designed poster hangs on the door of my bedroom, depicting him as he first brings the ball between his legs, and then crushes it into the basket with his right hand. Sleeping on the top floor of the bunk bed, that poster has always been at my eye level, and I stared at it, studied it, analyzed it until I fell asleep for days, weeks, months.
Today that poster, that bunk bed and that bedroom are gone. And since last night, from that damn helicopter flight, he is no longer there either. Hi Kobe, we will never forget you.
(Photo by Andrew D. Berstein / NBAE via Getty Images)
Who knows
by Niccolò Scarpelli
Who knows who you are now, what you do, who you talk to and what you are saying. Who knows if you will still be explaining to her what is the best way to get out of the blocks, or if you will be holding her close to you, comforting her with that seraphic calm of one who knows we are just passing through.
Who knows if you will be proud or sad.
Who knows if you will be desperate to have brought it with you, where your fadeaway is no longer allowed to see. Who knows if you too believe that it is something disgusting spiritual being able to spend eternity with the greatest love of a lifetime. Who knows if she would have had the same profile as you. Who knows what language you speak, and there is no doubt that you will teach her all the ones you know. Who knows if you kept your eyes closed when things got worse, or if you accepted fate with the same clear awareness with which you held that ball, even the times it hurt, even when it was unfair. Who knows if you realize it’s so fucking unfair that it hurts just to think about it. Who knows if you knew it would go like this.
Who knows if even when your map was erased you managed to inspire someone, those who respected you even before those who idolized you. Who knows if you pushed a father to hug his daughters stronger. Who knows if you have forced some boy, scattered around the world, to feel a great emptiness inside, a void to be filled with the awareness that every day is a fantastic gift, a never banal present to be filled with all the love we can. Who knows how many things you still wanted to give us. Who knows how many things she would have given us.
Who knows if you greeted everyone before leaving, or if you left only silence, the same silence with which we now have to deal. Who knows if your death does not allow us to understand something more of our own life. Who knows if there really is a place where you now present her to all the greats of the past. Who knows if they too want to take a picture, have a memory. Who knows if they too, History itself, Eternal in Time, will have embraced you with the warmth of those who open the doors of Infinity to you. Who knows if you’ve ever really understood how much you meant to us all.
Who knows if now you laugh at our pain, because deep down you know best of all that legends never die, that people never die, as long as we carry them, somewhere, within us.
Who knows when we will meet you again, Kobe and Gigi. Who knows if our thanks goes as far as where you are now.
Farewell my hated rival
By Nicolò Ciuppani
I am basically numb. I can not even say that I am sorry to be because, precisely being such, it is not true. Yet it is the first time in my life that news like this disturbs me, makes me feel bad. It doesn’t happen sooner, you sleep shortly after, you wake up staring at the phone with tears running down while you make coffee and get dressed for the office. You don’t talk to anyone about it, your girlfriend asks you why and you don’t explain it, because there is nothing to explain, or maybe there is too much to explain.
Today we are in mourning, we find ourselves members of a family we didn’t think we had. On WhatsApp the overflowing chats are all those related to basketball, those of the old UISP teams and of the current ones, those of the various editorial offices of the sites, those of friends. Friends who don’t follow basketball ask you for confirmation, because they know that you follow basketball and you just confirm and say you’re sorry. You don’t say anything to friends who share this sport with you, because everyone knows so much. You tell the world you’re sorry, you write it on social media, you tell your colleagues, the truth that hurts the most is that you want someone to say “I’m sorry” to you.
I hated and hated him as one can only do with the greatest rival. If you ask any Phoenix fan to indicate the player who symbolizes the enemy, they will only mention his name, without even thinking about it. And the fact that she hated him so much and feels so bad today is perhaps the very proof of how, in reality, he was so important to me, to us.
One is gone who, like it or not, built the foundations for this giant family that is in mourning all over the world today. He left us “your favorite player’s favorite player”, too soon, unfairly.
And it’s surreal to realize what a legacy he left behind, people wearing his tank top because they don’t have any other tank tops or because they wouldn’t want any more. The crowd around the Staples like it was a church. The dedications of the players, before and during and after the games. “He would have wanted it that way, he would have wanted me to go out on the pitch and give everything”. The faces of the veterans who played together and against us hurt, those of the new generation who lived him as a hero and an example hurt even more. The infractions of 8 and 24 seconds in all games, with the choirs with his name rising. It was so damn important that now two numbers are unequivocally equal to his name. 8 and 24, and also 81.
Gone is the opponent to beat, a questionable person, one you hated, and you realize that he was one of the family, a part of you. I think back to a friend of my girlfriend, who lived only in her myth and that’s it. And the rare times he saw me, and knew I was interested in the NBA, he asked me about him, talked about him, and I think about him.
I thought it would pass quickly, but today it hurts so much that I still can’t write its name.
(Photo by Steve Freeman / NBAE via Getty Images)
Still Kobe
by Lorenzo Neri
It hit harder than you expected. As he did on the pitch.
It is understandable that the news of his passing – amplified by the pain of the loss of little Gigi – has such a strong emotional impact on us all, that we eat basketball and binge every day. Because Kobe was the first to do it.
You might not be the biggest admirer of his exploits, you might be among those waiting for a subdued performance to point the finger at him, but it was impossible not to be fascinated by the emotions he emanated, the passion and attachment he felt towards the game.
That passion that has become obsession in him, the most dangerous of all forms of love, unless you have a mental strength capable of knowing how to channel that anger – in this competitive case – in the right direction. Tame it.
He did not want approval, he wanted to be consistent with himself, with the work he had done from an early age.
For the anger of those who hated him, sportingly. For the sake of those who loved him, sentimentally.
He has remained the same, always.
Still Kobe.
I’ve always hated Kobe Bryant
by Lorenzo Bottini
I’ve always hated Kobe Bryant.
I have always cheered against him in every game he played (except perhaps in the Finals against Boston) and still today I win for all his baskets against Portland, against Sacramento, against Phoenix and especially against Philadelphia in those 2001 Finals that scored on fire. my passion for the game.
I have always hated Mamba Mentality, a philosophy halfway between a manual of personal realization from the basket of the motorway restaurants and Scientology. An obsession that devours everything around him, eventually becoming a barrier between himself and the world.
I often joked about his game, about the masses of shots taken in every possible situation, trying to make his team win through his herculean performances rather than sharing them in the collective. A continuous me against the whole world.
I could hardly stand the 2016 Farewell Tour, a circus with too many stops for an acrobat too far in his career. The last game against Utah was also the manifesto of everything I always hated about Kobe Bryant.
I was one of the fans who got up to sing in the Nike commercial that sanctioned the exit of the Mamba from the world that had dominated for twenty years, practically my entire life as an NBA fan. Somehow I wasn’t ready for a basketball without Kobe yet, without a villain so charming that he could whistle on any occasion.
Kobe had internalized his role as the quintessential villain by taking it to a zen level. Kobe enjoyed tearing you apart slowly, long 2 after long 2, as if basketball were Chinese torture. He went around you visualizing in his head every movement to make to tear out your heart and then snap and take you to the jugular. Like a Mamba in fact.
A reptile loaned to sport, a cold-blooded animal that could only end up in the California sun.
Hating Kobe was a subtle pleasure, one that dances above and below the perception of pain. A ritual dance of which the dancers know perfectly the positions and moves. On the one hand, the beautiful and unbeatable champion, even in the darkest defeats; on the other, those who desperately hope to see it fail at least once. In the middle there is a boundless love for a game, the electric discharge that manages to hold two particles so opposite together.
For this reason, yesterday, as I absent-mindedly turned on the PC as soon as I got home, I felt as if the energy of a thousand nuclear power plants were going off in me. Paraphrasing the words of Kanye West, who yesterday posted a beautiful photo: those who die soon do not always become a hero. Kobe had 20 years of extraordinary career to become the perfect villain and then walk away as a hero. Imperfect, in chiaroscuro, but still a hero.
A man who was learning to be normal and who had found in his daughter Gianna Maria his imperishable bond with basketball. Unfortunately, she will never have time to become our worst enemy.
(Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images)
Dear Kobe
by Francesco Andrianopoli
Imagine being 16 in the 90s: you have been passionate about the NBA for a few years, its champions are both dazzling and unattainable, far away in space and time. Then one day, through the limp and uncertain information channels of the time, rumors begin to circulate of a boy who has declared himself for the Draft: one who is more or less your age, a year and more change (and already it’s strange), but above all one who grew up in Italy, who speaks perfect Italian. He is someone like you, or at least, in the splendid mythomania of a 16 year old, you are convinced that he is someone like you.
On the day of the 1996 Draft you are 16 and he is 17: the usual information channels tell you, briefly, that he ended up at the Lakers, and by coincidence this is the team you had a casual liking for; that curiosity from today will turn into real support, it will become pure passion, because now he is on that team, and therefore there is you.
On the day of the Conference Finals against the Blazers, Game-7, you are 20, he is 21, and these are unforgettable moments: you shout in front of a screen in the middle of the night, he leads the Lakers to an unlikely comeback. It is perhaps the high point of your experience as a fan, and it is certainly the high point of his career up to that point. This identification will not last forever, of course: we grow up, the wonderfully stupid obsessions of the 16 years are less, and on the other hand his figure begins to be scrutinized and vivisected in depth, bringing out even the most unpleasant sides of his character even the darkest episodes of his life and personality.
There is a different climate around him, which also translates into the field: from an enfant prodige loved and pampered by the whole league he becomes an antagonist, a villain , a player that everyone fears but very few love, especially among his teammates. The level of his individual performances grows dramatically, his trophy cabinet grows, but the controversy, the contemptuous attitudes, the divisive and polarizing nature of his figure also grow.
They are cracks that affect his unreal allure , but somehow also make him fallible, imperfect, and therefore more human, more multifaceted: not a Homeric hero, but a real person, a person who knows what he wants and dedicates every drop of his energy to obtain it, even if that same unstoppable impulse that moves and stimulates him often ends up leading him astray, on the field and in human relationships.
Finally, the waning phase of his career arrives, and at this point something strange, unpredictable happens: as his performances decline, the love of his fans increases, the esteem of his detractors increases, and the last season is not a song. of the swan, it is a great pagan festival; joking with friends you call it a Viking funeral , without even being able to imagine that that word will take on a much more sinister meaning only a few years later.
That path is completed with Dear Basketball : a somewhat dull message, certainly very rhetorical, but purely positive, which no longer has anything contemptuous or divisive, a message that was further cultivated and enriched in the following years. These last years after his retirement were perhaps, and paradoxically, the best of his figure as a sports icon: always keeping away from the embittered, nostalgic or melancholy resentful attitudes that characterize many former champions, he has always provided positive opinions, encouragement, recognition to the former adversaries, suggestions and advice to anyone who asked him, and first of all to his beloved daughters, to whom he devoted himself full time.
In recent years his parable has come to fruition, which has led him from a young prodigy to a star, then to an anti-hero and finally to a well-rounded character, a beloved and respected father figure. In an already tragic story in itself, what leaves the worst aftertaste, what makes it truly unbearable, is that in that accident a father died – even before the champion, the public figure or the man – a father with his daughter.
Today you are almost 40 years old, he will be 41 forever: you would like to tell him something special, but you manage to be just a little dull and very rhetorical. Dear Kobe, thank you for everything.
An unrivaled legacy
by Ennio Terrasi Borghesan
When trauma occurs, we often indulge in reactions that are difficult to explain. Subjective, highly personal, private answers that can be made public to try to pass more quickly to the stage of acceptance and elaboration. What happened last night in California is, in fact, a trauma. For me, personally, it is for a thousand reasons. One that comes to mind cold, almost straight away, is the impossibility of imagining again a moment in which I will be able to watch a clip of highlights of an athlete who was the scenography of my life and of the passion for a sport I write about.
Until yesterday afternoon he was watching (am) or videos of Kobe Bryant, speaking (am) or Kobe Bryant, thought (am) or Kobe Bryant. To the moments of his life that tied me and us to him, the personal ones like the luck of having been able to ask him a question during the last World Cup in China or the “public” ones like the most beautiful plays of a unique and unrepeatable career.
Having had, in the course of my life, the good fortune to live Kobe Bryant, I can think intensely about that legacy that goes beyond statistics, titles, dunks and baskets at the end. It’s not easy, I never could have imagined when it might not be, but I can. And then I think about who Kobe Bryant was for me. I think of having been the protagonist of a film that is part of my life day after day, a protagonist of such a level that it is difficult to think of the same film without him.
I think of the feeling of total magnetism that surrounded him. The ability to polarize conversations, between friends or strangers, which could drag on for hours. To his passion for the game and the desire to transmit it over the 28 by 15 meters of a parquet: writing, telling, teaching.
To his total nonchalance and naturalness in being able to move on to discuss, with competence, the talents of the Lithuanian or Greek national team to “realize” the day of those who wait their whole life to ask him a question or a simple greeting, between embarrassed and excited. In Italian, a language that was also his and that has always made him closer to us than others.
Today he thought (iam) about Kobe Bryant, and it is a thought that could easily go beyond the hours that make up a single day. It is a different, different, unique and unrepeatable thought. Like the feeling that I can imagine as indissoluble from yesterday onwards. Our timelines are filled with the memories or silence of those who, by Bryant, were a partner, opponent, mentor, emulator, fan, fan or hater.
It’s a memory that may never end, because it will simply be impossible to think of Kobe Bryant without thinking about last night. Our ability to “cling” to our memories of the Kobe player and the Kobe man will have to become part of us. And this, in an almost paradoxical way, is the umpteenth legacy of a man who will have no equal.
(Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images)
I always wanted Kobe to speak to me in Italian
by Marco D’Ottavi
One day several years ago, for an exam that was marked only by a friend of ours, we added the student Kobe Bryant via the computers of the faculty . To remember it now doesn’t seem like such a brilliant or funny idea, yet that’s what we did to fight the boredom of those days spent on books. During the roll call the professor, must have been a complicated subject and a complicated professor, read his name with a question mark expecting an answer that never came. He accused the Erasmus students of being idlers and the story ended there, with the only human being in the world who did not know Kobe Bryant.
This is certainly the most stupid anecdote that links my life to that of Kobe Bryant and yet it was one of the first to come to mind when, in short, we had to come to terms with this impossible news. Because Kobe was not only a great basketball player, he was a companion, one we talked about with friends because he was bigger, more asshole, stronger, different. It wasn’t a statistical question, it was a human question. For me it was its complexity that was so attractive, a complexity that today seems insurmountable, unique, special. Kobe was the lonely man on an island, the one who knew all the opposing schemes, who would glare at you if you were wrong, who spoke to you in Italian if he liked you, the obsessed one. Tomorrow he would be the upright teacher, the envied father, the severe coach.
I know that I can only write this thing here, because for many of you it will have been even harder, many will have loved it in an even more visceral, sporty and human way, they will have grown up even more in contact with it, have cheered or hated it. . All my life I have hoped that Kobe would speak to me in Italian one day. This will not happen, but that’s okay: much more remains.
50 shots
by Davide Casadei
Tomorrow I have to wake up early to go to work, come on but who makes me do it. I could sleep first, watch it live, and then go back to bed. It can be done. In the end I always had 3 hours of sleep in the playoff period. But it’s worth it?
It is April 13, 2016, the last aftermath of a failed season in the yellow-purple house. A record of 17-65 which certifies the lowest point reached by the ever brilliant Lakers post Finals 2010, those against the hated Celtics. They have been months of internal controversy and turmoil, in which a franchise that logically should look to its promising group of young people is devoured by something that does not allow it to leave. A supernova imploded years ago in the overseas basketball galaxy, creating a black hole that not even gravity can escape. The black hole is called Kobe Bryant, and since he announced his retirement all of us scientists and we do not observe it with amazement. The Achilles tendon rupture delivered us a slow motion player, with halved athletic and aerobic capacity and whose age makes him more and more like a tired old lion at the edge of the pack. However, his dribbling elegance and encyclopedic footwork remain unchanged, engraved in the minds of fans who now cheer him in every arena after years spent insulting him for yet another fade-away on the siren.
Kobe knows perfectly well that there is only one possible version of being Kobe. He has spent a whole life becoming what everyone universally recognizes him to be: a tireless worker and a winner by nature. So she marks her appointments like a rock star on her farewell tour, to give us the last of Kobe’s rationed crumbs. He is a seasoned writer who manipulates the narratives of his short story. He’s the obsessed puppeteer who can’t let anyone intrude on his grand finale. ” He was the most intelligent professional athlete I had ever encountered, curious and demanding and savvy and competitive and relentless and infinitely complicated ” writes Jackie MacMullan. Infinitely complicated.
And so that Italian night between 13 and 14 April I sit on the sofa in my house and decide to watch a show of which I already know the premises, development and conclusion. A film seen thousands of times made by a director whose imagery and scripts I personally have never appreciated, despite recognizing him great artistic qualities. About a minute from the end of the usual script a thought sneaks into my head. Suddenly I realize that it will be the last time I can complain about this melodrama, where I can snort on yet another senseless midrange with 18 seconds on the clock, the last time I can see that Greek mask with gritted teeth. raise a fist with mad eyes. Please stop time, I’m not ready yet … triple boom but no one moment, dribble, stop, shoot,
Free to sign, free to sign, substitution, standing ovation, Mamba out, lights out at Staples I’m 60. With 50 shots. The shameless copy of the match I knew he was going to make. So why did I cry then, and still cry now writing it? Because you who have always wanted to do it your own way, who have always had all the answers.
Why can’t you explain it to me, Kobe?
Lower Marion High School, where it all began
by Michele Pettene
I started hearing discussions about Kobe Bryant’s legacy – the legacy left by the player and the person in the world – when Black Mamba was still in the prime of his career. This is because the impact of Kobe on his sport and on the sporting world (and not) began a long time ago, certainly not now and only because he tragically disappeared from Planet Earth.
Impossible not to be inspired by the unreachable work ethic, a legend with a solid real basis confirmed in the last hours by the many anecdotes that anyone who has touched Bryant’s approach to the game seems to have experienced. Impossible not to be speechless in front of a declared enterprise and even more so epic: all of us, and we will have been close to a billion people, in a moment of our life we thought / dreamed / shouted “I want to be like MJ! “. Only one can claim to have made it, or at least to have come as close as possible. Stop, think again, rework: it’s incredible to me.
Kobe Bryant is the one who in 1996 did not want to go to college for one real reason, besides considering himself ready for the NBA level: he was afraid that Michael Jordan would retire while he was at university, preventing him from playing against it. These are words I heard directly from his beloved Lower Merion High School coach, Gregg Downer. The only one, together with Phil Jackson, able to understand what was burning inside that teenager with a broken English and perfect Italian already so devoured by the desire to improve and win.
Right here, in the gym of the Kobe high school completely renovated thanks to the financial help of the Black Mamba, in my small way I touched a part of this legacy, of this obsessive and maniacal approach: the Lower Merion no longer had a talent of the his caliber, yet since 1996 – the year of the state title with Kobe in charge – he has had only winning seasons, state finals, titles.
Coach Downer told me it’s only thanks to Bryant, his constant return year after year to the school where he grew up to show the kids what it takes to bring out the best in himself: getting his ass more than anyone else. The students have received and, although not gifted in basketball as their source of inspiration, they have taken the challenge seriously by rising above the competition, keeping alive the winning culture implanted with pure strength by a superior, special, unique being. Even behind the school desks, the headmaster told me, with the overall average rising significantly since Kobe’s arrival at Lower Merion: if you want a place in the world capable of concretely witnessing the Mamba effect, you can find it in the north-west. of Philadelphia, the city where it all began.
