I grew up with a strong dislike for Kobe Bryant.
My brother was a huge Allen Iverson fan and was all in on the Sixers when they made the 2001 NBA Finals and faced the vaunted Lakers led by Kobe and Shaq. Following in the footsteps of my brother, I became a huge Iverson fan as well and a Kobe hater. In our eyes, Iverson was the underdog that played with swagger and confidence while Kobe was the arrogant kid who was overrated and greatly benefitted from playing with arguably the best center the NBA has ever seen. Iverson and the Sixers stunned the Lakers in Game 1, but lost the next four and the Kobe hatred intensified.
Shortly before the 2003-04 season, Kobe was charged with sexual assault and while my brother and I didn’t like Kobe, we didn’t really try to use this as ammo against him because we were so young. I was six years old and my brother was twelve. The only thing we really cared about at the time was whether or not Kobe was going to play. The Lakers signed Karl Malone and Gary Payton and were heavy favorites to win the NBA title again, but conflicts within the team along with Kobe missing games to go to court took their toll. Fast forward to Derek Fisher’s insane 0.4 second buzzer beater against the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, and my brother and I are fearing the worst: another Lakers title.
Fortunately, the Lakers fell apart in the Finals and lost to the Detroit Pistons. Shaq gets traded to the Miami Heat in the offseason and the Lakers become Kobe’s team. Phil Jackson steps down as coach and I’m stoked because that means Kobe isn’t going to win a title any time soon. Later, prosecutors dropped the sexual assault case against Kobe Bryant and he came out and admitted wrongdoing by stating,
“Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.”
Along with emerging details about Shaq and Kobe’s feud, Kobe became the villain of the NBA. And Kobe embraced the role, becoming The Black Mamba in the process. Between the departure of Shaq and addition of Pau Gasol, Kobe became a one-man team putting up insane scoring numbers with little playoff success. My brother and I still didn’t like Kobe, but we had to respect the guy who was averaging over thirty points a game and dropped 81 points on the Toronto Raptors. Also, Kobe celebrated a buzzer beater by pulling his jersey to the side and revealing his chest which was a copycat of a Kenyon Martin taunt. This infuriated my brother since Kenyon Martin is an alumnus of our favorite college team, the Cincinnati Bearcats.
The Lakers then acquired Pau Gasol at the trade deadline in 2008 and they became legitimate contenders. They finished first in the West and Kobe Bryant won MVP. Our only hope was the new Big Three in Boston consisting of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen. The 07-08 Celtics delivered and the good guys beat won in six games. We said it after the series was over, “Kobe still can’t win without Shaq”. So, Kobe went back to the lab.
Kobe started to shift from villain to antihero in the our minds when he was selected to Team USA for the 2008 Summer Olympics as part of the Redeem Team. I was eleven and my brother was seventeen so we had matured enough to realize that this only made the team better, he would elevate everyone’s play, and it was okay to root for him because he was playing for America (amazing logic, right?). The Redeem Team blitzed through just about everyone until they played Spain in the gold medal game. Team USA beat Spain by 37 in the preliminary round game, but they found themselves in a close game down the stretch in the championship until the Black Mamba delivered a lethal four-point play late in the game and put his finger to his lips to quiet the crowd that wanted to see an upset.
For a brief moment in August 2008, I was an unabashed Kobe Bryant fan and the turn began.
Kobe followed up his Olympics performance with two straight NBA titles. Was I happy for Kobe at the time? No, because I still could not stand the Lakers, but I respected his performances and the fact that he won two more titles without Shaq and as the best player on his team. He made the playoffs the next two seasons, but the Lakers were outplayed by a tremendous Mavs team and the young guns from the Oklahoma City Thunder. Then the snap came in April 2013.
Kobe was playing insane minutes in his age-34 season in order to get the Lakers into the playoffs and his body was wearing down. Attempting to drive off his left foot against the Golden State Warriors, Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles tendon. I was sixteen at the time and did not realize how bad of an injury this was for a basketball player. The only knowledge I had about Achilles tears was related to the Bengals’ Leon Hall who returned from his injury and made a few Pro Bowls. I had no idea Achilles tears were seen as death knells for NBA careers. However, I do remember the despair and raw emotion on Bryant’s face in his postgame interview and how he had to put on a strong face for his kids and tell them that “daddy’s gonna be just fine.”
Kobe then battled more injuries over the final three years of his career and finished with a bombastic 60 point game on 50 shots that will be remembered forever. I still criticized the fact he took so many shots to get to 60, but it was a nice exclamation point for one of the greatest careers ever and I was genuinely happy for him. The turn was complete.
Two years after Kobe’s last game, I suffered an Achilles tear of my own and the healing and recovery process contains both the darkest and most resilient periods of my life. I had extremely negative thoughts and never thought I would be the same. And I would never be the same, but Kobe told Rudy Gay after his Achilles tear that you may not be the same, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be good or better than before. Even Kobe Bryant discussed how tough it was to get his Mamba Mentality back after his Achilles injury. As I progressed through my rehab and things started to feel more normal, I looked to Kobe for inspiration. Not just his recovery, but just his day-to-day life. I looked at his Instagram and saw him playing basketball with his daughter, Gianna. This was four years after his injury and the man was thriving. He won an Oscar and helped both NBA and WNBA players develop their games. The next chapter of his life looked to be just as impactful as the first and he was allowing us to be a part of it. He went from villain to antihero to a hero in my mind.
Then it all ended on January 26, 2020, when Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and members of the Altobelli family passed away in a helicopter crash. No death of a celebrity affected me like Kobe’s. Paul Walker and Robin Williams are really the only celebrity deaths that genuinely made me reflect, but Kobe’s was the only one of those three where I have trouble believing it months later.
Over the course of nineteen years, I went from hating a basketball player and calling him a villain to loving and respecting his hard work, parenting, and variety of passions. Kobe Bryant will not be remembered just because he was a great basketball player. He will be remembered because of his love for everything that life had to offer.
Rest In Power, Kobe Bean Bryant aka The Black Mamba.
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