Not “Just an Athlete”
Sunday was a rare day in which I didn’t look at my phone right when I got up. I had a slower morning, spent chatting with a friend who was visiting and eating a real breakfast. I finally got around to checking my ESPN app around 11am. I check scores every morning, and if I’m being honest, probably too many times throughout every day. Sports for me are a reference point, something around which I tend to organize my thoughts and one of the lenses through which I see the world. I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t at least playing a sport, if not playing, coaching, and studying sport all at the same time. I have often been surprised by what scores and stories tell me about sports. I’ve been amazed, overjoyed, and amused; I’ve also been surprised, saddened, disappointed, and angered by what I’ve seen. And yet, Sunday was the first time I can remember being truly heartbroken.
The pain I felt – felt all day, and am still feeling – after reading about the very sudden, very tragic death of Kobe Bryant, his 13 year-old daughter, Gianna, and the 7 others on that helicopter, really took me by surprise. I didn’t know the Bryants or any of other people that died (and my heart goes out to all their families, equally); I only know that my lifelong passion for basketball began with Larry and Magic, grew with MJ and The Glide, and was both fueled and cemented by what for me was a golden era of hoops stardom that existed with the complicated, maddening, awe-inspiring on-court greatness of Kobe Bean Bryant at its epicenter. He was relentless, cunning, vicious, and brilliant on the court. He was called selfish and arrogant, and especially early on, it appeared that there was some truth there. But he also made the seemingly impossible look routine in a way that only a few athletes in the history of all sports have done. Over the course of the rest of this basketball season, there will be conversations, interviews, tributes, arguments, and SportsCenter specials on the career and life of Kobe Bryant, and I’ll watch and read them. Even so, I only know what his greatness, humanity, and legacy mean to me.
Kobe entered the NBA just as I was getting to high school. Middle school for me had been a trying time, and high school was a fresh start. I actually stopped playing organized basketball when I got to high school, but never stopped following the game and never lost my love for it. Having been born in Boston, I was a lifelong Celtics fan; then when we moved to Oregon, I semi-adopted the Blazers (Clyde Drexler was overshadowed by Michael Jordan for most of his career, but that guy was amazing). So, as a fan, I was loyal to the Lakers’ biggest rival and their biggest rival in the division. Needless to say, I wasn’t initially a fan of Kobe Bryant. However, it didn’t take a basketball genius to see that his game was special.
Throughout his 20 years in LA, he ripped out the hearts of other teams’ fans and players and coaches on a nightly basis (including mine) and he did it unapologetically and relentlessly with swagger and style. When we aren’t calling him by one of the coolest nicknames in the history of sports (even if it was self-given), we just use his first name, an honor reserved only for true legends; don’t tell me that you didn’t, at least once, chuck something into the trash and yell “Kobe!” He was frightening to watch if you were on the other side, and the ultimate confidence booster if you were on his. He made legitimate NBA basketball players – whole teams, really – look futile and silly seemingly at will, and he did it with a scowl, a sneer, but also often with a smile that let us in, even just a little bit, on the joy with which he devoted himself to his craft.
“The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.” – Kobe Bryant
I believe that one of the true measures of a human being is the way that they inspire the people around them, and in this - especially in the second half of his career - Kobe was unparalleled. To see this week’s outpouring of emotion, sadness, and love from players, coaches, media members, and fans across all sport and across the globe tells me that Kobe Bryant’s inspiration of others was truly immense, and that his measure was as great as we’ve seen in modern sports. He played with a fire, a relentlessness, a curiosity, a fullness, a single-mindedness, and a passion that was polarizing at times, but that also inspired two generations of athletes to push themselves to be great. Kids everywhere saw him and, like the generation before them that wanted to “be like Mike,” they wanted to be the Black Mamba. From LA to Italy to The Philippines to China, young athletes picked up basketballs and pushed themselves to new heights because of Kobe Bryant.
Perhaps even more impressive is how he influenced his peers and bent the game of basketball to his will. Like Jordan, Bird, and Magic before him, and like Wilt and Russell before them, Kobe was one of our generation’s foremost standard-bearers for basketball greatness. And, he was a human being like all of us, and so he was also much more, and less, than what we saw and perceived. Nobody is just one thing, and Kobe Bryant wasn’t just a basketball player. What we outside of someone’s inner circle see is only the outward manifestation of someone’s complex humanity, their values, their choices, and their spirit. We heard about, and saw the outward results of, Kobe’s legendary work ethic and competitiveness. But championships don’t define a person, despite our best efforts to reduce people to statistics (although Kobe’s stats are among the best ever). The thing is, while Kobe was undeniably one of the greatest ever to pick up a basketball, his legacy is complicated (I encourage you to read this ESPN piece written by Sarah Spain), and while the world is rightfully mourning his loss, it is also fair – imperative, I would argue – to acknowledge that Kobe Bryant was human, just like the rest of us.
In a 2016 interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Kobe said this: "We all say s--- that we shouldn't say. We all do things we shouldn't do. We all are angels. We are all devils." Kobe Bryant probably said some things he shouldn’t have said, and he definitely did some things he shouldn’t have done. It is disingenuous of us to look back on his life and legacy and skip over the darkness in favor of only remembering the light. As my shock and emotions begin to level out, I’m doing my best to remember that Kobe was neither angel nor devil, and he was both; like all of us, he was different things to different people.
Kobe Bryant was a philanthropist, an artist, a mentor, a seeker of knowledge, a practitioner of mindfulness, a connoisseur of languages, an advocate and ambassador for women’s basketball and basketball worldwide, a soccer fanatic, a storyteller, a teammate, a friend, a husband, and a loving father of four daughters. He was also the person who reportedly forced his way to the Lakers in the draft, who feuded incessantly with teammates that didn’t live up to his standards, the selfish gunner who berated teammates to tears, and an alleged rapist. See, what we often fail to understand about our idols is that they are not so different from us underneath the ways in which we make them out to be exceptional and spectacular (either good or bad). It is never as black and white as we want – or even sometimes need – it to be. What perhaps set Kobe apart was his willingness to acknowledge his mistakes, to seek self-improvement, to continually challenge himself to grow as a person, to change his perspective, to embrace his imperfections and failures and seek the knowledge that would allow him to change.
“Everything negative – pressure, challenge – is all an opportunity for me to rise.” – Kobe Bryant
Kobe understood one of the most powerful truths in sport and in life: It is that we are all flawed and exceptional, all make bad and good choices, all lose and win, and so are all together in everything we do. We all experience joy, and we all experience pain. I know that I’m not suffering as deeply or acutely or as devastatingly as Vanessa, Natalia, Bianka, and Capri Bryant. Not the way that Kobe’s former teammates and colleagues and the families and friends of the other people on that helicopter are suffering. And yet, I am also among literally millions - hundreds of millions? Billions? - of people whose lives Kobe Bryant touched in some small way. That goes beyond Kobe the athlete. That reach, that inspiration, is the measure of Kobe Bryant the man, and must also be included in his legacy as one of the most influential human beings of the early 21st Century.
It is incumbent upon us to understand the power in that reach, and for those of us that are aspiring and working and sweating and learning to find our own greatness, our own inner Mamba, our own rise after we get knocked down, our own opportunities to make mistakes and be forgiven, let’s remember that even the Kobe Bryants among us don’t do it alone. When our hearts hurt, and our minds can’t comprehend the tragedy and how we move forward, we need each other. Kobe once said that “the moment you give up is the moment you let someone else win.” So, let's reach out, reach down, reach up, and whatever challenges or pressure we face, we will face it – and rise – together.
Originally published on January 29, 2020