Kobe Bryant Left us a year ago, as he knows how to do everything – in the most grandiose way possible. But he did not really leave. These are not just his highlights – after all, only this weekend marked the 15th anniversary of his 81-point game against Toronto, in April we will mark five years of retirement with the 60-point game against Utah, in early June we will mark 20 years of the 2000/01 championship season with the most dominant team , And in June we will mark 25 years since the day he was drafted – this is mainly the essence, the excellence, the commitment, to which many others “stuck”.
“The meaning of Mamba Mentalite is to try to be the best version of yourself, consistently. It’s a constant task, to try to be better today than you were yesterday,” he explained in 2016. That was his mentality, and it radiated to an entire world. A bit like in an epidemiological investigation where you try to locate contacts in retrospect, almost every time you shed light on a team, a game, an impressive performance by an athlete, you will find a little Kobe Bryant there.
Trust yourself more, even in one on five
To be Kobe Bryant was to be sure, most of all, that you were the best at everything. When others did not believe in you, you believed in yourself. When others believed in you, you always believed in yourself more. When others internalized that you had to throw 25 times in a game, Kobe, in an overtime loss against the Celtics in 2002 in which Shaquille O’Neal was absent, took 47 shots from the field, and missed 30 of them. When asked by reporters in the locker room, he explained without blinking: “I felt I had a better chance of scoring in one-on-five, than my teammates when they were completely free.” The friends actually scored a slightly better percentage that evening, but that did not interest Kobi. It did anger the friends. Kobe moved on.
This is not always a good feature. The people who least enjoy watching the NBA because of the “Hiro Bull”, the tendency of people to try to save the game on their own, may remember Kobe doing it time and time again – sometimes because he did not trust anyone, often because he always trusted himself. Kobe did not invent the method, but included it in the art class and during his career missed 14,481 regular-season shots, a gap of more than 1,000 following him (LeBron James, by the way, has a chance to break that “record” as well – he is far from Kobe 2,000 offenses). All 14,481 times, he was probably sure he would score the next shot. And all over the United States, children and adolescents have seen and learned.
Shane Batia, for example, was one of the few who managed to take advantage of this to his advantage. In an interview with the Sports Uncovered podcast last week, he recounted how he realized that his tactic, to hide players’ field of vision with the palm of his hand, worked against Kobe. Kobe, but what, refused to admit it, claiming he did not need to see the basket to score, because he had “Muscle Memory”. It has also happened after games of 2 of 16 from the field against one of the best guards in the league in the last two decades. Batia realized that any such mistake would spur Kobe to try again, and so he found himself “allowing” Kobe more and more shots – and misses – from half distance, the most ineffective shot in basketball.
The decline of the dictator, the rise of the mentor
Being Kobe Bryant in the early stages of his career, involved a consistent refusal to acknowledge that there could be someone better than you. He was demanding, one of the things he inherited from the man who always dreamed of being like him, Michael Jordan. It was not pleasant to watch. His body language showed many times contempt and contempt, his looks could have killed, and to some of his teammates it probably left quite a few traumas and scars. Brian Shaw, who played against Kobe’s father in the Italian league, played with the Lakers and then coached him, gave a pretty crazy example of this.
J.R. Ryder joined the Lakers in the summer of 2000, joining the new champions after a 19-point season per game in Atlanta. In one training session he challenged Kobe, threw him a small one. Kobe unequivocally informed him that the notebook was open and the account would be closed after the one-on-one training. “All the other players brought chairs to watch,” he said Shaw On the same podcast. “Kobe just murdered Ryder, and after he finished, he turned to all of us and asked, ‘Is there anyone else here who wants to try?'” No one tried.
Over the years, this demand has diminished. It also happened because of the rape trial and the complications in his personal life that forced him to change as a person, and also when Kobe eventually realized she was taking away from him the chance for more championships. He realized that you have to be better than you were yesterday as a person and not just as a player, also as a teammate and not just as a scorer, also in the locker room and not just on the floor. He realized that sometimes it was worth handing over the last ball. He began to trust others. And here, in parallel with the decline of Kobe the dictator, the rise of Kobe the mentor began.
Blue collar, no glamor and glory
Kobe may not have been the best at everything in the end, but he was really, really good at everything he did. Wednesday at all times in points, five championships, two MVP titles and another long, long list of titles. 20 seasons at the most glorious club in league history. One of the most significant mentors the league players have, if not the most important of them all. Then, when he retired, he won an Oscar, became the best Girl Dad there is, and promoted the WNBA and the best women’s sport there is.
Even as he was on his way down from the summit, he broadcast his effort to everyone. That they will learn. He showed everyone how many pairs of shoes should tear on the way to the top, and how you overcome each fall. “He taught me what hard work is,” he told me Harrison Page From the Silver Screen and Roll website, “If you have a job, you have to do it over and over again. When people talk about Los Angeles they talk about glamor and fame and Hollywood, but a lot of people have connected to its ‘blue-collar culture’, the struggle and difficulties of my life. Everyday. “
And enough people have learned, and internalized. More than we knew. It seeped into LeBron and Lianis Antocompo and Kyrie Irving and Kwai Leonard and Paul George and Jason Taitum and Trey Young. And to Russell Westbrook, who passed it on to Victor Oladipo and maybe pass it on to the young people of Washington, who will pass on the crazy work ethic, the pursuit of perfection. For the people who have ruled the league for the last decade and those who will rule it for the next decade. And it also permeated Ben McElmore, who was on his way out of the league, came to work for him at the academy and went back to being a legitimate rotation player in the NBA. With some he worked personally, including with dozens of players half a year before his death, in a camp whose rules were simple: no guests, no cameras, no social media, no sponsors, just basketball. To others, he gave advice or words of encouragement.
And it seeped out of the NBA. To Novak Djokovic and To Superstar Baseball Alex Rodriguez, Who called him “my secret coach” and to football player Richard Sherman, who received a phone call from him after he tore his Achilles, and to actresses Candice Parker, Joel Lloyd and Sabrina UNESCO. And from them it will permeate both others and others. Dozens and then hundreds and then thousands of athletes who will grow up with something of the crazy work ethic and uncompromising mentality of Kobe Bryant.
Make the world a better place
Some will remember the bad things from him. The offenses, the outbursts, the teammates he left injured, the act that ruined the life of a young woman at the same hotel in Colorado. It’s just that all of these, it seems, were pushed back with his death. He did not die of an illness or a seizure or even of corona – in most of the USA they did not yet know what corona was then. The disaster happened when he was with his eldest daughter Gianna, whom he taught everything, on his way to becoming three better basketball players, Which he took to get around the traffic jams and get there faster.
Kobe worked hard for the last 14 years of his life to push back the less good parts of his legacy, but those who took the torch after his death were his students and the people who inspired them, who themselves became revered athletes, and they are the ones who set the narrative. And it was his Los Angeles Lakers team that gave him the 17th championship with his agent as manager, adding a Hollywood twist. And there was also one, Michael Jordan, himself a superstar and tyrant and celeb and perfectionist at difficult levels, who gave a final stamp in the moving speech at Staples Center, at the memorial service.
And they are the ones who made Shana Pamper and Green Keith Taylor, presenters of The Grio’s Dear Culture podcast for the African-American population, open their last six-minute episode on Vice President Camela Harris, then cuddle for 25 minutes on Kobe, and how he made them understand that in every One day they have to worry about making the world a better place, thinking about what legacy they will leave behind.
Kobe Bryant was not a perfect player and certainly was not a perfect person, especially not in the first part of his career. Some will call him the greatest of them all, some will say that he is not one of the ten best players in history. But in the second part he was a more complete actor than in the first part, and in time he also became a better person than in the past, and with his death he became even more of a legend than he was in his life. And this, too, if you will, Mamba Mentaliti.
