Bryant immortalized in book
Perfectionist attitude extended beyond the basketball court
From the time Kobe Bryant was a just-out-of-high school basketball prodigy through his days as a global celebrity, a man by the name of Andrew D. Bernstein was there to chronicle it all with photographs.
Yet, it wasn’t until they collaborated on “The Mamba Mentality,” a best-selling book project, that Bernstein discovered that the thousand words each picture told the two men were expressed in distinctly different languages. The photographs spoke to the subject in a tongue few understood as well as Bryant: basketball fundamentals.
“Little did I know, honestly, until he and I started to do the book together, he told me that he used my photos, even as a kid, and as he started playing, he used my photos to study how players played, to study their moves, their expressions, how they were locked in,” Bernstein said by phone from Los Angeles, where he works for the NBA and as the Lakers official team photographer. “As we started editing photos to the book, he started showing me by breaking down, dissecting my photos.”
Bernstein, who has been shooting NBA action since 1983, discussed a photo of Bryant guarding Michael Jordan to show how Bryant dissected images to become a more complete basketball player.
“His caption describing that photo was about how he was doing everything wrong,” Berstein said. “So I look at the picture. Here’s a young Kobe, here’s his idol, they’re going mano a mano, pretty cool picture, great moment, right?” Wrong.
“He doesn’t look at it that way,” Bernstein said. “He looks at it as to what is he doing, what’s Michael doing, how’s he reacting to what Michael’s doing. How his feet are in the wrong place? His legs, his hips are pointed in the wrong direction. It was truly like being in a lab and having somebody dissect something right in front of you. It was a mind-blowing experience.”
And he was doing it an age much younger than the rest of us dissected a frog for the first and last time in a high school biology course.
“He told me that he did that going back to the posters that he had hanging, my posters of the greats, Bird, Magic, Dominique, Isaiah, the guys that he admired as a kid and a teenager, hanging up in his room,” Bernstein said. “He would look at those posters and not see just a cool action shot. He would see what’s going on, how is this guy interpreting the moment. That was incredibly mind-blowing to me. It was incredible.”
Bryant selected every photo in “Mamba Mentality,” and wrote every word.
“He was completely immersed. If you knew Kobe, Kobe didn’t do anything half-assed,” Bernstein said. “He went in full bore on everything, and his obsession was contagious. Kobe has a great quote: ‘If you’re not obsessed with what you do, we don’t speak the same language.’ I love that quote because I had to rise up to the challenge throughout my career of being as obsessed with my craft as he was with his craft.”
The result of two driven men among the best in the world at their basketball crafts collaborating is a book, published by Melcher Media, that reveals Bryant’s attention to detail.
In it, Bryant shares how he learned to gain an advantage against various NBA players and shares what he liked about players’ games, including many former Celtics.
Kobe writes about Tony Allen’s defense with a respect that borders on reverence. He said Allen “would foul every time and dare the refs to call it. … I loved that.”
Other Kobe revelations on Celtics: Legendary trash-talker Kevin Garnett divided the league into players who were rattled by the talk and those who were fueled by it. Garnett lumped Bryant into the latter category. Figuring out how to slow down Paul Pierce, who knew how to use both his bulk and length to his advantage, was no easy puzzle for Kobe to solve. The Heat’s Dwyane Wade gave Kobe trouble as well, so after he came up with a new strategy, he watched tape for an hour with big men on the team and showed them the whole key was for them to “hold him” for one more full second. Details.
Bryant shared what Bill Russell, the greatest of all basketball players, according to no lesser all-time great than Jordan himself, told him that stayed with him. Russell said most didn’t realize he was as good a dribbler and outside shooter as he was and he saw no reason to try to prove it. With Sam Jones available on his wing to shoot and Bob Cousy able to bring the ball up the court, why not let them do what they did best, what they did better than Russell?
Kobe’s respect for the giants of the game stretched for generations and was well captured in the book.
“The Mamba Mentality,” earned first place in the book/people category at the prestigious PX3 international photography awards in Paris, where Bernstein happened to be shooting an NBA game when the winners were announced.
Bernstein sent a text with the news to Bryant. His response: “Congrats to us.” Two days later, Bryant, his daughter Gigi, and seven others died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, on the way to Gigi’s basketball game.
“It was the last communication I had with him,” Bernstein said. “I’ll keep that text. I think I’ll probably take a screenshot, make a print, and frame it. … I can’t even get my head around what just happened.”
Kobe and Gigi Bryant will be memorialized today at Staples Center in Los Angeles.