How a city full of stars took a shine to Kobe
In the end, Kobe Bryant stood alone atop Los Angeles. He might remain there in perpetuity.
Over his 41 years, Bryant’s stubbornness, his smarts, his people’s willingness to forgive and mostly forget, his ability to torch bridges and build them anew and his athletic brilliance netted him five NBA championships, global recognition and, perhaps above all, the elusive and undying love of his adopted hometown.
In death – and it remains jarring to even consider this concept, even as each hour moves us further away from the Jan. 26 helicopter crash that killed Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others – that status will only be amplified as Bryant’s unreal set of accomplishments are frozen in time.
Bryant was so good at basketball that reality often sufficed as a compelling narrative. Yet as mourners continue encircling Staples Center, and Bryant’s highlight-reel loops prove more compelling television than the impeachment trial of the president of the United States, it’s clear the mythology of Kobe will transcend his considerable reality.
“We’re literally standing here heartbroken in the house that Kobe Bryant built,” Alicia Keys told a somber Grammys audience inside Staples on the night of his death. Heck, who among the crowd was going to correct her that Bryant wasn’t an NBA starter by 1998, when ground was broken on the arena?
Such is Kobe’s pull, massive in life, probably larger in death. It’s so strong that he might forever be the most recognizable figure for a Los Angeles Lakers franchise that counts Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and now LeBron James on its marquee.
It’s so strong that in a town that loves its stars, he stayed there and endured and, most important, won in a manner that exceeded Sandy Koufax, Wayne Gretzky, Clayton Kershaw, Marcus Allen or Reggie Bush – and reaped the accompanying adulation.
And it was strong enough to endure a first decade in L.A. that was filled with missteps ranging from personal to criminal.
Kobe arrived in 1996 as part of what we’ll call the post-Jordan influencers – prodigious athletes who grew up on MJ, idolized MJ, and in some cases managed to make every sound bite downright MJ-esque.
His fellow rookies in that Class of ’96, a couple of fellows named Derek Jeter and Tiger Woods, could bland any media member to death. Kobe had more charms – plus that gorgeous step-back jumper – but at 17 already seemed among the most calculating athletes of his time.
L.A. typically doesn’t eat that up – particularly when the competing force is a 330-pound multimedia star. Shaquille O’Neal was everything Kobe wasn’t – spontaneous, occasionally funny, apparently comfortable in his own skin.
By 2001, both players were feuding but managed to stay in their respective lanes to produce a second consecutive NBA championship.
At the resulting victory parade – which now seemed a birthright in the Shaq/Kobe era – O’Neal grabbed the microphone and freestyled his own version of the iconic 1988 rap hit “It Takes Two,” a nod to his and Bryant’s ability to make the dream work.
Yet it was Shaq imparting the message, while Kobe was left to awkwardly stroll the stage holding a squirt gun.
Isolation didn’t just come in the locker room. When Bryant, then 21, married Vanessa Laine in 2001, his parents were not there, father Joe disapproving of the union and leading to an estrangement that stretched on past the birth of their first daughter, Natalia.
It was a startling turn for a family that moved to L.A. to help a 17-year-old Bryant assimilate to NBA life.
“It’s not about basketball,” Bryant told the Los Angeles Times in May 2003. “It’s about having somebody to go to a ballfour game with. It’s about having somebody to hang out with. That’s what I miss.”
Just weeks later, Bryant, while in Colorado to undergo knee surgery, had a sexual encounter with a front-desk clerk that he would later claim was consensual. The woman told police she was raped, and Bryant was charged in July 2003 with first-degree sexual assault.
After nearly a year of pretrial discovery, the accuser eventually opted not to testify and charges were dropped; a civil suit resulted in an undisclosed settlement.
The incident in Eagle, Colorado, permanently and rightfully lost Bryant some number of supporters. The trade of O’Neal to Miami after the 2004 season was, for many Lakers fans, like watching their parents break up.
Kobe? He compartmentalized, per usual.
It took just three seasons in the wilderness before the personally rebranded “Mamba” got back to the Finals, this time with a new big man, Pau Gasol. They would win the next two championships, Bryant topping Shaq’s titles with five of his own, equaling even the great Magic Johnson.
Meanwhile, at that point in time, the NFL had been gone from L.A. for 16 seasons. The Dodgers were about to implode under the blundering of owner Frank McCourt. Bush’s Heisman Trophy was confiscated.
There was only one star in L.A.
He would churn on for six more All-Star seasons, seemingly relishing his role as sage as he branched into the multimedia sphere.
Bryant’s unsatisfactory reckoning with his sexual assault case would always leave a bitter taste. Yet, publicly, he was undeniably a present and doting father and advocate for women’s athletes worldwide.
His story contained so many chapters that those 21 or younger would have no recollection of his legal troubles, his beef with Shaq, his awkward early years. Those much older seem, largely, to have reconciled it all.
Particularly in his adopted hometown, where in death he will somehow grow even larger than his remarkable life.