Love him or hate him, Kobe is remarkable
NBA will miss its brightest star
Try to imagine the NBA without Kobe Bryant. Go ahead, try. It will still be full of stars of all shapes and sizes — and all manner of personalities. It will still be a constellation, because it always is. It will go on, because there isn’t really another option.
But it will not be the same and may already not be the same. Late Friday night, Kobe Bryant was playing in the 1,459th game of his career, in the 54,031st minute, and he crumpled to the floor. He had already limped around on a hyperextended left knee, suffered in the first half, another on the list of injuries he had simply not deigned to accept. But then his Achilles snapped like a timing belt and that was that. He got up. He made the free throws.
“I love the fact he got up and made two free throws with a torn Achilles,” Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers would tell reporters a day later. “He is as tough a competitor that we’ve seen. Ever. He’ll be missed.”
The free throws tied another desperate flaming wreck of a Lakers game at 109 and Kobe walked off the court. Chauncey Billups is a tough customer and when he tore his Achilles last year, he left with his arms over the shoulders of two helpers. Kobe walked off alone. Of course he did. In this game, he was always going to die on his feet.
What was surprising wasn’t that his body finally broke, because bodies break. What was surprising was the accompanying sadness, shared by many, as his career was suddenly in question. Kobe has never been lovable in the traditional sense — at first, he tried too hard to be authentic, even copying Michael Jordan’s interview style, and he was always hard on teammates.
He could never hide his ambition and was willing to feud with the far more popular Shaquille O’Neal at the end of that Lakers dynasty. During the 2004 Finals, his teammates and coaches would talk in barely concealed code — we have to move the ball, they would all say — but Kobe couldn’t be anything other than what he was and the Lakers came apart.
Owner Jerry Buss still chose him over Shaq, though. Jerry was always smart.
And then, of course, there was Eagle, Colo. The arrest in the rape case occurred in July 2003 and it seems forgotten, buried under the weight of time and accomplishment. Bryant settled a civil case out of court after the criminal case was dropped, but not before there were fans in the stands wearing orange prison jumpsuits on the road, not before O.J. Simpson came to his defence on Fox News — “I have certainly in my life had girls come to the room and say ‘no’ or say whatever. When I was a kid growing up, just about every girl said ‘no’ once” — not before Kobe had to fly back and forth from court to playoff games, not before he once admitted, for probably the only time in his life, he was terrified. This year, he said the only thing in life he feared was bees.
She was 19, a hotel employee, anonymous. Almost nobody talks about that anymore and little girls wear Kobe jerseys in arenas across North America. They have for years. People forgot, or they just let it go.
Kobe the athlete was that powerful, his sway that strong. As an athlete — this is all related to that side of him and in no way is designed to minimize what happened in that Colorado hotel room — he has become one of the most admirable figures in sports, in his own flawed way.
He has been chasing Jordan, chasing nothing but pure greatness, in such a determined fashion that his weaknesses have become strengths. As Richard Ben Cramer once wrote, “Few men try for best ever and Ted Williams is one of those.”
The ambition, his drive, his stubbornness, his unforgiving nature, they all became recognized as the core of his greatness. He is 34 years old and has been great this season — not on defence, but in the midst of the Lakers’ star-studded Hindenburg of a season, Kobe has given everything. In his last seven games, he played 47:37, 47:04, 42:32, 47:20, 41:06 — that was a relatively comfortable eightpoint win — 48:00 and 44:54 before the Achilles snapped.
There has been a deep desperation to this season, a clock in his head.
Wednesday night in Portland, he delivered 47 points, eight rebounds, five assists, three steals, four blocks, a win. He is at 27.3 points, 5.6 assists, 6.0 rebounds and .463 shooting this season; by ad- justed field-goal percentage, which takes into account the extra value of three-pointers, it’s the best shooting season of his career.
Even if you hate him, it is impossible not to admire him as an athlete. There is nobody else like him playing today and only one other ever.
Maybe that’s where the sadness comes in, because once he leaves, the NBA will be missing that kind of pure sociopathic, cutthroat genius.
In late 2009, Kobe broke the index finger on his shooting hand, which to a shooter is like a concert violinist snapping a string, but he adjusted his shooting style so the ball was controlled by his middle finger and thumb. Reconstructing your shot in midseason is a miracle. The Lakers won the 2010 title.
The finger became arth- ritic. It aged faster than the rest of him, though German treatment on his knees gave him a little more lift. He said recently he thought he had five years left in him.
He will come back. He is 675 points and one ring behind Jordan. And what else could he do with his life?
But he may never be exactly the same — the same daring shotmaker, the same example of textbook footwork, the same do-or-die avatar of hero ball who needed every inch to get those shots off, whether they saved his team or doomed it. As his teammate Metta World Peace put it, “Not many people have a chance to fail.”
When the Lakers lost in Toronto this year, a dysfunctional mess, Kobe said, “Tried to push, just ran out of time.” Story of his season — and maybe what comes next.