Kobe’s teen book series mixes basketball, magic
During the final training camp of Kobe Bryant’s NBA career, he had an idea for a teen book centered around basketball and magic.
In typical Mamba fashion, he dived headfirst into this idea by learning from the best. “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling gave him advice on world-building and a signed copy of a first-edition “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” which Bryant regards as “sacred stuff.” JJ Abrams, whose works include “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” installments, wondered aloud why nobody had thought of the concept before.
And George R.R. Martin, the author of “Game of Thrones,” told Bryant he was crazy.
“I said, ‘Bro, if you are telling me this is a crazy idea, we’re moving in the right direction,’ ” Bryant recalled, laughing.
“The Wizenard Series: Training Camp,” which is available for pre-order and will be released March 19, is the first book of a series involving a struggling inner-city basketball team. Like “Game of Thrones,” the book is told from the perspective of various people.
Unlike Martin’s series, each player in “The Wizenard” gets a full section that spans the same 10-day time frame during training camp. After one player’s storyline ends, the next section begins with a different teen back on the first day as the book shows their individual experiences in the same situations.
Bryant created the book in collaboration with author Wesley King, whose books often deal with fantasy and magic. King has written from perspectives of multiple characters in a single book and touched upon psychological topics including anxiety and depression.
“Really, as much as magic plays a part in ‘The Wizenard’ series … it was actually more about the characters and about sort of the gritty realism and getting in their heads,” King said.
Disguised as a book about basketball and magic, “The Wizenard” teaches lessons of compassion and confidence as the kids face their fears and learn about themselves beyond the game.
The series is based on Bryant’s experiences growing up on the court. The characters struggle to get by in an extremely low-income area called The Bottom. Only four players on the team own a basketball. It takes a month’s salary for some to get a decent pair of shoes. For many, basketball is seen as the only escape.
“The Bottom, for example, is an area in west Philadelphia where I wound up playing a lot of my basketball,” Bryant said. “I didn’t want to create a story where I’m just pulling stuff out of thin air. I wanted to base it off of experiences and things that I’ve seen and places that I’ve played.”
King traveled to Philadelphia as part of his research to spend time with local teams and talk to the kids, which formed a template for the story.
“It reflects the day-to-day reality of a ton of those people across the U.S.,” King said. “It gave us this really real look at these boys who were surviving and using basketball to try and be better.”
Each player develops through facing his own struggles. One works two jobs; some have absent parents. Every athlete holds a unique fear and struggles to properly communicate with teammates, which subsequently drives them down on the court and in life. Only by working through their fears can they become better athletes.
After all, the book is about basketball, with the majority of the plot taking place on the court. The coach, named Rolabi Wizenard, tells the players they can call him “Professor.”
“A lot of times, when people label themselves as coaches, coaches are just out there barking out orders, telling you what plays to run, scaring the crap out of you,” Bryant said. “As a professor, his job is to more just guide, mentor you, help you find your own way.”
As Rolabi teaches the kids to play basketball with his magical means, reallife athletes can take away the same lessons. Idioms such as creating a black hole on offense were taken almost literally, as players’ vision was largely removed and they had to find other ways to move the ball and get open.
At one point, the players stood on a crumbling mountain as they were forced to make a high-pressure shot.
“If you’re at practice and you’re approaching each shot, approach each play as if it is that mountain that may crumble, now you have that sense of significance and importance,” Bryant said. “You become accustomed to (it) so that when the game starts, you don’t have that nervousness, because you’ve been playing from the top of that mountain the whole time.”
For the kids in the Bottom, their possibility, and impossibility, of life was what they made of it and was based on their own perspectives, magical or not.
For teens who read this book, they might open their minds and find that what is possible isn’t prescribed by their situation.