I learned early in life that we are more than our physical selves. If I could synchronize my mind and body towards the same point, something incredible would happen. You can bend light, time or the universe.
I started observing those who I believed had acquired that ability: Michael Jordan; Bruce Lee; Mikhail Baryshnikov, to name a few. I saw everyone of their moves in super slow motion. Similarly, I regarded Kobe Bryant in that same way.
Back then, before the internet and Instagram, Michael Jordan was “Must See TV”. After he left the game in the spring 2003, sports seemed bland. Tasteless. But after MJ came Kobe and I saw what happens when sheer will meets intension, skill and red hot intensity. Electricity. I was inspired!
Those were the days before “binge watching” and streaming. When something happened in the world, we all knew because we all saw it happen at the same time. It was more fun that way.
When Jordan played, his movements seemed to suck the oxygen out the air. You dared not exhale until the final whistle. Kobe engaged you in a contradictory way – he pushed oxygen back into your lungs. Air Jordan knocked the wind out of you. The Black Mamba made you catch your breath.
Michael Jordan and his artistry challenged you. “ When I step onto the court, I’m ready to play. If you’re going up against me, you better be ready (to play)”, he said to his opponents. “If you’re not going to compete, I will dominate you.” He didn’t care if he humiliated them in the process.
Kobe, who’s legendary style, movement patterns, work ethic and sense of dramatics, rivaled Michael’s. He too dominated his opponents but did so with joy. For Kobe, basketball was a chess match. Your mind and your body versus his. Whatever the outcome, it would be fun.
The Jordan and Kobe similarities were startling. The prodigy even mimicked his muses' speech cadence and tonality. But Kobe had his own uniqueness, though. His movements were languid. More like Superman when lost his cape. He teleported, seemingly. One moment he’s over here, the next moment somewhere else. And you’re set in time afterwards, grateful for instant replay, pondering how he got there without you noticing.
The way that Michael & Kobe played the game affected me. It was a different NBA game back then. If Magic made the league popular domestically and Jordan expanded it globally, Bryant propelled it into modernity with sheer will power. Something that he called "Mamba Mentality.”
Jerry West, (the silhouette in the NBA logo) GM of the Lakers when Kobe played, knew right away.
"To watch him work out, you saw the incredible skills that he had for a young kid," West once said. "I think the one thing that we all saw was that he had an immense desire to compete. I mean, he just didn’t want to stop competing, and in an hour workout, it was something to see. When he was done, he wanted to keep going." I admired that about him.
Kobe had spent his life painstakingly and meticulously extracting each strain of potential from his talents. The game coursed through his veins. His father and maternal uncle played in the NBA, too. Nature and nurture were on his side resulting in one beautiful, generational gift to basketball.
I know that I wasn't sitting there alone stunned on January 26th, 2020, scrolling through live tv channels to absorb every detail about his untimely death. There I was, texting friends, sitting in a daze.
In a grotesquely unfair twist of fate, the inseparable bond between Kobe and his daughter Gianna, made a devastating tragedy that much more incomprehensible. His death affected me very much the way his life in basketball did. Yet, I'm grateful that I got to experience the force-of-nature, named Kobe. Even now, after all of the eulogies have been written, I still can not process his death.
Thank you for all the lessons taught and learned, Kobe.
"When we are saying this cannot be accomplished, this cannot be done, then we are short-changing ourselves. My brain, it cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Because if I have to sit there and face myself and tell myself, 'You are a failure,' I think that is almost worse than dying."
Kobe Bryant