All these years later: Kobe Bryant’s Impact

I never felt outside pressure. I knew what I wanted to accomplish, and I knew how much work it took to achieve those goals. I then put in the work and trusted in it. Besides, the expectations I placed on myself were higher than what anyone expected from me.

Kobe Bryant in his autobiographical craft-talk, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play, a book that peels back the curtain on what drove one of the sport’s most polarizing talents and the grueling attention to detail it took to achieve his on-court successes.

Defendant-appellant, JOHN DOE, appeals his conviction for trafficking in cocaine, a violation of R.C. 2925.03. He argues that his conviction is supported by insufficient evidence and is against the manifest weight of the evidence because the identification of appellant as the person who sold drugs at Children’s Hospital was wholly based upon the testimony of the undercover officer who had only a brief encounter with the person who sold the drugs.

From the case detailing my father’s appeal against the state of Ohio for his conviction.

I didn’t realize it growing up, but these two men are intricately linked for me. A largely absent father, both for reasons that were in his control and those that were not, and another who epitomized dedication to what he cared about. My relationships with both are conflicted.

Kobe’s life, much like my dad’s, was colored by his transgressions, but these weren’t problematic to a 14-year-old me. If anything, Kobe’s refusal to take his perception into account while he pursued greatness furthered my admiration with him. And I wanted my dad to be around, regardless of any past trespasses.

Kobe Bryant, on the other hand, was around. I consumed his games, training videos, and interviews, but not only was he around, he knew what he wanted to achieve, and he did whatever it took to achieve it. I don’t believe I’d have attended college without my idolization of him.

Of course, there are galaxies of difference between being a middling student at a private school and the best basketball player in the world. But in 2011 I’d just been cut from the basketball team and subsequently asked, “How are you bad at basketball, you’re black?” It registered as a reasonable question and expectation of me, and I didn’t have an answer. So, I practiced. As soon as the weather permitted, every day after school, I walked five minutes to Nelson Park and shot under the sun until the hunger pangs jabbed into my ribs and sweat clung my clothes to my skin. Then at home, I consumed as much basketball as I could. This included watching tutorial videos on YouTube, where I found, who else, but Kobe Bryant.

It didn’t take long to fall down the rabbit hole and learn that this was, without a doubt, the hardest-working player in the NBA. Here was someone who, through his own admission, was not as physically gifted as his contemporaries at the upper echelon of the sport. Look only at what legendary Lakers trainer, Gary Vitti, said about him as a podcast guest on Andrew Bernstein’s podcast Legends of Sport in 2019.

“He was talented, but what if I told you he wasn’t the most talented guy out there? I’m telling you, and I’ve had them all, there’s nothing really special about Kobe. I mean he’s a big guy, but he’s not that big. He was quick, but he’s not that quick. He’s fast, he wasn’t that fast. He was powerful, but he wasn’t that powerful. I mean, there were other players that had more talent than he did, so what was there about him that more talented players had zero rings and he ended up with five?”

The answer? He worked harder. Than everyone. The stories are well documented. Setting the tone for the 2008 Redeem Team with early workouts on less than three hours of sleep, followed my group workouts, followed by more individual ones. Completely revamping his shooting form after breaking his index finger in 2009, a process that required practices of 1000 made shots in order to mentally “download” the new software.

This is what I tried to emulate. That summer after getting cut, I woke up at 5 AM every day and walked to Far East Recreation Center. I remember it vividly, the cool morning walks, the dark, musty gym. I did everything I could to be like my idol. I worked on the one-dribble pulls relentlessly. Operating out of the triple threat. To this day, I love playing in the post (I’m a generous 5’9, 165). I exclusively wore his shoes when I played. I returned to school that fall in a “Kobe Fro.”

It wasn’t that Kobe was the only one to impart to me the value of hard work, or even the only example that I had. My mom was a single mother who always made sure we were secure. Countless teachers implored that if I applied myself, I could accomplish whatever I wanted to. My dad came home and turned his life around, and as glad as I was for him to be back, there was something about knowing the work Kobe put in, and then seeing it on the largest stage. And make no mistake, whatever today’s advanced statistics or efficiency-obsessed fans might say, Kobe Bryant’s work ethic made him a maestro.

There’s a tremendous YouTube channel, Thinking Basketball, that breaks down the sport in some really great ways. They have one series, Greatest Peaks, that examines some of the all-time greats at the heights of their careers. Their feature on Kobe does a tremendous job of highlighting his greatness in spite of his physical limitations. Take, for example, these heatmaps they offer comparing Kobe and LeBron’s shooting frequency and efficiency.

You can see where Lebron’s size and otherworldly athleticism allow him to not only attack the rim, but do so with devastating effectiveness (The redder the higher the field goal percentage, the larger the hexagon, the more shots attempted in that area.) Kobe compensated for this lack of athleticism by turning himself into a lethal scorer from every area. Unparalleled work ethic and meticulous attention to detail created a lethal scorer from everywhere on the floor. And the devil of his skill really is in the details. Look closely at the heatmaps, and you’ll notice LeBron has increased volume and efficiency from the left side of the court. This is true of nearly all right-handed players. Shooting is an art of balance. If you’re balanced, with your shoulders squarely aligned towards the basket, the greater the chance of your shot going in. When stepping into a shot on your dominant side, your natural dominance typically pulls your shoulders slightly in towards that side, throwing off alignment. When stepping into shots on your other side, you aren’t fighting against this because you have to stabilize and square yourself to get to a clean look.

Kobe didn’t have these concerns. He had the discipline and muscle memory to always square himself, instilled through endless hours of training. It sounds like a small thing, but in practice, it’s almost impossible to pull off at high volume, especially when you’re facing the other teams’ best defender night in and night out. Of course, this shot selection bled out his efficiency. A lot of those long 2s came out of doubles and at extraordinary angles, and as a result, he shot around league average on them. In today’s more optimized NBA, a significantly larger volume of these difficult shots would come from behind the 3pt line, and as we all know, 3 is worth more than 2.

But a trade-off of today’s optimization is that we’ve lost so much of the artistry that the Kobe Bryants and Michael Jordans mongered. As Hall of Fame Coach Gregg Popovich stated in 2018, “There’s no basketball anymore, no beauty in it”. It was in the razor-thin margins of preparation where Kobe carved out his edge, where he made the game beautiful.

And it was breathtakingly beautiful to watch in real time. My favorite on-court memory of Kobe is from a random March 8th regular season game, against my favorite team, no less, not long before the Achilles injury that ushered in the twilight of his career. I stayed up to watch it in spite of the West Coast start time. The Lakers had acquired Steve Nash and Dwight Howard the previous offseason and were severely underperforming to start the season. As only Kobe could, at 25-29, he guaranteed that the Lakers would make the postseason.

“It’s not a question of if we make the playoffs. We will. And when we get there, I have no fear of anyone — Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Denver… whoever. I have zero nervousness about that.”

He proceeded to go on one of the most ridiculous tears of his career to get the Lakers back into position. On that March 8th night, they were down 105-100 to the Raptors with 1:44 left in regulation. And he delivered miracle after miracle. Remember the difficulty with shooting pull-ups from your dominant side? Let’s add in a ball fake with the defender draped all over you.

BANG! 105-103.

31.7 seconds left. 107-103. Falling into the opponent’s bench on catch and shoot from the corner?

BANG! 107-106.

8.4 seconds left. 109-106. Right wing again? Ball fake again? Two defenders this time?

GET IT OUT THE NET! 109-109.

OT. 20 seconds left. 115-115. Double team? Triple Team? Your defenders sick of me.

HE’S ON THE RIM. 117—115. Ball game.

There’s not a second in any of these moments where he’s concerned with the “correct basketball play”. He knows that he is going to win this game. Because why wouldn’t he win the game? He’s not afraid of the moment. Why would he be? He works the hardest. He’s made these shots hundreds of thousands of times before. All that’s left is to make art.

The things he does in these clips require a level of self-assurance 99.9% of humans will never have. There’s a requisite level of arrogance required to take shots like those. There’s also an arrogance required by my father to risk his own freedom, when he had children who depended on him being present for them. But Kobe had every reason to be arrogant, right? And relative to my dad’s social cohort, he was making unfathomable amounts of money. I’m sure the adulation and the on-court successes warp the human ego. I’d imagine my dad’s financial gain did the same. How could they not? But life isn’t just basketball, and it’s not just money, and no matter who you are, you have to operate successfully within the same society as everyone else. In this endeavor, they loudly failed.

On July 18th, 2003, media outlets reported that the Eagle, Colorado, sheriff’s office had arrested Kobe Bryant for his involvement in the ongoing investigation of a sexual assault case. I was six years old in July 2003, so I don’t remember the public opinion, years before movements like #MeToo helped lend strength to victims’ voices, when he was allowed to continue playing basketball in the midst of legal proceedings. I don’t remember the victim’s identity being leaked, and her character being attacked. I don’t remember the criminal case being dropped and him sitting next to his wife, Vanessa, and apologizing prior to settling a civil suit. The Kobe Bryant that I knew was one who’d already successfully rehabilitated his image, as men with money and power are so often able to do. The father that I knew when he came home was not one I remembered choosing to jeopardize his children’s future, but one who was taken from me and finally given back. However, not remembering these things does nothing to diminish their reality. Realities in which my dad valued his own life above his kids’, and Kobe Bryant was credibly accused of raping a teenager.

One day, I don’t remember exactly when or what prompted it, I looked into the details of Kobe’s case myself. My takeaway at the time? Total innocence and exoneration. Whatever doubt his defense team hoped to sow with complications involving evidence and irregularities within the case worked on me extraordinarily. He was Kobe Bryant after all. How could he do something so abhorrent, and why would he need to?

Immediately following the death of him and 8 others, including his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, in a helicopter crash, I was iron-willed in my refusal to acknowledge that part of his legacy in any meaningful way. The most important male figure of my formative years was dead, where was anyone finding the gall to mention something he was not convicted of? In retrospect, it’s similar to how I was staunch that my father wasn’t a wrongdoer, but a stolen part of my life rightfully returned. But this isn’t real respect for my father, and fanatical deification isn’t reverence for Kobe Bryant. My dad was entirely at fault for his not being involved in the early part of my life. While from afar, Kobe instilled a work ethic in me that has allowed me to be successful where I otherwise would not have been, he also publicly conceded that he understood how a victim felt she did not consent to a sexual encounter with him.

By the nature of his being missing for so long, our family welcomed my dad back with nothing but gratefulness. For a long time, this gratitude tinted our interactions with him. When he provided for us in ways that others in our family had done for years, we were overjoyed. When my cousin, his nephew, who he lived with at the time, betrayed and abused me, I didn’t hold him to account for looking the other way to protect his living situation. It was convenient and felt good even to be nothing but appreciative of his return. The truth is that his absence blew up our lives, and after returning, he still came up short time after time.

Kobe’s talent, money, influence, and gender allowed him to regain nearly everything he’d nearly cost himself. He lost some endorsements, but competed in an NBA finals later that season, and would eventually rebrand as the “Black Mamba” and win 2 more. After his playing career ended, he championed the women’s game and peeled back the curtain around his personal life, revealing a doting and loving father and husband. His tragic death has further insulated him from the abhorrent ways in which he impacted others’ lives. It’s convenient to believe his apology was sincere and that he lived the rest of his life trying to atone and redeem himself. It’s unmistakably true that a young lady’s life was devastated because of the predatory actions of a man she’d previously admired.

Today, I’m greatly appreciative to have my dad in my life, and similarly so of the impact Kobe had on me. I also recognize that I cannot fall into the comforts of what’s convenient. We have to hold the people in our lives to account for the very real and tangible ways their decisions impact those around them. The same must be true of those with celebrity and status, and for how they wield those things on others and the world at large, be it athletes athletes to private-jet taking pop stars, or presidential candidates, no matter what they might mean to us personally. For me, that means acknowledging that an overwhelmingly positive force in my life was also a severely flawed person, plausibly accused of committing the most horrible of sins. It doesn’t mean harboring a resentment for my father, but it means recognizing his mistakes and allowing those mistakes to inform my perception of him. This honesty and toppling of idols is necessary not only to demand accountability from others but also to ensure we’re able to examine ourselves with the same clarity. If we do, perhaps we can be more aware of the ways in which are own decisions impact those both in and adjacent to our lives.

Qwame’s debut novel, The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now, and he thinks it’s great! If you enjoyed this article, it just might be worth your time to check that out as well.