Kobe SI Interview

Keyser Soze · Oct 17, 2013

Good read

"I have self-doubt," Bryant says. "I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I'm like, 'My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don't have it. I just want to chill.' We all have self-doubt. You don't deny it, but you also don't capitulate to it. You embrace it. You rise above it. ... I don't know how I'm going to come back from this injury. I don't know. Maybe I'll be horses---." He pauses, as if envisioning himself as an eighth man. "Then again, maybe I won't, because no matter what, my belief is that I'm going to figure it out. Maybe not this year or even next year, but I'm going to stay with it until I figure it out."

Summer of 1991 and Bryant enrolls in the Sonny Hill Community Involvement League in Philadelphia. He has spent the past seven years in Italy, where Jellybean was a pro, and nobody on the club circuit overseas could stop the kid. "Then I came back here, and in that first summer I didn't score a point," Bryant says. "I'm serious. Not one point. My dad was a Philly legend. My uncle [Chubby Cox] was a Philly legend. And I'm out there with these big ol' volleyball kneepads looking like the Cable Guy. I had really bad Osgood-Schlatter disease, so even tapping my knees gave me serious pain. The league was probably 25 games, and I didn't score a basket, a free throw, nothing. At the end I sobbed my eyes out." That fall Jellybean joins a team in Mulhouse, France. The Bryant family moves into a villa with a tennis court and a basketball hoop that's 11 feet high. "Whatever, it was a hoop," Bryant says. "I played there all day long, and the only thing I thought about was, One basket, one basket, one basket. Just score one basket. When I went back to Sonny Hill the next summer, I wasn't dominating anybody, but I scored. I figured out, If you keep pushing, you'll keep getting better."

Summer of 1994 and Bryant struggles to sleep in a dorm room at Fairleigh Dickinson in Hackensack, N.J. He has earned one of the precious spots at the Adidas-sponsored ABCD camp, but he's not sure if he belongs. "I was lucky to grow up in Italy at a time when basketball in America was getting f----- up with AAU shuffling players through on strength and athleticism," Bryant says. "I missed all that, and instead I was taught extreme fundamentals: footwork, footwork, footwork, how to create space, how to handle the ball, how to protect the ball, how to shoot the ball. I wasn't the strongest kid at that camp. I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the most athletic. I was probably the most skillful, but that didn't matter. It was all about the 360 windmill dunks.
"

Winter of 1996 and Lower Merion has a chance to win its first state championship in 53 years. Vaunted Chester High is waiting in the semifinals. "They'd already beaten us a couple of times with Kobe," Downer says. "The week of the game, our starters were competing pretty hard with the subs, and there was a collision diving for a loose ball. I look over and see Kobe lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. All your worst fears are realized in that moment. He's got a broken nose heading into one of the most electric games in a long time. We spent a couple days frantically trying to find a mask that would fit him. The day of the game, at the Palestra, he warmed up with the mask on. But in the locker room, right before we went out on the court, he ripped it off in front of everybody. He threw it against the wall and yelled, 'I'm not wearing this thing! Let's go to war!' He scored 39 points. We won."

"I went right back to L.A. and changed my whole weight training program. I had to start lifting during the season so what happened in Utah would never happen again." That summer Spike Lee begins filming He Got Game, a movie with Denzel Washington about a basketball prodigy named Jesus Shuttlesworth. "I want you to be part of it," Lee tells Bryant. "Thank you but no thank you," Bryant says. "This summer is too big for me." Ray Allen lands the role as Shuttlesworth.

Winter of 1999 and Bryant is bracing for his third straight season coming off the bench. "I was looking at Ray Allen and Allen Iverson, guys I came into the league with, who were already starting and kicking ass," Bryant says. "I'm sitting here on the bench thinking, I'm just as good. Why aren't I playing?" Jellybean puts similar questions to Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak, who explains the benefits of patience, but Jellybean's son is still years away from comprehending that concept. Bryant takes out his rage on the starters, punishing them in practice to prove a point. "I had to kick their ass every day," he says.

Bryant develops a penchant for dribbling through five defenders at a time, which earns him the nickname Hollywood. "That's not the name you want," cautions Lakers executive vice president Jerry West, so Bryant reduces his dribbling exhibitions and bolsters his midrange game. "On the team plane we had Shaquille O'Neal in the aisle doing the Macarena," says Del Harris, the coach of the Lakers at the time, "and Kobe watching tape of Jordan." Before the 1999 opener, small forward Rick Fox complains of sore feet because his shoe insoles don't fit properly. Bryant's days on the bench are over. No one calls him Hollywood anymore. "If I'd been allowed to start right away," he says, "who knows what would have happened to me."

Winter of 2001, Phil Jackson is the Lakers' coach, and Fox is addressing the team in a players-only meeting. "Kobe," he says, "you can do anything you want on the court, but it's like you don't need us. We want to feel like you need us." Bryant tries not to roll his eyes. You're grown-ass men, he thinks. And you're right: I don't f------ need you. Then he considers the courage it took for Fox to speak up. "I had to respond," Bryant says. "I had to be as transparent with them as they were with me. I opened myself up to let them know what my insecurities are. 'Sometimes I do shoot too much. It's not because I see you open and don't want to pass. I don't see you at all. My mind is built on scoring the ball. That's a weakness. So if you're open, say something. Give me a shout. ...' Once your culture becomes such that your leader communicates, then everybody does the same. We still didn't hang out together off the court, but on the road we'd all go out for dinner. I learned that a lot gets accomplished over dinner and a drink."

Summer of 2004 and news breaks that O'Neal has been traded to Miami. This is great! Bryant thinks, the end of a tumultuous year in which he feuded with O'Neal, nearly signed with the Clippers and made court appearances in Colorado for a sexual assault civil case that was later settled. "Then everything sinks in, and it's like, Oh, no, now you better win or your whole career is basically bulls---," Bryant says. "Those last three championships you won will be meaningless."

Summer of 2007 and O.J. Mayo, the No. 1 high school player in the country, attends the Kobe Basketball Academy at Loyola Marymount. Mayo asks Bryant if they can work out together. "Yeah," Bryant responds, "I'll pick you up at three." The next evening Mayo sees Bryant and asks, "Where were you?" Bryant looks confused. "Three in the morning," he says. "Not three in the afternoon." Mayo slinks away. The back-patting era, however long it lasted, is over. "I can't relate to lazy people," Bryant says, speaking generally, not about Mayo.

L.A. is about to be swept and Howard is about to leave for Houston, where he will forfeit $30 million and avoid discomfort. But Bryant is the rare modern athlete whose presence can transcend playoff results and free-agent decisions. Sometimes, just seeing him is enough. "The long year, the injuries, the Shaq stuff, the Phil stuff, it all came to a head when I walked out to the bench," says Bryant, who was serenaded with a standing ovation and MVP chants. "It was the first time I ever felt that kind of love from a crowd. Oh, my God, I was fighting back the tears."
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http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nba/news/20131016/kobe-bryant-lakers-si-cover-story/#ixzz2hxNymnaU

ferrari77 · Oct 18, 2013

You missed the Houston angle

Winter of 1983 and four-year-old Kobe Bryant signs up for karate classes at a dojo in Houston. His father, Joe (Jellybean) Bryant, is playing his final NBA season, for the Rockets. Kobe is on the fast track to a yellow belt. "One day, the master of the dojo came to me and said he wanted to put me up against a brown belt," Bryant says. "I started crying. I told the master, 'That kid is so much bigger than me. He's so much better than I am.' The master said, 'You fight him!' So I stepped onto the mat, with my headgear on, my shiny red gloves. Kids were sitting all around the perimeter. I was so freaked out. I got my ass kicked, but I did get a couple of good licks in myself, and I remember sitting there at the end thinking, It wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. It wasn't as bad as I imagined. I think I realized then that your mind can wander and come up with the worst, if you let it."
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supdudes · Oct 18, 2013

Repped. This is why I love Kobe.

LCAhmed · Oct 18, 2013

So Kobe knows what Capitulate means? Awesome for someone who didnt go to college.

Nook · Oct 18, 2013

Who gives a ****..... he is old and his team sucks.

supdudes · Oct 18, 2013

Nook said: ↑

Who gives a ****..... he is old and his team sucks.
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Who gives a **** about Bruce Lee...He's dead and he was never a Hollywood star.

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