In Pursuit of Excellence: Mamba Forever
I was busy texting my friends to meet up at a coffee shop before church. I was finally able to walk, the flu subsiding enough so that I might kinda become a normal person again.
My sister texted my brother and I. All it said was “did you hear about Kobe?!?!”
I was really confused. I knew LeBron had just passed him on the scoring list, but I also knew he had moved on to other endeavors since retiring. I spent half an hour scouring the internet in disbelief and shock, not wanting to believe it.
But I have to come clean about something.
I hated Kobe. Like, an intense kind of loathing I’m embarrassed to admit. He consistently beat the Blazers, not just in the 2000 Western Conference Finals (I was 8 years old yet it still broke my heart), but throughout his whole career.
It did go deeper though then him beating teams I rooted for. I didn’t like the way he carried himself both on and off the court. I hated when he put on the “Mamba face.” I thought it was ridiculous that all these analysts compared him to Michael Jordan. Honestly, I was very irritated about how deeply competitive he was.
Because I am deeply competitive too. Yet I wasn’t good at “being competitive” like he was.
The common denominator all these famous players, analysts, coaches, and celebrities share about Kobe and his career is how hard he worked. At everything.
T-Mac said Kobe once tricked him into relaxing in an offseason weekday while Kobe worked out himself to get an edge on his friend. His feud with Shaq is well known, and it’s pretty remarkable to think that a young twenty-something believed so strongly in himself he contended he was more important to the Lakers than one of the greatest big men to ever play. It is remembered, too, about several of the early games in his career where he shot multiple airballs and his passing was nonexistent. Even in the last game he ever played, he took 50 shots and missed over 50% of them. On his way to 60 points.
All these stories drove me nuts while he was alive, while he terrorized the league with his tenacity, his hunger, his passion, but, most of all, his heart. Yet all I ever saw was the pride. The selfishness. The many career losses and repeated personal failures. But I never saw the work. I never imagined the absurdity of fighting to become greater than the greatest to ever play. I never reflected about how after all the airballs, all the lost championships, all the doubters, all the personal mistakes, Kobe woke up everyday and worked to be Kobe. The greatest person Kobe overcame in his pursuit of excellence was Kobe.
I’ve written about it before, but my own personal basketball career was, in a word, disappointing. All up in my head and feelings, I never felt equipped to handle the intensity of competitive sports. Consistently in practice, however, I shot the best of all the players. Even the most athletic of jocks. This scrawny, lanky, Star Wars vintage t-shirt wearing dude could sink dozens of threes in a row. I did it for years in the driveway while no one was watching. It was the only way I could make them.
Without the lights. Without the pressure. Without thousands of people, millions even, rooting AGAINST me. Relishing any mistake, any airball, any moment of weakness.
But when the pressure turned on, and a few dozen people were watching, I lost it. My offensive flow was never fluid. I fell asleep on defense and got scored on many times. During that freshman year, I scored a grand total of four field goals. And after that year, I quit. My love for the game remained, the countless nights shooting hoops in my driveway never stopped. The shots I made, and the shots I missed, seen, felt, and experienced, only by me. And God too. But I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t overcome myself to make shots I knew I could make, and to make plays I knew I could make when others were watching.
Yet for Kobe, the airballs early in his career compelled him to swish later on the biggest stage. The doubting motivated him to accomplish. The people telling him he couldn’t only convinced him all the more that he could.
He believed in something greater than himself and greater than even his own abilities. Even while he was the best player in the league, he was the first person at the gym and the last one to leave. And as his body failed him and his tenure as one of the greatest to ever do it came to an end, it was his love for the game and his perpetual and lifelong pursuit of excellence that was remembered. And what will be remembered. Forever.
Whether a fan or a player, a mediocre amateur or one of the greatest to ever do it, so many of us love basketball. I believe it is the greatest sport. I love that one player can take over the game, willing his teammates to overcome and get the win, or the whole team can pull together to achieve a scrappy victory with a dozen unremarkable, unsexy plays. Athleticism is needed, and height is, honestly, very, very important to go far professionally, but finesse, precision, and an indomitable will is what’s most required on the biggest stage.
Thankfully, my “career” in basketball has become happier and more fulfilling as I’ve gotten older. Playing recreationally, at my beloved Laurelhurst Park, with an array of skilled and unskilled amateurs, I’ve had dozens of good games. Many times when the game was on the line, 10-10, or 19-20 or anything in between, and with both teams working hard but not too hard to win, I have called for the ball. I have rolled off a screen, dribbled around a screen, somehow gotten assistance from a bigger teammate with a “screen” of sorts, to get a sliver of an opening for a shot.
I’ve made the shot as often as I’ve missed it. Well… I’ve probably made it about 40% of the time, give or take a few percentage points. But what’s changed about my game has not been the result of a swish or an airball. What has changed is the belief within. When the game is close, and the hunger to win takes over, even to win a silly rec game filled with un-athletic, passionate novices, I believe I can take and make the shot. And even if I miss it, I want another chance to take it and to make it the next time. And the time after that.
This is the Mamba mentality. This is what made Kobe Bryant Kobe Bryant. What was so amazing is this unwavering, unfaltering, reckless belief in himself, his desire to defeat himself and all of his inner demons on the court, that inspired millions of people to love or hate him. Very few people felt casually about the man. His fire was so intense it was polarizing. Yet another Kobe “isms” of the many.
But this work, this passion, this heart he showed to the world inspired most if not all of the present NBA players, in particular the greatest players playing today. He was 6’6”, 200 and something pounds, and tailor suited athletically to become a good player in the NBA. But it was the work, the heart that never, ever gave up, which is now and will always be immortalized and recalled as one of the greatest ever.
I hated the player but now I love the man and what he stood for. He made many mistakes, including the incident in Colorado, but this unwavering belief in self extended to his dear Gigi. Who, according to many who knew her well, was just like her dad. Determined, unmoved, ridiculously assured of her skills, her potential, her heart.
I, among many who felt passionately about him, will never get a chance to meet him. But his mark on this simple game will never, ever be forgotten.
Mamba forever. Rest in peace #8, #24, and #2. Prayers to your wife and your three daughters, along with the seven other people who tragically lost their lives.