We often praise grass-roots inspirational stories about single-parent families from slums, such as Allen Iverson and LeBron James, who have changed their destiny through sports. And when talking about Kobe, his middle and even elite background, his father’s basketball background, and his experience of multinational growth always make us feel that his success seems to be a natural success, all that is needed is a little diligence-therefore, we praise Kobe The most is always his diligence, such as the well-known story about four o’clock in the morning.
In fact, human sorrow and happiness are not connected. Although he doesn’t need to face the life of slums, and his childhood full of guns, gangs and drugs, Kobe naturally has his long-term pain and problems. Nearly a month after Kobe’s death and his memorial service has just been held, we want to use this video to take you back to Kobe Bryant’s short and glorious life, and try to take everyone to better understand his experience, his The predicament, and the legend he left us.
This article comes from WeChat public account: NorthPark (ID: northpark2018) , manuscript / narration: Kimura Takushu, video: pinch one side, head picture Source: IC photo
Philadelphia, the oldest city in the United States, Philadelphia in English, means brotherly love in Greek, Brotherly Love. Philadelphia got another name for the city of love.
However, in the last century’s industrial transformation and inappropriate urban governance, this city has gradually become one of the the most serious ethnic issues in the United States . Civil rights organizations (Philadelphia Civil Rights Rapid Response) and the Philadelphia Police Department have both given some amazing data on hate crimes. The 18-year-old black man was arrested by a store clerk for sitting at Starbucks without ordering a borrowed toilet, and 13 police were fired last year for posting racial hate speech on social networks, all in Philadelphia.
Kobe Bryant was born on August 23, 1978 in this city of friendship and hatred. Of course, he doesn’t encounter too many problems because of his race. After all, his father, Joe Bryant, is an NBA player who plays for the Philadelphia 76ers and earns two million dollars a year.
The year before Kobe ’s birth, the 76ers had “during the chaos” during the merger of the ABA and NBA leagues and obtained one of the ABA ’s most dominant players, “Dr. J” Julius Owen, Successfully scored 1977-year NBA Finals, but lost to the Portland Trail Blazers. This is Joe Bryant’s closest year to the NBA championship. After Bryant was born, Joe Bryant played another five seasons in the NBA as a role player, and then retired from the NBA to Italy to continue his basketball career.
In 1984, the year that David Stern took over as president of the NBA, the Kobes moved from the United States to Italy. They first settled in Rieti (Rieti) in central Italy, a small city with a population of more than 40,000, less than 100 kilometers from Rome . Two years later they moved to the small seaside town in the south, Reggio Calabria (Reggio di Calabria) , and then moved to northern Italy. Reggio Emilia (Reggio nell’Emilia) , a small city world-renowned for children’s education, is only two hours’ drive from Milan-in Here, Kobe became a fan of AC Milan. This is also the place where Bryant has the most sense of belonging in Italy, which he called the place where his dream began.
But unlike the United States, Italy is a relatively ethnic country, with more than 92% of its residents being Italian. The Kobes don’t know Italian and don’t have much local connections. Bryant mentioned in several interviews that in his life in Italy, he has few black children like himself. This experience made him mature earlier than his peers because he needed to grow up quickly to overcome all the problems a black American child might encounter in Italy.
In order to make children feel more at home, the Bryants tried everything. There were also some retired NBA players playing in the Italian basketball league at that time, and parents would work hard to arrange some parties for the children to play together. Among them was Harvey Keggins, who had also been with the 76ers. His daughter was only one year younger than Kobe. His name was Tamika Keggins, and he became one of the greatest female basketball players in WNBA history. One. Tamika and Kobe became playmates in Italy when they were a few years old, and no one expected that they would become such great two basketball players in the future.
In Italy, Bryant relied on the NBA game tapes that Grandpa sent back from the United States. The NBA in the 1980s belonged to the Lakers who won the championship in 9.5 years. Kobe became a Lakers fan when he was a teenager. And in the summer offseasonJoe Bryant will take the family back to the United States, specifically looking for some youth summer games for Bryant to practice.
With the end of Joe Bryant’s basketball career, the Kobes moved back to the United States in the eighth grade. Bryant returned to Philadelphia and enrolled in Raul Merion’s (Lower Merion) High School in 1992.
But for 14-year-old Kobe, his hometown is a bit strange to him. From sensible to adolescent, Bryant grew up in Italy. He speaks Italian well, but rather English. Several times during the class, the teacher named him to answer the question, and he couldn’t even read the textbook smoothly. Black children have their own unique slang system, and Kobe can hardly integrate. Things like this happen from time to time.
Identity issues have always been with young Kobe. After moving to Italy at the age of 6, he was the only American child in life, a black child. But when he returned to Philadelphia at the age of 14, he became a “foreigner” who did not understand the local culture and had a strange Italian accent. Spike Lee Spike Lee once took an interview with Kobe and Tamika. The title of the film was “Italian Imports”, and they talked about the long-term influence of their cross-border growth experience on them.
In Kobe’s subsequent life, we will see how much he has done to integrate into the black American community. But now, what makes this teenager feel safest is not anyone else, but basketball.
After entering high school, Kobe was selected and started in the varsity from high school, and scored a record 2883 points in the next four years of varsity career. The rookie Kobe was first noticed by the media in a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer in December 1992. The reporter wrote, “Remember this child, Kobe Bryant, 6’4”, 14-year-old Gao Sheng, Job Ryante’s son. He can not only score in college basketball, but also starter. “
For four years in high school, Kobe has played almost all the large competitions and training camps that high school students inside and outside school can play. In 1995, Joe Bryant found the “Godfather of Sneakers” Sony Vaccaro (Sonny Vaccaro) . This legendary sports marketer helped Nike to sign Jordan’s first shoe contract that year and laid down the Air Jordan brand legend for decades to come. At the time, he had left Nike, worked for Adidas, and founded Adidas ABCD C.amp training camp to help the company find young players.
Joe Bryant finds Vaccaro and convinces the opponent to let Kobe play at ABCD Camp. Kobe then became the MVP of the camp in 1995. Kobe’s performance conquered many scouts and brands, laying the foundation for signing a six-year Adi shoe contract after graduating from high school, and skipping college to go directly to the NBA.
After his popularity rose, although he has not yet officially entered the NBA, Bryant has begun to behave like other young athletes. He signed business endorsements and made several sitcoms. And, at the high school graduation ball in May of 1996, he took the popular actress Brandy Norwood-know that at this time he has not participated in the NBA Draft. Since both were under 18 at the time, Bryant was able to make an appointment with Brandy with the permission of Brandy’s mother. A large number of local media heard of the news, and they were waiting outside of school waiting for Kobe and his dance partner. This almost ruined the graduation ball of the classmates. No one wanted their graduation ball to become a carnival of two little stars and a bunch of entertainment media.
In the summer after the graduation ball, through the operation of the brokerage team, the Kobe team successfully eliminated the idea of Kobe being selected by the high-ranking teams in advance. Basketball reporter Jonathan Abrams wrote a “Boys Among Men” in 2016, which mentioned the measures taken by the agent team, including preventing some intentional teams from approaching and training Kobe, and even threatening to be infinitely close to choosing Kobe. The Nets “If you choose Kobe, Kobe will return to Italy to play.” In the end, Kobe was drafted by the Charlotte Hornets in the 13th overall and was traded to the Lakers after two weeks of operation.
Everything points to the perfect story of a teenager’s fame. Until Kobe really stepped into his dream NBA arena.
Good teammates, bad teammates
In January 1997, sports writer Pat Jordan published an article in the New York Times titled “How Do You Like the NBA Now, Kobe Bryant?” which recorded what he observed as a Lakers game day: in the afternoon, Guests of the Lakers in Milwaukee enjoyed the city’s famous afternoon tea meals in the hotel lobby, surrounded by beautiful fans, while rookie Kobe ate lunch in the room alone; in the evening games, Bryant spent most of the night sitting on the bench Watching his rookie Ray Allen shine in the same session, but he only got a few pointsZhong’s playing time, not a point.
This is a classic epitome of rookie season. At the game, the silver fox Harris, then the Lakers’ head coach, did not seem to appreciate this confident young man. Kobe played a bench for two seasons. In the first season, he only had 15 minutes of playing time. He even doubted whether it was a correct decision to skip college. In an interview with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on Kobe Bryant ’s ALL THE SMOKE program earlier this year, he also mentioned that the coach’s approach made him feel “not really fair”.
The problems on the field began to be resolved with the arrival of Phil Jackson, and the problems outside the field seemed a bit more difficult. A column from Newsweek 98 made the title very accurate-“KOBE GOES IT ALONE”. Kobe’s competition would have made him intolerant of the hectic team atmosphere and unwilling to focus time and energy on interpersonal relationships. When O’Neal recently recalled Kobe’s interesting facts, he mentioned that when the team was in a meeting, rookie Kobe would be alone in the corner, and no one would simulate all kinds of dribbling and shooting actions at full speed, sweating, and talking to himself — —The point is that he doesn’t even have a ball in his hand.
Kobe is like the best performer in the class but the behavior is weird. As his classmate, you admire him, but it is difficult to like him . And as the performance of the transferred school bully gets better and better, the disagreement between him and the old monitor O’Neal gradually emerged. In the 1998 shutdown season, the season when Kobe began to play the main force, Bryant and O’Neal even really started a fight.
The tension with O’Neal has been repaired as the two have grown older and have reached the end of their careers. But how to achieve the ideal mode of getting along with his teammates has been a matter of exploration in Bryant’s career.
As we all know, 03 ~ 04 was the darkest year of Kobe’s career. After the Eagle County incident, his reputation fell to the bottom of the valley, fans were disappointed with him, and brand ambassadors broke off with him. The problem between him and O’Neal expanded, and the Lakers’ management made a choice of two. After his coach Phil Jackson left the Lakers, he wrote an entire book about Kobe Bryant. In addition, Kobe will spend a lot of time regaining the trust of the family-for example, after that year, we first saw Kobe Bryant has a tattoo on his right arm. (Image of Kobe’s wife and butterfly) .
In this more than ten-month period, Bryant has done several things. He gave himself the nickname of the female killer in “Kill Bill”It is called Black Mamba, so as to isolate the noise outside the stadium, load his most fierce and combative emotions into this personality, go to the stadium, and calm himself with the purest and most engaged competition.
Off the court, he seems to be rethinking how he and others, especially the team, get along. However, it seems that your branch did not change his style in the end.
In the famous Bryant and Smush Parker ’s beef in 2012, Smash, who had been with the Lakers for two years from 2005 to 2007, said that he felt that Bryant was an extremely bad teammate. I like Kobe’s character and the way he treats other people. He said he couldn’t stay with the Lakers because he didn’t want to be a “lick dog” and said that the Los Angeles Lakers should be renamed Los Angelas Bryant. He also told a story many times: once he tried to chat with Kobe about something other than basketball during training. Kobe told him with a stern face that before you get more results to prove yourself, you are not qualified to me speak.
The indifference and cruelty Kobe treats his teammates has always been an enduring and interesting topic outside the stadium . The Lakers’ famous magician Johnson has discussed leadership issues with renowned basketball journalist and writer Bill Simmons in previous years. The magician thinks that there are four ways for a player to lead a team. The first is example by example, the second is intimidation, the third is communication, and the fourth is any combination of the above three.
Kobe should have hovered between several. After years of leading the team alone, Kobe seems to have begun to strengthen communication with the team. He mentioned on a phone call with Bill Simmons that after the Lakers traded to Gasol in 2008 and the lineup was neat, he had tried to have a good relationship with the team and become a close brother on the team to take care of everyone’s emotion , Doing everything his haters thought he couldn’t do. But that year the Lakers Finals suffered a 4-2 defeat to the rival Boston Celtics. Bryant spent a summer reflecting on what went wrong, and finally judged that the Lakers failed not hard enough or tough enough.
He adjusted his leadership style and changed back to the bad guy in training and in front of the media. Next, the Lakers won the championship for two consecutive years.
It’s hard to say whether Kobe’s transition to Bill Simmons’s own leadership style is really the decisive variable that determines the Lakers’ two consecutive championships.I have clearly believed in this. Later in the 2012 Smarsh incident, Kobe wrote a famous confession letter on facebook. He said: “Leadership is responsibility”, “Sometimes you need to prioritize the success of your team to a higher position than you have shown a good personal image. You need to find a way to wake your teammates Real beasts, whether they will hate you for this or not. This is more important than passing more balls to them or making them feel comfortable. I want to be a winner rather than a good teammate. “
This seems to be the tenet of Kobe’s life.
World, Times
Since James joined the league in 2003, in the next few years, whether the active player is Kobe or LeBron has become the biggest debate in the NBA and even the entire American sports. On scoring ability, personal honor, record, and Kobe’s victory; on data other than scoring, audience fate, background of origin, and participation in social topics, LeBron’s slum origin is more appealing to the black community. If you have been to some foreign chat rooms at that time, many netizens opened their mouths to “Kobe or Lebron”? This is to identify whether the other party is “own”.
In February 2008, the editor of Sports Media BR could n’t stand it. He wrote an article mentioning that I really had enough arguments between Kobe and LeBron. I got up and went online to compare his double-digit articles. both. But half a year later, the Beijing Olympic Games ended the topic briefly.
First of all, in the 08 team in the United States, Kobe set up a role model and leadership ability with almost no doubt. Secondly, In this growing NBA ’s second largest market in the world, there is no basketball player, except Yao Ming, who can match the popularity of Kobe. At the opening ceremony, after the lens was shot through Nadal and Federer, which are also the best athletes on the planet, Kobe was shot and the whole bird’s nest was boiling instantly.
Every NBA star selected for the U.S. national team feels like they should be a wrist until they find Kobe’s popularity in China.
In 2009, the Wall Street Journal published an article with a title mentioning “Kobe conquers China.” The first sentence at the beginning was “China’s love for Kobe is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of contemporary sports.”
The phenomenon of Kobe in China is actually understandable. Kobe’s family moved to Italy in 1984In that year, David Stern became president of the NBA. Over the next three decades, Stern did a lot of things. The most important thing was to take advantage of the global wind to promote the NBA to the world, especially China after the reform and opening up. In 89, he came to Beijing and waited 40 minutes in the CCTV building to see the story of the person in charge of the show. Now the fans have talked about it. Under his impetus, Yao Ming successfully landed in the NBA in 2002. Starting in 2004, the NBA hosted Chinese games, which made China the NBA’s largest overseas market outside of the United States.
After Jordan’s second retirement, the NBA desperately needs a star who can compete with Jordan in terms of ability and image as a facade. Kobe was born out of nowhere.
In the early 21st century, China’s Internet industry developed rapidly. We had fan forums like ilovekobe long ago, and a few years later we were able to follow the NBA games through live broadcast on feature phones while attending school and work. Later, the rapid popularization of mobile Internet and smart phones, and the rapid rise of Chinese video websites, made almost every Chinese person easily accessible to NBA games. To some extent, Kobe is the first NBA star that the Chinese have known since the Internet.
Maybe thanks to his multinational growth experience, Kobe and his team also noticed the potential of China in a timely manner. In fact, he visited Beijing as early as 2001, climbed the Great Wall, and showed a few hands on the Great Wall. He has been to China more than ten times since then. He interacted with Zhang Ziyi, took Sprite advertisements with Jay Chou, and interviewed by Shang Weiping Bryant. He even taught his daughter Gigi Chinese.
China also gives Kobe an unparalleled love and respect. His jersey has dominated China’s NBA jersey sales for many years, even late in his career.
Kobe has said that China is his second home on many occasions-of course, you also said so in Italy. Italy is the city he has lived in, and China is just the place where he comes to participate in activities every summer. But I still believe that Kobe’s love for China is sincere.
As we mentioned earlier, Kobe’s early experiences of transnational growth brought a different perspective to Kobe, but also planted seeds for him on issues of identity and cultural belonging. After returning from Italy, he almost had to learn languages and culture again in order to communicate with classmates and friends around him. In the 2014 New Yorker’s special feature “Kobe Bryant’s fourth quarter: a long and painful farewell,” the reporter wrote that Kobe will still ponder the experience of that time. Bryant mentioned, “Kids are cruel, It ’s always been hard “, children are cruel, and life was always difficult at that time.
Kobe, like other blacks, sees Bruce Lee as an idol and also tries to make rap music. But we can obviously feel that compared to other black stars, his cultural interest in these black ethnic groups is actually not high.
This ethnic and cultural dislocation erupted after the New Yorker article was published in 2014. Prior to that, the 17-year-old black teen boy, Trayvon Martin, was shot dead by police because of “suspected whereabouts”, which aroused the anger of the black community across the country over police enforcement issues. LeBron James took a photo of the Heat team, everyone They all wore a dark sweater that symbolized support for Trayvon. A New Yorker reporter wrote that when he wanted to discuss with James Kobe ’s active solidarity with public affairs, Bryant said, “I wo n’t support or oppose anything because I am black. Is it true that society and culture want to advance to a higher level? It should be like this. “This remark caused a great uproar. The black group believed that Kobe was excessively ruthless and did not have a sufficient understanding of the structural difficulties encountered by the black group. Some black opinion leaders even called on young people to boycott Kobe.
Kobe later explained on Twitter that his remarks were misunderstood, and that he was referring to the general case, not to Trayvon. Specific to this matter, he also thought that Trayvon had been mistreated. A few months later, he went to work with Trayvon’s parents to participate in a lecture about the event.
The Jim Brown incident, the Trayvon Martin incident, and things like this are constantly emerging in Kobe’s career. In fact, when talking about whether Kobe can rival Jordan, one of the most frequently criticized words is that he does not have unparalleled cultural influence like Jordan, and does not seem to be as willing as LeBron James. Black culture, black community platform.
None of us is Kobe, and none of us can substitute for a diligent and excellent great black athlete who is treated differently just because of his own growth experience. We also don’t know how much Kobe has endured because of issues of identity and cultural belonging. When teenager James shook his head while listening to hip hop music on the street, teenager Bryant did sit in an Italian classroom to learn the Latin version of Homer’s epic. Can we condemn him? Good origin should not be the original sin of black athletes.
Kobe was questioned because of its transnational growth and cultural background, and also benefited from the cross-border exchanges brought about by the tide of globalization. More importantly, He inspired countless young people across time zones, across cultures, across national borders, and across races. Sometimes I still think that the love and respect Kobe Bryant has gained among his global fans, especially those from far east, may make up for some of his regrets about belonging. This is why, I believe he was serious when Kobe said he regarded China as home away from home.
Fortunately, in recent years, we can see that the previous doubts about Kobe are decreasing. Because of his second daughter Gigi’s love of basketball, Kobe became one of the biggest spokespersons and promoters of women’s basketball. He devoted himself to writing, and is committed to providing teenagers with more valuable juvenile literature, not fast food novels. After retiring from basketball, he devoted his time to almost everything he thought was of public value. Kobe, who had his lower teeth exposed and tried his best to make him look like a wicked man, was gone, replaced by the extremely peaceful and loving family man Kobe. He may even reconcile with his parents who have always been upset-Bryant’s father’s old friend Wayne Slappy mentioned in a recent interview that he saw Kobe and his father hugging each other at a training camp a while ago.
However, tragedy happened at the best time.
Everyone has a reason to commemorate Kobe. I am an old “Kami” who has watched the Lakers game from the three consecutive championships. I have a picture of 10,000 Kobe shooting in my mind. But when the recent bad news happened, I reviewed his career over and over again, and I found out that his story is not just a story of a basketball player’s pursuit of excellence; it is how a person can deal with the problems that bother him and time and time again Overcome, constantly improve yourself, and ultimately achieve a great personality.
The best way for us fans to remember Kobe is to inherit his spirit and live.
This article is from WeChat public account: North Park (ID: northpark2018) , manuscript / Narrator: Takushu Kimura, video: pinch one side