Itâs just after 11 p.m. on what couldnât be more than an ordinary day. Kobe Bryant sits in the Los Angeles Lakersâ locker room gently lacing up his signature shoes. Dressed in sweatpants and a Nike long sleeve T-shirt, Bryant walks into the weight room. Listening to nothing but silence, Bryant is alone, save for the camera crew. At this point, theyâre invisible to him.
My brain cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Because if I have to sit there and face myself and tell myself, âYou are a failure,â thatâs almost worse than death.
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Leg presses, calf raises, weighted calf raises, Bryant mercilessly works his body at an hour where most are asleep or at home with their loved ones. Such was the life of rehabbing a torn Achilles.
Though this routine appears only once in his documentary Muse, itâs hard to imagine Bryant not doing this every night he could.
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More than a year of rehab later, Bryant was back on the court, setting the NBA record for most missed shots in a career, and more significantly, passing Michael Jordan for third on the NBAâs all-time scoring list in the form of a free throw, the same way he scored his first point in the league.
Kobe Bryant is a dramatist of sorts. His flare for the dramatic and his win-or-die attitude were perfectly summed up in Museâs final words:
âMy brain cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Because if I have to sit there and face myself and tell myself, âYou are a failure,â thatâs almost worse than death.â
But itâs not just image-generated drama that Kobe Bryant lives off, itâs the drama generated from his narrative of greatness, his story. And in this coming season, we may very well witness Kobeâs final chapter on the basketball court.
Though I watched Michael Jordan and was alive for some of his greatest moments, much of his career, especially his scoring and athletic prime, was before my time.
Kobe Bryant is my Michael Jordan.
For many people, their Jordan is LeBron James. But, for me, it wasnât just the fact that Kobe mimicked much of Jordanâs game (in reality, he only mimicked the moves of the 1996-98 version of Jordan; Bryant never had younger MJâs athleticism or style of play).
It was the fact that Kobe gave his heart and soul every night on the court, it was the fact that after every offseason, he seemed to come back with something new in his arsenal, it was the fact that despite every on-the-court or off-the-court issue in his career, he never stopped trying.
Because I want to see if I can.
Kobe always seemed so human. Jordan and LeBron are supremely athletic deities, built like Greek gods and gifted with athleticism that would surely translate to any sport. Itâs not to say Kobe wasnât athletic; he definitely was elite in every facet of athleticism in his younger days, itâs just that he never seemed to rely on it too heavily.
All of his moves, even when he was young, were so skillful, so pure, as if he was playing basketball the way it was meant to be played. And now, in his final days, skill is almost all he has.
After sitting out most of last season with a torn rotator cuff, health and age are major concerns for the Laker legend. Last season Bryant played 35 games, averaging 22.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game on horrendous shooting splits of 37 percent from the field and 29 percent from deep.
Many thought it was over, that Bryant was no longer the player he once was. And itâs true to some extent. Kobe has limitations that he simply cannot overcome, as much as he tries. Perhaps thatâs why LeBron and Jordan have always looked so immortal, any limitation theyâve ever had has been shored up by their impressive physique or durability. Kobe no longer has either of those.
More than that, Bryant finds himself on an, at best, middling Lakersâ team with nothing more than an outside shot at the eighth seed in a fiercely competitive Western Conference. He is surrounded with mostly unproven youth in Jordan Clarkson, DâAngelo Russell and Julius Randle and media-beleaguered veterans in Nick Young, Lou Williams and Roy Hibbert.
It almost seems a disservice to both him as a player and a dramatist to surround him with such a lackluster cast for what could be his final performance. But part of it also couldnât have been scripted any better.
In âKobe: The Interviewâ, he discusses exactly why heâs attempting to rehab his torn rotator cuff and get himself back to full health: âBecause I want to see if I can.â
For Kobe Bryant, weâve seen him turn âif I canâ into âI just didâ time and time again.
He scored 62 points to the Dallas Mavericksâ 61 in just three quarters.
He scored 81 points in a single game.
He went to three straight Finals as âthe manâ and won back-to-back titles after so many people said he would never win without Shaquille OâNeal.
He singlehandedly willed the Lakers to the playoffs in 2012-13 before ultimately succumbing to his Achillesâ injury.
Blue Man Hoop
He has done so much over the course of his career, and itâs sad to see it coming to an end. I know Iâll be devastated when number 24 hangs it up for good. Because it wonât just be about an all-time great retiring. It wonât just be about my Michael Jordan never suiting up again.
Itâll also be about a man who has lived his NBA life constantly seeing if he can, a man who has spent more of his life in the league than out of it, finally admitting that he canât.
And yet, before that day comes, we still have this last chapter, however long or short it may be. A playoff berth with this supporting cast would be the icing on the cake of a storied career. Yes, it is unlikely, and the odds are definitely stacked against Kobe and the Lakers in every sense of the phrase.
But now itâs our turn, Kobe. We want to see if you can.
For all your doubters, there are still believers, believers in your fire, in your pure competitive will, something that doesnât even make any logical sense or show up on a stat sheet. And even though that flame is fading, there is also still hope, for a candle burns brightest at the end of its wick.
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