Kobe Bryant, a Detroit Pistons perspective, and processing a legend

Kobe Bryant’s legacy is many things to many people. For a Detroit Pistons fan, his 2004 NBA Finals failure led to not fully appreciating his greatness.

Kobe Bryant‘s legacy meant different things to different people. For this Detroit Pistons fan, it led to serious thought about how our experiences inform our sports opinions and biases. The Kobe Bryant news hit everyone differently.

Many grieved. Others analyzed his legacy, good and bad. For me, the takeaway was how my experiences as a Pistons fan informed the way I perceived the legendary Los Angeles Lakers star.

As a kid growing up in southern Michigan in the early 1990s, Michael Jordan was everywhere. Before the advent of local stations showing 82 games per year, Sundays on NBC were the medium for most NBA viewing. Jordan’s Chicago Bulls were regular guests. Chicago’s WGN brought even more of His Airness.

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The exposure to Jordan and his inextricable relationship with the Detroit Pistons appealed to me as a young child. Years later, LeBron James similarly struggled in Detroit before breaking through and earning my respect. Kobe Bryant, however, never struck the same chord.

Yet, his death hit me hard.

As a lifelong basketball fan, I always appreciated his greatness on some level. His work ethic and journey to become such a complete player were legendary. But I just never appreciated him in the moment the way I did with other legends of the game.

So I spent several days examining my personal feelings towards Kobe.

Why did he not resonate with me in the same way as Michael and LeBron?

My formative experience with Kobe Bryant came during Detroit’s special championship run in 2004.

Entering the Finals, the Detroit Pistons were given little to no chance to win. Then the opening tip happened. Larry Brown left Ben Wallace and Elden Campbell on an island against Shaquille O’Neal. Detroit schemed to stop Kobe, and he shot a paltry 38.1 percent over five games.

The Pistons decided that there was no stopping Shaq. But they were going to do everything they could to make life difficult for Bryant. Tayshaun Prince and Richard Hamilton spent most of the time as his primary defender, but Detroit’s defensive success was much more complicated.

Kobe Bryant’s brilliance came in his ability to manipulate whatever technique you threw at him to your detriment.

In many ways, he was well before his time. Modern defenses require players to counter multiple schemes in order to be effective. Even elite scorers can be limited by the correct scheme. Counter those schemes consistently and your ceiling raises significantly.

Larry Brown fully appreciated Kobe’s vast skill set, as evidenced by his game plan. Teams often threw double- and triple-teams at Bryant, but doing so failed to fully respect his diversity. Kobe attacked obvious aggression because he could process what was coming and react. Brown took a more subtle approach.

Hamilton and Prince defended one-on-one along the perimeter, but once Kobe got anywhere near the paint, help came from a variety of directions. It rarely came in the form of a trap that would provide time to react. Rather, the Pistons helped from all angles. A surprising extra hand in the lane and late resistance from an unexpected source made life miserable for Bryant. Not knowing where the extra defender was coming from, he regularly forced shots and passed into lanes that weren’t as open as they appeared.

Despite the struggles, Kobe caused what Detroit Pistons fans lovingly refer to as a five-game sweep. Down three with ten seconds left, the Lakers needed a big play to avoid losing the first two games at home.

Enter: Kobe.

An inbound to Shaq and two passes later, he nailed a deep ball with Hamilton in his face.  Because that’s what he did. It didn’t matter that his previous four shots from behind the arc failed. Unprecedented confidence willed the ball through the hoop, forced overtime, and ended in the Lakers’ only win of the series. It was every bit of the confident “Kobe” shot kids were hitting in their bedrooms across the county.

It’s impossible to shake the feeling that came after Game 2.

It felt over. It was fun while it lasted, but Kobe had arrived.

Fortunately for Detroit fans, the Pistons rebounded both on and off the court and won the Finals in five games. But it’s a much easier viewing sixteen years later. Knowing the final result, you don’t need to worry that the legendary Laker was going to take over. But that threat could not have been more genuine in real-time.

When I processed Kobe’s death, I often thought about that period in my fandom. The one time his playoff aura threatened my favorite team, he failed. It didn’t happen often, but I never experienced the stinging defeat felt by Sacramento Kings, Portland Trail Blazers and Philadelphia 76ers fans. Michael was the legend of my formative basketball years. When Kobe arrived, my NBA biases were already forming. LeBron’s success came at a time when I was developing a stronger understanding of the game.

As a result, I was seemingly always on the other end of Kobe vs. X debates. Reflecting after the devastating recent news, I feel like I missed out.

Though I understood his legend, I never fully appreciated it. I fell in the same trap as many others. I focused too much on rankings and being right instead of just taking things as they were. Those obsessions blind us. They obfuscate how we process individuals, teams, and principles.

In the future, I will do my best to avoid those traps. And, for me, that will always be a small part of Kobe’s incredible legacy.