Kobe Bryant was destined for greatness.
Destiny, though, means squat if you’re not willing to work. From an early age, Bryant knew he would be one of basketball’s megastars and worked relentlessly to achieve that goal.
It’s those early years Mike Sielski chronicles in “The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality.” The NBA games have been dissected, and Bryant has been heralded in many volumes. This book, though, goes into granular details of high school games, influential coaches and paints a complete picture of a boy, teen, and young man.
At no time did Bryant doubt his destiny. When anyone questioned such a lofty goal, Bryant doubled down. How could anyone think he wouldn’t be one of the sport’s best players? Of course, he went on to win five championships with the Lakers.
He made it happen through grueling work, an intense focus, and excellent guidance. It helped that he came from a basketball family. His father Joe and his maternal uncle John Cox were NBA players. Joe was also a coach and knew what greatness was in Kobe. The family reared Bryant to believe in his abilities, and helped him achieve goals because they knew what went into turning pro.
The book begins with the tragic day of the helicopter crash two years ago this week that took Bryant’s life, his daughter Gianna’s, and seven others. While Sielski doesn’t dwell on the accident, it reminds everyone that Bryant was such an internationally celebrated figure that people can tell you where they were when they heard the news.
This, though, is about his life, including when the family moved to Italy when Bryant was 6.
“Had Joe remained committed to pursuing a career in the NBA, and had another team offered him an opportunity to extend his career, the family’s peripatetic existence would have continued,” Sielski writes. “But it would have continued within the confines of the United States’ borders, and for all the diversity and variety of people and life within those borders, the experience wouldn’t have provided the full immersion in a foreign and exotic culture that Italy did.”
Bryant became fluent in Italian and developed a love of soccer. His family, already close, grew very tight. Kobe relished tagging along to his dad’s games and being around other basketball players. He loved the game and was a natural from the start.
Besides his innate abilities, there was the drive to practice constantly. The notion that he would fail never crossed his mind.
Even as a freshman at Lower Merion High School in suburban Philadelphia, Bryant was confident. Let’s face it; usually, when 14-year-olds say they will be movie stars or pro athletes, adults smile indulgently then prod them in the direction of college or a vocation. They need a backup plan because how many hopefuls actually make the big leagues?
And so when the guidance counselor, Frank Hartwell, asked this gangly freshman about his goals, Bryant explained he would play in the NBA. Even as a freshman, colleges were recruiting him.
Hartwell, Sielski writes, had counseled high school students for years and had a deep appreciation for the benefits of playing sports.
“Nevertheless, he had never seen Kobe play basketball, and even if he had, would he have recognized what he was seeing, what was buried within that bony body?” Sielski writes. “He wasn’t inclined to advise Kobe, or any high school athlete, to pour himself or herself into the pursuit of a professional playing career.”
When Bryant stated this was no mere whim, Hartwell cautioned him on the odds. Completely confident, the freshman told the guidance counselor, “If I don’t focus one hundred percent on this, I’m never going to get there,” Sielski reports.
Sure, he used the counselor’s advice but not in the way intended. Bryant nursed even that hint of doubt to propel himself to new heights.
“He took it as a dare, almost an insult, and he would never forget it,” Sielski writes.
Sielski, a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, can recount these conversations because he did scrupulous research. He not only recaps important games (and lesser ones), but gleaned the perspective of many of those around Bryant.
In retracing games from 1992-1996 when Bryant wore “33,? Sielski explains what a phenomenon Bryant was. Yet, for all of his prowess on the court, Bryant didn’t always play as if basketball is a team sport.
He wanted that ball and could make it do what he willed it to. Bryant made outrageous plays even as a high school kid. Yet he tried. And when he failed? He tried again. When he succeeded? He tried again.
The book hammers home that Bryant understood how much work he had to do. And his dad guided him. Scouts on the lookout for the best players were on his trail early. Even in a school where basketball was not as popular as other sports, with Bryant playing, it became The Sport.
While basketball was undoubtedly the center of his world, Bryant’s mom, Pam, made sure her three children kept up their grades, were polite, good kids. From these accounts, Bryant was not much interested in anything but basketball.
While colleges courted him, other players and spectators were fascinated. Fans knew they were watching history being made. In his senior year, he led The Aces to their first state championship in 53 years.
As a teenager, he was asked to sign autographs for those he trounced, and for other fans. The Bryant family attended all of his games. And, they kept a lid on where – or more accurately, if – Kobe would go to college. The expectation was that he would play for a university then go to the NBA.
Bryant, though, knew his goal.
And he kept playing, practicing, studying tapes of his hero, Michael Jordan.
In an interview Bryant gave for ESPN’s “The Last Dance,” he said, “I don’t get five championships here without him.”
As impressive as Bryant’s skills were, the author does not lose sight that this was a man and a very flawed one at times.
“He had traveled the redemptive narrative arc: ruining his good name and nearly his marriage and leaving a stranger scarred in that hotel room in Eagle, Colorado; destroying relationships with who knows how many coaches and players and peers before reconstituting them; somehow scrubbing away much of that grime to emerge as someone perceived to have matured, to have found the elusive balance between peace and ambition; persuading people that arrogance and atrocious choices and actions of his past weren’t so relevant anymore; forging a new identity as an emotional and psychological touchstone, the possessor of a mentality that all should admire and emulate and adopt. It was a greater trick than anything Michael Jordan ever pulled off,” Sielski writes.
The journalist provided this detailed account from the more than 100 people he interviewed for this book. A note on excellent reporting: Sielski explains that when he attributed people thought something it was because he asked what they had been thinking at the time – no assumptions.
Ultimately, he explains who Bryant was before he wore the Lakers jersey. And, Sielski proves that Bryant was destined for greatness all along.
