My Three Kobes
When I was 10 years old, I remember my older sister hyping about the 1996 NBA Draft Class. She said it was going to be one of the biggest draft classes of talent in NBA history.
I thought she was over-exaggerating things and thought that these players were cool but didn’t wow me. Of course, I was young and never anticipated the kind of impact these players would have on the league.
The big names that stood out included Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Ray Allen, and Antoine Walker.
And then there was Kobe Bean Bryant, the youngest player from that draft class.
He was drafted straight out of high school by the Charlotte Hornets as the 13th overall pick. He would later be traded to the Los Angeles Lakers since Jerry West — the general manager at the time — was determined to have Bryant play for the Lakers.
Although people often mention that there were two different Kobe Eras, I would like to think that there were three. I saw the young, #8 Kobe Bryant with the Afro, the “Black Mamba” #24 Kobe Bryant in his prime, and Old Man Kobe Bryant, the conclusion of his NBA career.
#8 Kobe Bryant was the young, upstart shooting guard that would average 22.5 points per game and was a dominate gunslinger in the league. This brash Kobe Bryant was raw, untapped and full of potential. This Kobe partnered with Shaquille O’Neal and formed a dynamic duo that terrorized the league and won multiple championships and formed a dynasty.
Around this period, Kobe manifested as the definitive best shooting guard in the NBA. He was averaging 23.9 points, 5.1 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 1.5 steals. He also had an excellent shooting efficiency with 48.2 eFG% and 55.2 TS%.
Unfortunately, this Kobe was also immature, petulant, and struggled to embrace leadership.
He pushed players away and often seen as incredibly arrogant despite being an immense talent. O’Neal would eventually leave and join the Miami Heat and win a championship with another young, talented shooting guard on the come up in Dwayne Wade.
Kobe, meanwhile, struggled to win without Shaq. He even threatened to leave the Lakers as a means of winning a championship. Eventually, he realized that in order to truly evolve as an athlete, this version of Kobe needed to die.
He ended this version of himself with his signature 81 point game performance against the Toronto Raptors.
It was a memorable performance for Lakers fans and a nightmare situation for Jalen Rose who would forever be haunted as the guard that was supposed to matchup against Bryant.
#24 Kobe Bryant — also known as “the Black Mamba” Kobe — was a newly mature, revised Kobe Bryant. This version of Kobe was far more mature (compared to his early years anyway) and more composed as a player.
He was still putting up numbers and still ranked as the definitive shooting guard in the NBA despite receiving competition from talented players such as Dwayne Wade and Tracy McGrady.
He was averaging 26.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, 4.9 assists, and 1.4 steals. Although he was never a top defender in the league, he still had excellent playoff performances that would define his legacy as one of the greatest athletes to ever grace the court.
When it came to playoffs, Bryant averaged 29.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.5 dimes per game with a slash line of 45.7/36.3/86.3. He was downright legendary in the post season.
Unfortuntaely, there was one opponent that Bryant couldn’t defeat during this era: Father Time.
The dynamics of the league were changing and young players like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh were coming into their own and formed a brand new superteam in South Beach. Dirk Nowitzki, a veteran power forward who could spread the floor by shooting threes and playing solid defense, was emerging as a top flight in the Western Conference. Then you had the likes of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and Serge Ibaka making names for themselves when they were playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Bryant just had difficulty trying to maintain the gold against elite competition.
This Kobe Bryant would meet his tragic end in April 2013 when he tore his Achilles’ tendon in an overtime victory against the young Golden State Warriors. He would struggle to play for two seasons after this injury and would never be the same. This period would mark yet another dramatic change for him.
Finally, we reach #24 Old Man Kobe Bryant. This Kobe is similar to Old Man Logan from the X-Men comic series. This is not the same Kobe Bryant we were used to during the 1990s and 2000s. He’s a grizzled veteran. He’s competed against the toughest athletes in the league. He’s seen it all and done it all. There’s no doubt that this version of Kobe knows he’s old and is determined to get to the postseason damning logic if he has to.
Sadly, it was not meant to be. There just simply wasn’t enough talent to help push the Lakers to the playoffs. Worse, the former young Golden State Warriors have now grown up and became a new, frightening superteam that could even rival the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s. There just wasn’t any room left for an old gunslinger like Bryant. Even he knew that there was nothing left he could do and would have to accept the fact that after playing in the league for more than two decades and acquiring the accolades that average rotational players dream of just achieving one, he had nothing left to give.
Bryant decided that if he was going to go down, he would go down the only way he knew how: scoring.
In what could be described as the definitive cap off to Kobe’s career, he pulled whatever last minute strength he had left and went off for 60 points in a legendary performance that would go down as one of the single great moments in Bryant’s career.
Kobe Bryant is right up there with the likes of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Tim Duncan, and the rest. He’s a rare generational player that defined not one but two decades of basketball. You can’t name a single NBA athlete that didn’t grow up watching and admiring Kobe when they were preparing to enter the league.
So as we prepare to retire two jerseys that defined his career, I remember watching three different Kobe Bryants. It’s surreal that I witnessed his beginning and his end. Bryant — for all his flaws — was a player I thoroughly enjoyed watching.
*credit to Basketball-Reference.com, Bleacher Report, ESPN, DawkinsMTA, GD Highlights, Player’s Tribune
