Kobe Bryant Always Believed in His Own Greatness

Any consideration of Bryant’s legacy mandates a discussion of the felony sexual assault charge he faced in 2003. He was accused of raping a 19-year-old woman who worked at a Colorado hotel as a front-desk clerk. The prosecutors dropped the case when the woman said she was unwilling to testify; Bryant publicly apologized to her after they settled a civil case out of court.

The case changed the way many people viewed him, but rarely so in Los Angeles. In Southern California, once he outlasted his Lakers teammate Shaquille O’Neal, Bryant became more beloved than any superstar athlete who proceeded him: Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, Fernando Valenzuela, Sandy Koufax, Jerry West or whomever else you wish to nominate.

I moved to the area in third grade and lived there long enough to become a Lakers beat writer for the Los Angeles Daily News, privileged to have a front-row seat in the summer of 1996 when West, as the Lakers’ general manager, found a way to import both O’Neal and Bryant to Lakerland. There will always be a lingering sense of underachievement around the Shaq-Kobe partnership, which dissolved after they won three titles in eight tension-filled seasons together.

But Bryant moved past the notion that the split left rings on the table by pledging his life to the franchise and barging into a stratosphere of his own, with his jaw jutting out in his signature fashion.

My favorite memories range from the obvious to the sublime. I will certainly never forget Bryant’s 81-point game against the Toronto Raptors in January 2006, which upstaged the N.F.L.’s conference championship games, or the 62 points he scored in three quarters against the Dallas Mavericks as a prelude the previous month.

I remember hearing stories about Bryant repeatedly quizzing Casey Smith, the longtime Mavericks and U.S.A. Basketball athletic trainer, about Dirk Nowitzki’s preparatory routines — in part so the maniacally driven Bryant could confirm that no one, not even Nowitzki, was outworking him.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/sports/basketball/kobe-bryant-confidence.html?emc=rss&partner=rss