Validation? June 14, 2009

Kobe Bryant is the most interesting man in the world. Sorry, old guy in the Dos Equis commercials, but the Black Mamba is a living example of a man who lives vicariously through himself. And not even that guy can make a face that’s so vile and ugly that it makes Hedo Turkoglu’s smile almost watchable in HD.

The thing I wonder about the most isn’t what’s going to happen when Kobe wins either tonight or in the next few days, but what the public perception of him is going to be. People either love him or hate him, but unlike other “controversial” athletes like Barry Bonds (mostly hated) or Brett Favre (mostly beloved), Kobe has an almost 50/50 split of fans who love his every move and detractors who latch on to every failure. For someone who was such an integral part of three championships, Kobe sure does have a lot to prove to us. He has to prove he can win as the leader of a team; even though you could make the argument he was just as valuable as Shaquille O’Neal. He has to prove he can win without Shaq; even though Dwyane Wade was the one who had to carry the load for Miami’s lone championship (In a way, this makes Kobe more comparable to Scottie Pippen more than Michael Jordan. Pippen had to prove he could win without MJ; and that’s the glaring thing in his resume that people hold against him, even though Jordan couldn’t even get into the playoffs post-Pippen.). He has to prove he can integrate his teammates and not just be a ballhog; even though as a ballhog, he scored 81 points, the second highest total in NBA history. And he has to prove that he’s just a good, All-American kid who is living out his dreams. But he’s not; and therein lies the reason why he’s such a polarizing figure. He’s not a good person. Inherently. He’s had to work at it.

Kobe Bryant – from the time he was born – was raised to be a basketball star. Kind of in the same way that Earl Woods brought his son Tiger up to be the face of golf, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant raised Kobe to be the next big thing in basketball. What’s so amazing to me is that while Tiger’s rise has been well documented, Kobe’s upbringing remains mostly a mystery to us. Sure, we know that he speaks fluent Italian and (annoyingly) loves soccer, but for the most part, we don’t see too many pictures or videos of kid Kobe. Where are the videos of young Kobe emulating Michael Jordan or the time when he got his first basketball. We have that with most of our athletes readily available on youtube; all we have is what Kobe tells us, and he doesn’t say much that’s interesting. Was it because Jellybean was a vicious taskmaster, which would explain the uneasy relationship father and son have had for most of this decade? We don’t know, and that bothers the living hell out of us. We live in a world where we seemingly have to know every little detail about our superstars even before they were famous, and because Kobe is the only source that’s willing to give out info, that gives him an aura of mystery. He works the people who can’t read between the lines.

The few things that we do know about Kobe is that he’s an insular kid without friends. You could attribute that to him being moved from Italy to the US during his formative years, but have you noticed – like Bill Simmons did on a recent podcast – that Kobe doesn’t have an entourage? Even Dwight Howard, quite possibly the nicest star player since David Robinson, has a group of friends he rolls with. Kobe has his wife and kids (of course, there was the whole Karl Malone thing, but we all know how that turned out) and not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when even his teammates and fellow Olympians make telling remarks about how he’s done such a great job of trying to be one of the “boys,” that’s a telling statement of his ability to get along (or not get along) with people. It took him almost 30 years to figure out how to make friends and be a good teammate? So the guy’s a work in progress.

Speaking of “work,” then there’s the whole “Kobe doing work” thing. If there’s one thing you can never accuse Kobe of, it’s being a slacker. If he has his mind made up about one thing, he’s going to go all out for it, even if that includes quitting, as evidenced by his performance in elimination games over the past few years. Nobody works as hard or quits as hard than Kobe. So when he made it up in his mind that he was going to change the public’s mind about him as a weirdo, he was going to go all out on it. He was going to over-laugh at every joke, hug a teammate a little too long, and make an agonizing documentary with Spike Lee that kind of parodies his current Nike ads with LeBron James. “Hey Kobe, you’re so unstoppable, how unstoppable are you” might as well have been one of the lines in the documentary, it was so contrived. And yet, you see a lot of the old Kobe come out when he yells at Sasha Vujacic or Trevor Ariza when they screw up instead of encouraging them. You can’t work that realness.

Lost in the shuffle in all of this are the Kobe fans and haters, who seemingly work just as hard to love or hate him. Follow a basketball message board sometime (I encourage you not to because I fear for your sanity) and I guarantee on the first page, you will invariably see a topic that either talks about how great Kobe, how terrible Kobe is, how Kobe doesn’t compare to Jordan, how Kobe is better than Jordan, how LeBron has surpassed Kobe, how Kobe is a joke, or how Kobe is something or other. It’s these fervent fans that have built up Kobe to such a unique position in sports and celebrity in general. Every brilliant move on the court is met with both cheers (”wow”) and jeers (”he should have passed it, what a selfish prick”). Every box score is analyzed to prove how good or bad he is in getting his teammates involved. Not even Allen Iverson, he of “practice” fame, doesn’t get worked this bad.

So will things change when Kobe finally wins a ring “on his own?” More than any other team sport, we attribute championships as a way to make someone’s career valid. Dan Marino might have never won a Super Bowl, but he doesn’t nearly get as much crap for it than Charles Barkley. Mike Piazza never produced a World Series win for the Mets, but Patrick Ewing is a running joke of futility in New York. Kobe has three rings; but that doesn’t matter, apparently. I’m guessing that instead of everybody finally shutting up, the “can he get to six” talk will start to commence. It never ends with the Black Mamba, even if he himself wanted it do. We’re doing the work for him.

(Note: this article was written before Game 5 of the NBA Finals. If for some unbelievable reason the Lakers manage to choke this series away, I apologize to the Laker fans for jinxing them… eh, not really.)

- Juan Martinez