Lessons From Legends

A lonely unicorn

I decided to turn this into a series as I’ve had this one particular essay cooking up in my head for well over a year now. It’s a powerful, poignant, and critically important lesson for greater society that is found by really zooming-in closely on a figure the vast majority of us adore. I think the premise is so important that I’ve never been able to shake it. I think the piece will cut so hard against this guy that I’ve felt pushed away from writing it. But boy, that sure violates my fundamentals. Shouldn’t matter how much we like the person (and here I do too!) to call out an underlying value that’s important to us. Isn’t that the pathway which broke us and brought us here? So I will write it… as the second or third part in this series. ;-) But now I’ve committed myself. I always knew I’d write it eventually anyways. It’s who I am. The reality is, I’d say it to this man’s face if I was required to in order to defend the position. It’s that important. I just would never want to. It’s got to hurt to levels I can’t possibly understand. While he put everything into his trade and achieved the absolute apex within it, I worked hard to make sure I’d never have to grasp those greater pains.

But I wanted to write about someone completely different this morning. What inspired these thoughts was a fantastic documentary on Kobe Bryant I watched last night on CNN.

It’s a multi-part series and I’m definitely going to catch the rest of them. This one focused on his childhood. What are the fabrics that made Kobe, Kobe? The very ground-floor layers. The story of his childhood in Italy is fascinating. Even back in those early clips from when he was 8-10, you could tell this was a unique, special, and dare I say almost magical human. I have a term I’ve used forever, “Unicorn Breed”. (I don’t use it much anymore because, like “ally” and the rainbow itself, all these cool and once meaningful things were hijacked and pissed on to become The Same Thing). I can’t really define it; hence, “unicorn”. But that word actually signifies something else. The fact this is a rare breed that most mere mortals will only ever hear legends of. This all may sound dumb and LARP’y to the coldly rational (I am one of those, BTW), but it makes perfect sense to me. I can actually see most of these people, this unique and special breed, on the exterior. Meaning, there is something so profoundly special about them that they wear it on the outside. It often presents as a spark or a glow, an energy or a shine. You can always see it in their eyes. That sparkle deep inside. It radiates! Michael Jordan had this in spades. Perhaps not coincidentally, Kobe was an almost perfect MJ protege on the court. Both wizards with the ball in their hands (the aesthetic is so similar it’s uncanny), but also mountains of men outside of the sports theater. The two of them influenced me profoundly. Especially The GOAT, the Godfather, “The Man, The Myth, The Legend”.

But the note I came to share isn’t this happy top-of-glory one. Their paths sure had a lot of that, but Kobe’s also came with profound sadness. Loneliness. Perfectly logical when you understand he was moved to Italy as a young boy and then bounced around the country as his father played on fledgling teams. He didn’t have community roots initially; he had basketball. The film of him sitting on the side of the court during his father’s games dribbling the ball (always dribbling the ball) is simultaneously magnificent and heartbreaking. Much like MJ, his passion for his craft became an obsession which fueled him to heights within the arena never before seen. The documentary used the term “masterclass in basketball” for all this young boy’s eyes and ears absorbed. Indeed! The seeds of future stardom. But like another MJ, this feverish pursuit replaced every other pursuit, passion, and initiative in his life - and within his childhood, especially. Much like that other Michael, he never had a regular one. I’m not sure he had much of a childhood at all. Now, I’m hesitant to cut with such broad strokes on Kobe, unlike the one used for Michael Jackson. Kobe is not a story of failure. You can write a Mt. Rushmore-worthy tale of The Black Mamba and it can be non-fiction. He was a lion in an era of few! And I’m not here to say his (forced?) childhood fixation was necessarily a bad thing. In the greater human story, it may have been both a wonderful thing and the only thing. Is one of this unique talent and magnificence not meant to paint with the obvious brush? But it’s not one rooted only in success and happiness. Reminds me of Tiger Woods’ story, in that regard.

One of his friends from an Italian village during the brief era where it seems he had some semblance of childhood normalcy commented about a dance competition their school had put on. How Kobe “The American Kid” could dance so well, so naturally, so authentically, so charismatically, that he lit the stage up! And he did. They showed it. Reminded me of a young Will Smith, also a Unicorn Breed. This is the kind of figure who isn’t just the life of the party and center of a room, but somehow sparks magic around him everywhere he goes. But she ended that happy memory with a solemn line about that very moment being the last time Kobe Bryant was ever just a kid, ever “just free”… as he walked off the stage and blew a bow back to the crowd and cameras… in a green kids’ jump suit… because he was maybe 12, tops.

The show would accelerate quickly into the global vortex that became Kobe’s life. His father’s league hosted a boys competition for kids under 10. Kobe was only 8 at the time, but he had spent so much of that time around the teams and gym mats that his connections and father (and his coach, who clearly saw his single horn sprouting) got him in. You don’t have to know anything further to know what happened next. This young phenom didn’t just dazzle, he dominated and demoralized! That was The Mamba, even at 8. He stole the ball and scored on so many possessions that several of the other (older) kids were left crying. He caught the world’s eye, he moved back to Philly to attend Lower Merion high-school, where he would basically do the same thing at a much greater level and dazzle the entire basketball world with a performance for the ages in the state championship.

This wasn’t just a special run of performance, this was a uniquely special athlete and human being. The world was on notice! This was also still a teenager. Still just a kid. As we all know, he forewent college and signed a contract with the Lakers and a massive shoe deal. He was now one of the hottest names on the planet, in the City of Stars, the money man for a family that had been chasing it for decades like gypsies, while at the same time still laser-like focused on his craft. Focused ONLY on his craft. The young boy who would isolate himself after school and practice in his house to watch VHS tapes of 6ers and NBA games sent by his family back home, was no less isolated as a global sports rockstar and multi-millionaire with access to anything and everything he wanted. Well, that’s not the right way to say it. He now had access to everything money could buy and the extra VIP doors only fame could open. He was on “top of the world”! Everything he had spent his life to achieve was checked off. Sure, there were sports accomplishments within the arena that would take time, but that was just gravy. But had he won? I don’t know. It depends on what lens you’re peering through when you read this. You see, it wasn’t everything he wanted…

Because the final scene of this episode I saw before I went to bed last night groggy-eyed from an epic AFC Championship was a moment so sad it rocked me, and remained in my mind when I woke up this morning. At the height of this success, when the world was giving Kobe Bryant everything we’re told we’re here to try and attain, you know what he wanted most? The one thing he could no longer have: normalcy. In his early years with the Lakers, Kobe would work himself into a lather at practice (“Like Mike”) and then disappear. Vanish; he just went ghost! Every day he would bolt and be on his own. He didn’t bond with the team at the time. Of course not, they were men and he was still largely a sheltered child. The childhood friend said he would drive around UCLA’s campus at night in his heavily-tinted car where no one could tell he was himself and just watch what the regular kids were doing. Chew on that for a minute. Put yourself in that car; a REALLY nice fancy car, apex!; staring out the window all alone at night. The regular kids wearing Kobe Bryant jerseys, many in an environment like UCLA probably feverishly pursuing what that jersey symbolizes (at the expense of so many other pursuits and roots), are actually doing what that shooting-star wants more than anything but can’t buy or shoot into a rim. Just hanging out on the corner at night with friends, being normal and doing whatever it is normal people do together on a random night with friends. There is no announcement when you arrive, no listing of your height and the previous school you played for. Those kids think they all want that announcement. Kobe just wanted what they had. But his chance for that was gone. In that moment, the dark windows of his luxury ride represented a prison. With everything he now had access to, he literally could not just go over and say hi. The most basic of human interactions. Gone. But for him, is “gone” the right word? Nope. That implies you once had. He never did. Ghost!

So, what’s my point? What’s the lesson from this legend? I’m not entirely sure. I hold Kobe Bryant in very high regard. I don’t view him as only special within his craft, but a truly remarkable, unique, and extraordinary person all-around. There aren’t many Kobe Bryants in life. We were meant to take notice. The type of flash in the human pan that makes you momentarily believe in unicorns. I find his death to be such a cold and painful tragedy. It haunts me to this day. Mainly because I feel like he had so much more to offer to this life; so many more ways he might mold and shape this rock. The very definition of a special one taken too young. So then why the negative spin here? Because the lessons that come from this once-in-a-generation run don’t all cut the same way. As much as his moves on the court wowed me, his titles and sports accomplishments impressed me, his charisma and specialness touched me, his way of living and influence on those around him inspired me, I wouldn’t want my children to have lived the life of Kobe Bryant. Yep, even with all the fame, fortune, and accolades. I don’t ever want my child staring at life through a one-way mirror wondering what it’s like to be a kid. That does help win in a lot of categories and metrics. But it almost always loses in the most important ones. To me, anyhow.

All trophies eventually lose their shine. Next in the series, we’ll look at some Lombardis.