The career of a giant — in sports or any other theater of human endeavor — is hard to encapsulate in a series of essays, let alone one.
You should read the beat writers for the Los Angeles Times and ESPN.com, and the other national basketball writers you’ve come to respect, in order to get a fuller picture of the career of Kobe Bryant, who announced Sunday night that he will retire at the end of this NBA season.
All one can do in a single piece of commentary is to identify one dimension of the larger figure Kobe Bryant was on the basketball court. Surely one of the 20 best players in NBA history, and very reasonably in the discussion for the back end of the top 10, Kobe captured our imagination and attention for the past 20 years. An equally compelling and complicated figure in his best and worst moments; a player who could dazzle with his skill and infuriate at times with his shot selection; a player who would castigate teammates but set an example worthy of a true leader, Kobe has been must-see TV for basketball fans around the world.
He created great television in many different ways, scaling the mountaintop five times but also enduring a less-than-seamless transition into his latter years. He elicited the full spectrum of human feelings, carving a path that was always — and quintessentially — his.
We all have our own individual impressions of the Black Mamba. I’ll offer mine.
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It was — and still might be — easy to think less of Kobe on certain levels. The high volumes of shots. The “31 points on 9-of-28” stat line with a bunch of free throws. The jarring on-court confrontations with teammates. The truly ugly episode in the state of Colorado (removed from one court and located in a very different sort of court). Kobe has given many people cause to look down on him. It’s quite understandable.
It doesn’t make it right, however.
Whether you love Kobe or hate Kobe — he did make a great villain if you loathed the Lakers — you ought to acknowledge that for all of his rough edges and dark, mysterious complexity, the Mamba cared about the game.
That might sound bland, corny or cliched, but it’s a simple statement with a simple word which means more than you might think.
Care is not just about passion or affection. Care involves concern. The word “careful” can be broken down into its two syllables: care-ful. Full of care.
Kobe Bryant was full of care in how he approached basketball. Immensely skilled and unceasingly determined in much the same ways Michael Jordan was — complete with a fadeaway mid-range jump shot that delivered so many daggers to opponents over the years — this 21st-century Laker icon is first thought of as a scorer’s scorer. Kobe epitomizes the star player who wants and gets the rock at the end of the game and comes through with the kind of consistency befitting a player of his stature and achievements.
Yes, Kobe was bailed out by Pau Gasol in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics — one can always find exceptions to any iconic athlete’s career over a long period of time — but that’s the exception which proves the rule. Kobe captured the big stage when he stood under the bright lights. A five-championship haul puts him in the exquisite and rather limited company of Tim Duncan among still-active NBA players over the past 20 years.
Yet, while the casual fan easily gravitates to the offensive end of the floor, those who admire basketball players in full are very much aware that defensive performance unmasks the true measure of a professional. If you really CARE — if you are care-full — you learn to become a top defensive player. You learn how to communicate and move on defense. You learn how to pour forth enough energy to succeed on defense, all while knowing you need to have enough fuel left in the tank on offense.
This is what Jordan did better than anyone else. LeBron James has already reached that same standard.
Kobe Bryant belongs in this same conversation of elite scorers who also played elite defense.
No “Jimmer Fredette hiding” at the defensive end. No “James Harden slacking.” No “Monta Ellis one-way traffic.” A vast ocean separates the good one-way players from the great one-way players. A similarly large body of water divides the great one-way players from the great two-way players, those who imposed their presence and will on the game — and opponents — across all 94 feet of a court, not just 47.
Does the following fact need any embellishment or analysis? I don’t think it does. Just absorb the fact that this comes from a 32,000-point scorer:
Kobe Bryant earned membership on the NBA’s All-Defensive Team 12 times in his career.
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Over the course of two decades, Kobe Bryant did manifest selfishness in the pursuit of victory. Yet, basketball — more than other team sports — actually demands selfishness. If the best player on a team isn’t the one taking shots at the ends of games (for reasons not clearly connected to good basketball, such as drawing a double-team and finding an open man for a corner three or a dunk), that’s a problem. Naturally, there’s a balance to be struck between “bad selfishness,” also known as “hero-ball,” and “good selfishness,” taking the initative to create a good shot with a skill level unmatched on your own team’s roster.
Viewed on the surface, Kobe’s career would powerfully and overwhelmingly indicate that his selfishness was typically of the good kind, even though the bad selfishness crept into the picture at times. Yet, for anyone who is inclined to dismiss or downgrade Kobe on an all-time scale for all the instances in which his selfishness was more of the hero-ball variety, those 12 All-Defensive Team honors serve as a powerful refutation and corrective.
You can say so many things about Kobe Bryant’s attitude and comportment over the years, but you can’t knock his true commitment — his level of care — for this sport at both ends of the court. He studied and learned the game, constantly evolving instead of remaining stuck in the same place. He won championships with Shaq and Pau, two very different specimens of bigs. He survived and thrived in many different competitive contexts. Certainly in terms of energy if not tactics, Kobe poured out every last ounce of energy his body and mind had to offer.
That care, that insistence on doing everything well — not just some things — is, in my view, Kobe Bryant’s greatest and most lasting gift to the game of basketball.
