Scattered Kobe thoughts
I was never a particular fan of Kobe Bryant's -- I rooted against him much more than I rooted for him. I don't have much to offer about the human or emotional side of his passing, other than general sadness of lives being cut short so early.
There are some aspects of how he is being recalled that I find interesting, and thought I would explore them here.
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The Creation story of the modern NBA, and much of sports commentary in general, is Wilt vs. Russell. On the one hand, we have a player who filled the stat sheet up like no player before or since. Yet he only won a couple of championships, played for three different teams (pre "player empowerment era"), and had some glaring flaws, such as poor free throw shooting. On the other hand, we have a player who was not as physically gifted, but embraced the team concept and two hands full of titles. The fundamental lesson for basketball players: Be like Russell, not Wilt.
In The Baseball Abstract, Bill James noted that there are two lines of baseball stars. There are the ones who are almost universally beloved and revered -- Wagner, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Banks, Mays, Clemente, Puckett, Gwynn, Griffey, and a line of those with more mixed reputations -- Cobb, Ruth, Hornsby, Williams, Frank Robinson, Rose, Reggie Jackson, Rickey Henderson, and others.
In basketball, there seems to be a Wilt line and a Russell line. The Wilt line includes players like Oscar Robertson, Elvin Hayes, George Gervin, Dominique Wilkins, Allen Iverson, and Russell Westbrook. Then there were the stars who "got it" -- Jerry West, John Havlicek, Walt Frazier, Walton, Magic, Bird, Isaiah, Duncan. In his book, Bill Simmons called it "the Secret;" Walton called it "the Choice."
Much of basketball coaching and commentary is spent coaxing stars from the Wilt path to the Russell path. Jordan got there, or at least the narrative suggests. LeBron was probably always there.
For Kobe, he won a couple post-Shaq championships, but never quite got there. You always had the sense that for Kobe, his teammates were an inconvenience to be managed rather than part of the joy, and this may come from growing up in Italy. His tendency when faced with a problem was to grind it out himself rather than reach out for help. If there were a 1-on-1 league that offered just as much monetary and reputational rewards as the NBA, Kobe would have chosen that league.
But should we hold that against him? Or should we credit him for going against his natural inclination to the degree that he did? Or for winning championships going against the grain of the dominant narrative?
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The other trend which Kobe went against analytics. He wasn't an efficient scorer, he relied on mid-range jump shots, and he received a big contract late in his career. On these, I am more squarely on Team Kobe.
A player like James Harden falls outside of the dichotomy laid out above. The way he plays would be considered selfish, except that it's apparent that this is the team's plan which he is following. And which is awful to watch.
That Kobe stood against the trend that basketball is game best managed by white guys with laptops in luxury suites is a point in his favor.
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Another James quote that Kobe brings to mind was about Nolan Ryan. According to James, sportswriters always wrote well of Ryan even as they may not have enjoyed his personality or recognized that his approach was suboptimal. The reason was that all other ballplayers had such great respect for Ryan and the difficulty of what he did, that it was a requirement for credibility for sportswriters to share this respect.
I think this is what happened for Kobe for commentators like Simmons and fans like me. Kobe ended up being much more of a winner than Ryan, but his style of play was never what we wanted to see. But we couldn't deny the degree of difficulty of what he did, and the esteem his peers held him in.