With His Time in the NBA Dwindling, Kobe Bryant Has Finally Decided to Share

LOS ANGELES — Kobe Bryant is wiser from rushed missteps, mellowed by age and suddenly breakable amid all these major injuries.

All that is part of it, but not most of it.

We have been seeing a much more human Kobe here late in his basketball career, and the primary reason for it cannot be found in anything that has happened to him on or off the court.

It is what he has made happen, from the inside out.

Bryant decided he wanted to share.

As we pivot once again from an NBA with Kobe to one strangely without him until what looms as one last stand, let's pause to acknowledge what he has become in his final chapter.

Uncommonly well-spoken, thoughtful, engaging, funny, generous with his time.

And smart enough to maximize his exposure now in pursuit of the high bar he has set for himself in post-basketball business enterprise.

The process continued with his video for The Players' Tribune showing Bryant receiving Lakers doctor Steve Lombardo's diagnosis about his torn rotator cuff. It will ramp back up again on Feb. 28 with the premiere of Kobe Bryant's Muse on Showtime.

"A Legend Unguarded" is how Showtime is plugging the 105-minute documentary, and while one can expect plenty of meaningful introspection from Bryant in there, letting his guard down in interviews or on Twitter or at his clinics coaching kids became common practice some time ago.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

No question, the process could be seen in Bryant's last two NBA championships in 2009 and '10. Those were won not while tugging for power and warring for greatness with Shaquille O'Neal, but by showing how Bryant could be led by Phil Jackson, could bond with a co-star in Pau Gasol and could be a great, longtime friend to Derek Fisher.

Those victories humanized Bryant, but that outward glory was preceded by an internal decision that Bryant wanted to have his true self representing him in public.

He concluded he must not have done enough to protect himself, dumbfounded that so many fans saw him as the bad guy and O'Neal as the good. So Bryant sought out advisers to help him understand how to present himself more accurately—and he personally set out to let people see how his mental toughness worked and why he was so intent on achieving significance.

The funny thing is, Bryant became much more comfortable with himself the less politically correct he was. He turned into a snake who never wanted to shed his own skin.

And thus was born a philosophy that Bryant was going to be himself—profanely cocky at times, caringly cocky at others, but never ashamed of his boldness.

Reconciling his private and public life enabled Bryant to open up in broader ways that explained his success, and the candor jumped to a new level recently the way it usually does with proud veterans who see the end is near—Steve Nash in 2014 and Karl Malone in 2004 being notable Lakers examples.

"There is power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own," Bryant posted to Twitter on Friday.

He was promoting his documentary. And Monday came promotions for his new shoe, Nike's Kobe X—with this fascinating explanation in the press release:

"Both the midsole and outsole are encapsulated in a translucent rubber casing to visually showcase the inner technology. This transparent approach was also inspired by Bryant's recent willingness to personally open up and reveal more of himself at deeper levels without reservation."

Even Kobe's shoes yearn to be open and honest these days.

That's how deeply he wants to be understood before it's all over—and how deeply he wants his career narrative to be ingrained for fans to be drawn to Kobe Inc.'s brands in the future.

Sports are the original reality TV, and it remains unscripted how Bryant's career will end. But the journey has been unique reality TV already—not the usual reward for viewers seeing crazies and getting a subsequent ego boost or holding some interactive voting power to judge the folks they see.

Kobe's career has been about trying to do things others dare not and cannot—producing disciples who devoutly respect that pursuit and believe they might be able to mimic it in some small way. It's why when Bryant goes for an archaeological tour of the terra-cotta warriors pits in China, he has to cut his visit short because the tourists stop looking at the sites and start following Bryant around.

Kin Cheung/Associated Press

The good thing: Bryant's museum has opened to the public in recent years.

Have those years been a failure? In a basketball sense, absolutely.

Still stuck on five NBA titles. Not a single playoff game for Bryant since 2012.

Told by Michael Jordan in mid-December to "go get Karl [Malone]" for No. 2 on the all-time scoring list, Bryant instead had to reinvent himself as a pass-first player to preserve his body—and suffered his third season-ending injury in three years anyway a month later.

It has been a heck of a pity party, though, because it comes at a time when Bryant is connecting with us like never before.

Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.