Kobe Bryant: Lessons in Resiliency

“You can know [God] all you want, but until you got to pick up that cross that you can't carry, and He picks it up for you and carries you and the cross .. then you know.”

             -Kobe Bryant on Quite Frankly, January 30, 2006

When ranking the best players to have ever played the game, the following names usually come up and together form the top tier: Jordan, Magic, Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Bird, Oscar, and West. Duncan and Bryant are current players, still building their resumes, who may ultimately find themselves in the same category, and some more forgiving lists include Shaq, Malone, Petitt, Hakeem, and Baylor. The majority consensus is that Jordan is in a class all by himself, with the rest forming a secondary subgroup below him.

Jordan was the perfect storm of domination and charisma with the immaculate and symmetrical body of work: an early career of absolute superiority followed by two pairs of legacy defining 3-peats. Bryant doesn't have Jordan's impeccable record; his resume has too many faults on it, the most noticeable being the 24-point lead his team coughed up at home in the Finals that cost them a Game 7 opportunity to win it all in 2008. But while Bryant is Jordan's foil, the flawed replica, he has uncovered new depths in dogged determination and professional technique.

Let's crack open the annals on Kobe Bryant since he switched over from 8 to 24, and see if we can't prove a point here.

Since the beginning of the 2006-07 season, Bryant has played in 289 out of 294 possible NBA games including playoffs, as well as two summers worth of USA basketball. In short, he has not taken a break from basketball for almost 3 calendar years, in a sport where even the elite tire after an 8 month season and need 4 months of rest. Factor in his age (almost 31) and the fact that he has spent the last 15 months with a wrecked pinkie in his shooting hand, and you may argue that this feat in endurance and persistence might be the most incredible achievement of his career.

The body of work accomplished during this 3-year period is mind-boggling: 2 Finals appearances, 1 NBA championship, 1 Finals MVP, 1 Regular Season MVP, 3 All-NBA 1^st Team selections, 3 All-Defensive Team selections, 1 scoring title, 3 All-star team selections, 2 All-star MVP's, 1 Olympic gold medal, and 1 FIBA Americas Championship.

To top it off, the consensus is that this 3-year window began after Bryant had began his physical decline, having reached his physical peak the prior season; he had just come off a 2005-06 campaign in which he averaged 35.4 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 4.5 assists, and, despite having a starting back-court mate named Smush and a starting center named Kwame, came within a Lamar Odom defensive rebound away from upsetting the vaunted Phoenix Suns in the 1^st round of the playoffs.

There is a significant minority that places Magic (and sometimes Russell) in the same overall category as Jordan, with only the slimmest of hairs separating them from His Airness. It is within this minority that Bryant may one day be placed alongside Magic and Russell as players whose legacies surpass all except for Michael Jordan. Bryant still has 3-5 years of 1^st-Team All-NBA basketball left in him and the Lakers have a championship-caliber core that has yet to hit its peak. He will win between 0-3 more championships and Finals MVP's, and it is possible that he may add one more Regular Season MVP and a Gold Medal to his resume before he hangs them up. For possibly as long as 20 years, we will have witnessed the near-consensus most skilled player ever destroy opponents on the court – the tight rotation on his jumpers, the strong base as he twists and contorts to create space, the step-back, the pull-up, the fade-away, the step-through, the impeccable footwork, the lightning fast reaction, the silky handles, the myriad counters to every move, the shutdown defense, mental and physical preparation, and the list goes on and on. When it is all said and done, he will finish his career with more points, rebounds, assists, games played, and possibly championships, than Jordan. Put that all in Exhibit A for dogged determination and professional technique.

So what, then, that Bryant will never equal Jordan? Certain things are not under our control, with Bryant's case being his teammates, the size of his hands, the modern era of increased parity in which he played, and spending most of the prime of his career on a junior varsity squad. It can only be the stuff of fantasy to imagine what could have been had the 2005-06 Bryant been placed on the 2007-08 Lakers.

But does that not only make the storyline that much more compelling when it's all said and done, the redemption of Kobe Bryant? The basketball player who made personal and professional mistakes, who pushed through despite unfavorable circumstances and maximized the skill set he was given? There are the chosen ones in Jordan, Lebron, Tiger – athletes so charismatic, so flawlessly gifted and graced by circumstance that they are crowned with adulation by the entire world. And then, there are the flawed superheroes whose kryptonite humanity is bared for all to see – the game 5 humiliation at the Palace, the public confession of adultery, the front-rimmed fade-away jumpers. Bryant is not Jordan and never will be, but think about it this way: not to say that Jordan wasn't hard working, but if a lesser talent can overcome adversity through sheer determination and hard work, and leave behind a legacy almost as great, is that not victory for the rest of us, all the non-Jordans, the non-Lebrons, the non-Tigers? During this 7-year gap between Laker championships, Bryant has taken us on an incredible journey of ups and downs, and demonstrated to us all the resiliency of the human spirit as well as the promised, albeit sometimes delayed, renumeration for effort and dedication.

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

-Galatians 6:7