Can the NBA Ever Replace Kobe Bryant?
Few jerseys are as recognizable as the purple-and-gold No. 24 (or No. 8, if you go back far enough), donned by a current player who will be elected to the Hall of Fame as soon as he's eligible. Few players are as respected as the man whose name has become virtually synonymous with a poisonous species of snake from sub-Saharan Africa.
Few names are as recognizable as Kobe Bryant's, whose presence in the NBA has been as ubiquitous as anyone's over the last decade-and-a-half.
But what led to the Los Angeles Lakers All-Star shooting guard turning into the legend he is today?
For starters, how about everything?
The definitions of stars and superstars seem to vary from person to person, but you'd find precious few people who would dispute No. 24's status as a superstar. Though I'm one of them, that's only because he falls more into the realm of "super-duper stars," a classification occupied by only a few players throughout NBA history.
Bryant simply transcends the game.
Even now that he's 36 years old and fighting to come back from two major injuries while carrying a mediocre Lakers squad, there's still a widespread belief that he won't skip a beat. No one has ever done what he's trying to achieve, but there's still this underlying assumption that Bryant is a superhuman, basketball-playing entity who is somehow beyond the reach of laws that apply to mere mortals.
Isaac Newton may have stood on the shoulders of giants while furthering the pursuits of physics and mathematics, but Bryant somehow looms even larger, unaffected by all those laws Newton helped quantify and explain.
Why?
Seriously, go out and ask a few basketball fans why they believe in Kobe Bryant. Chances are, you'll hear a few different answers of the same iteration: Because he's Kobe Bryant. Some might even include an expletive as Bryant's fake middle name.
It's a silly argument. Tautological as it gets, it's supplying no form of rhetoric other than unsubstantiated opinion.
Yet, somehow it still makes sense.
Again, simply because this is Kobe Bryant we're talking about.
It was a ridiculous convergence of factors—some controllable and others not—that got us to this point, and that's saying nothing of Bryant's immense popularity, both domestically and internationally. Just think all the way back to the beginning of his career, when a precocious teenager was drafted out of high school by the Charlotte Hornets and immediately traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Whatever involvement Kobe had in that process, it happened. And it allowed him to play for what's arguably the sport's No. 1 attraction. Though the Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls would all disagree for various reasons, the Lakers are the league's marquee franchise, enjoying gargantuan levels of support from virtually all areas of the globe.
Any time you combine a captivating athlete with a franchise that's always under the global microscope, sparks are going to fly. And Kobe promoted them by being so damn good early in his career, even if his first All-Star appearance was a little bit ridiculous. Plus, the titles flowed in during the afro-bearing, No. 8-wearing portion of his career, setting the stage for a widely viewed prime and twilight to his NBA tenure.
Let's not overlook how rare it is for a superstar to spend his entire career in one uniform.
There have been negative aspects to Bryant's life with the Lakers—the time he spent in Colorado early in his career, as well as the summers in which he was no longer satisfied with the direction and success of the organization—but he's worn purple and gold throughout his entire time as an NBA player. From brash teenager to sage, unfiltered veteran, Kobe has gone through every stage of an NBA life without changing colors.
Kevin Garnett can't say that. Paul Pierce can't either.
Nor can Shaquille O'Neal, Ray Allen, LeBron James or virtually any other star of the modern era. Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki are the exceptions, though neither has risen to the level of worldwide popularity and unmitigated scrutiny that Bryant has both enjoyed and put up with throughout his time playing professional basketball.
Ridiculous Popularity
How many people truly fit the definition of a household name?
If you walked into the home of a family that had as little interest in the NBA as possible, which players could they name? Due to how much they dominate the news cycle, James and Bryant would likely be mentioned. But beyond that? Even Kevin Durant hasn't spent enough time making headlines, and the rest of the big guns—O'Neal and Michael Jordan, above all else—are long retired.
If you walked into a sports bar instead, you could gauge how much conversation just saying a name sparked. People always seem interested in arguing about Bryant, whether discussing the strength of his career resume, his ability to excel upon his return from injury or whether he or O'Neal was the leader of those early-2000 L.A. teams that were so successful.
Who else passes the bar-fight test? James again. Maybe Derrick Rose. But beyond that, you'll be met with some indifference by at least some portion of the otherwise-interested crowd.
Everyone seems to care about Bryant, and that's not a statement that's limited to the United States. China, above any other country, has a torrid love affair with the future Hall of Famer, as Chris Ballard carefully detailed for Sports Illustrated in one of the best sports articles of 2014:
""As for Kobe, here in China he really is, as the sign reads, "forever young." Here the local media dotes. The fans not only adore him but arrive with no expectations beyond glimpsing the icon. Hang around a Lakers' road hotel in the U.S., and you'll see groupies and autograph hounds awaiting the bus, and if the players don't acknowledge them, angry 40-year-old men will berate them. In Shanghai, I saw one group of nearly a dozen teenagers outside the Shangri-La hotel at 10 in the morning one day; at 11:30 p.m. they were still there, waiting, hopeful, asking any Westerner who entered if they knew when Kobe might return. They carried a succession of handwritten placards, in English, that, one holding each, read "kobe can we take photo with u [heart sign]?"
This kind of unconditional love is rare. Growing up, Kobe received it, like most kids, from his parents. Now he gets it from 17-year-old Chinese kids.
There's no telling why exactly this popularity sprang out of nothingness, though Ballard speculates it happened organically, with a hardworking people respecting and admiring the unmatched dedication that Bryant has shown to his craft.
Regardless of the reason, it exists.
In fact, ESPN.com's Darren Rovell reported during the 2013 offseason that Bryant was the most popular player in the NBA from 2008-09 until last summer, when James surpassed him.
Think about that. It took four MVPs and two titles for the best basketball player in the world to move past a star who should be aging.
A summer later, Rovell wrote that James had become the most popular male athlete in America, but let's not overlook where Bryant ranked.
Keep in mind that the Lakers superstar was coming off a season in which he'd played only a handful of games, limited by an Achilles injury during the early portion of the ill-fated campaign and a major knee injury after his brief return. Despite being largely out of the public eye for the vast majority of the year, Bryant remained the fifth-most popular male athlete in the country, trailing only James, Jordan, Derek Jeter and Peyton Manning.
This isn't the result of a normal career.
An Abnormal Career
It's a testimony to everything Bryant has done in his NBA life.
He's stayed with the same franchise, which again just happens to be the most popular one in the Association, and excelled throughout his career. He's won titles, consciously—and convincingly—imitated the greatest player of all time and displayed a near-psychopathic ability to avoid distractions and believe in himself unfailingly.
"Armed with unequaled self-confidence and an insatiable desire to prevail over opponents—both literal and figurative—on his own terms, ferrying Los Angeles' hopes has become Bryant's preferred way of life," Dan Favale writes for Bleacher Report. "He wouldn't have the Lakers entrusting their fate to anyone else. He wouldn't share the strain of expectations even if he could."
Bryant has drilled countless game-winning shots, shaking off the misses so vigorously but simultaneously with so much ease, that everyone in the arena believes the ball is finding the bottom of the net when it next leaves his fingertips while the last seconds of a game tick off the clock. He's posterized what seems like every great big man during his era of NBA history. He's crossed over myriad opponents, leaving them clutching their ankles as he rises for another successfully converted jumper.
In his prime, he was even a lockdown defender, capable of impacting a game immensely on that end of the floor. Though he's devolved into a ball-watching, opportunistic defender who thrives on his previously earned reputation, he remains capable of serving as a shut-down one-on-one player to this day.
"It was probably the best defense somebody's ever played on me since I've been in the league," Brandon Jennings said about the 2-guard, via The Associated Press' Greg Beacham, after a January contest during the 2012-13 season.
He wasn't the first to feel the wrath of a jilted Bryant on that end of the court, and he certainly won't be the last.
Bryant's game has constantly evolved, as he's developed some of the best footwork in NBA history to counteract his falling athleticism. When the need arises, he's served as a de facto point guard, piling up assists and eschewing those volume-shooting outings for the better of his team.
He's by no means a perfect player, but he's always going to do his darnedest to ensure he comes as close as possible to that descriptor. Well, as close as possible to his version of that descriptor, as Bryant's idea of a perfect player doesn't always show a perfect correlation with everyone else's.
What he's done in the NBA is irrelevant here. There will be players who match his number of titles as a key player. There will be stars who put together similar statistical resumes. Someday, another standout will score more points than Bryant has to his credit when he's done lacing up his sneakers for a final time.
That much feels inevitable, even if it's hard to fathom in the present.
More important is how Bryant has risen to such prominence. That's where the tireless work ethic, nonstop improvements and tinkering, willingness to play out his career with a single franchise and knack for handling the spotlight all come into play.
And that's why there won't be another Bryant.
No Potential Replacement in the Current Landscape
There are plenty of superstars in the current iteration of the NBA. In fact, James seems awfully close to superduperstar status, if he hasn't reached that popularity nirvana already, and Kevin Durant won't be far behind if he keeps improving each and every season of his already impressive career.
But no one has been mythologized like Bryant. Plus, each star has a notable flaw in the resume he's submitting while trying to walk in the shooting guard's size-14 footsteps.
James has already changed teams multiple times, alienating the Cleveland Cavaliers fanbase before returning to his hometown team after winning two championships with the Miami Heat. Even though he's the most popular athlete in the sport now—objectively speaking, based on those earlier popularity reports from Rovell—his career has been filled with too many twists to enjoy the unbridled adoration so many project upon Bryant.
As for Durant, he simply hasn't been as successful.
Now gearing up for his eighth professional season, he's ringless and has yet to develop the following that Bryant enjoyed at such a young age. He's widely viewed—whether it's fair or not—as the league's second fiddle, a status that might be different if he'd already three-peated, as Bryant had already done at Durant's age, young as that may be.
Who else is going to get there?
Anthony Davis is the next big thing, but he's playing for the small-market New Orleans Pelicans. Ditto for Andrew Wiggins, who's now set to toil away in relative obscurity for the nondescript Minnesota Timberwolves.
Poking holes in the candidacy of the league's other young up-and-comers is a similarly easy process.
Plus, the way we view the NBA has changed.
The role of analytics has risen rather dramatically, shaping the way the game is played and viewed by fans. Though some remain stubbornly opposed to the impact of numbers, they're doing so at their own peril, passing up a chance to glean valuable information and become more intelligent consumers of an incredibly complicated, ever-evolving and often awe-inspiring product.
Bryant had the luxury of playing in the era just before everything was scrutinized. Basketball was quite popular in the early-2000s, but the sport wasn't a 24/7 entity in which each move was broken down. Allen Iverson was allowed to loft up 25 shots per game while shooting low percentages from the field, and hero ball pervaded late-game situations.
That doesn't fly anymore. Well, it doesn't fly to the same extent.
But that offensive freedom—the ability to operate in a one-on-however-many situation—allowed Bryant to start his career in soaring fashion, then continue on his merry way as the game changed around him. It's hard to fathom any player in this day and age recording an 81-point game, for example, despite this particular 2-guard doing so only eight years ago.
"Still, the thought of anyone so much as scoring 70 points in a single game—in a league that's gone to great lengths to encourage ball movement and spacing and de-emphasize isolation play—is a fleeting one, at best," wrote Bleacher Report's Josh Martin while looking back at what has arguably become the most famous game of Bryant's incredible carer.
So, regardless of whether anyone touches that 81-point milestone, will the NBA be able to replace Bryant?
Absolutely not.
Just as Bryant, Duncan, Garnett and the rest of the stars from the post-Jordan era helped the Association move past the absence of the greatest player the sport has ever seen, remaining ever-popular all the while, Davis, Wiggins and the new breed of basketball superstars will help the league fill the void left by this particular shooting guard.
However, that in no way means the Association will replace the man, the myth and the legend named Kobe Bryant.
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