Healthy Kobe Bryant Is Exactly What 2014-15 NBA Season Needs
The NBA needs Kobe Bryant more than ever.
With a massive new TV deal, as first reported by Richard Sandomir of The New York Times, and a skyrocketing salary cap encroaching on the horizon, the league is careening toward an unfamiliar era. Bryant, as familiar a face as there is in the NBA, can serve as a bridge to that new age.
Perhaps that'll be his last act as an active NBA icon. If it is, he appears committed to making it a damn entertaining one.
Because however you feel about Kobe's contract, his attitude or his place in history (arguments about his G.O.A.T.-ness spring up everywhere), you can't deny the NBA is a better, more compelling product when he's a part of it.
Case in point: Bryant turned an utterly meaningless preseason game Oct. 6 into a must-watch affair.
A New (Old) Brand of Entertainment
Bryant scored 13 points on 5-of-12 shooting in 21 minutes against the Denver Nuggets in his first game action since Dec. 17, 2013. And he looked good—if you take new Los Angeles Lakers head coach Byron Scott at his word:
Scott's exaggerating a bit there; Bryant looked like himself, albeit a modified version.
His lift was entirely gone, a fact made evident by his endless pump fakes in the lane (a telltale sign the springs are no longer springy) and ridiculously tough, highly contested fadeaways. Those shots were always difficult, but now that Bryant can't get off the floor, they look nearly impossible.
Nonetheless, Bryant made his fair share, earning bonus points for the heightened degree of difficulty attending each leaning fling.
He operated mainly out of the post and dribbled far less than a younger version of himself might have. It was a lesson in energy conservation, an acknowledgment that limitations—once nonexistent—are now things that define Bryant's play.
His recent pre-injury seasons hinted at such an evolution, so the current post-centric state of his game shouldn't be surprising. Plus, Michael Jordan increasingly relied on low-block prowess as his career wound down, and if we know anything about Bryant, it's that he'll go to the grave emulating MJ.
Bryant is the same man—evolved. To use a baseball analogy, he's pitching instead of throwing these days, replacing physical skill with tactical smarts.
We've seen the unstoppable drives, the one-dribble pull-ups, the relentless transition attacks. But we haven't seen the measured (though still aggressive) post technician. We haven't seen the guy who might operate almost exclusively as a draw-and-kick facilitator on the block.
When a superstar fundamentally changes his game in an effort to stay on top, well...it's fascinating.
The New (Old) Outlook
In addition to new territory for his game, Bryant will also offer a previously unseen angle in terms of his own image and narrative. He's an underdog now, no matter how confident he seems. He's a guy hanging on, trying to prove something to observers who've already seen him prove so much.
Rest assured, he'll do it with the same familiar confidence he's always had:
Of course you did, Kobe. Wouldn't expect anything different.
It'll be captivating to see how Bryant's persona develops this year. From a physical standpoint, you wonder if a guy who doesn't have his legs at this early juncture will find them later. But you also wonder what such a recognition of physical mortality might do to a previously indomitable spirit.
That's just another reason to keep watching.
How will Bryant adapt if his athleticism is even further shaved away by the grind of the season? What happens if his body won't allow him to lead by example like he always has?
Or, perhaps more interestingly, what if it does?
All but the most devoted, purple-and-gold footie-pajama-wearing diehards would admit expectations for Bryant's season are guarded. Can you even imagine the fervor that would sweep through the legions of Kobe fans if No. 24 plays like an All-Star?
It's a terrifying thought, but one we probably shouldn't rule out entirely.
In His Debt
Usually, a player of Kobe's age, with his mileage (over 45,000 regular-season minutes and another 8,600 in the playoffs) doesn't give us anything but a dejected farewell after a severe injury strikes him down in his mid-30s.
Bryant doesn't owe fans anything anymore, but he's giving us what he has left anyway: a new and fascinating final chapter that is somehow familiar. Even if the game has changed, the mentality remains. And that's really what we've loved about Bryant all along anyway.
He refuses to quit, driven by a pathological competitiveness we haven't seen since—you guessed it—Jordan. He finds reasons to keep going—reasons motivated by love (of the game) and hate (reserved for doubters, real and imagined).
He's practically a fictional character in that regard, larger than life.
The NBA is changing—in a big way and in short order. And it's oddly appropriate that Bryant, this iconic figure, is still around to guide us into a new era. After all, he's at once a symbol of the league's past and a major reason its future is going to be so strange and exciting.
Without Bryant, the NBA wouldn't be the same product, and the league might not be as healthy as it is globally without players like him spreading it across the planet over the past two decades.
The future of the NBA is brighter because of Kobe Bryant. But so is the present.
Enjoy it.
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