Why Kobe Bryant isn't looking for a storybook ending at All-Star Game
TORONTO – Gianna Bryant spun the basketball in her hands, occasionally looking down, then looking up to gaze at her father as he spoke into a throng of microphones, digital recorders and cellphones in the corner of a room at Ricoh Coliseum. Kobe Bryant wrapped his arm around his 9-year-old daughter, somehow squeezing her tighter than he was embracing this moment – one of the last remaining apogees of a bedazzling playing career that only has two more months left.
The smile has been unflappable this weekend, which belongs to Bryant regardless of the location or the presence of luminaries that he spent so many years trying to fend off for supremacy. Bryant had his most memorable game against the team that plays in this city, and as someone who grew up in Italy, it almost seems fitting that the NBA's first international All-Star game is his last. What isn't lost on Bryant, but may very well be overlooked by the fawning admirers is how special this All-Star game is, considering that he couldn't participate in the previous two because of injuries that could've – and to some, should've – represented the end.
Bryant's contemptuous refusal to leave on terms other than his own brought him back on this stage, so he has no interest in being force fed a fifth All-Star game MVP on Saturday; he'd be content if San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich played him 10 minutes and chastised Stephen Curry for telling him, "I have a lot of assists for you."
"I said, 'Don't. What are you doing, you're a shooter. You grew up watching me. What the hell are you talking about you're going to pass the ball in the All-Star game?" Bryant said Saturday. "What storybook ending? I've had storybook endings."
The final chapter rarely has the desired ending for athletes, especially those who stick around long enough to have their greatness succumb to physical limitations of age and attrition. Bryant came to that acceptance many months ago – both with the futility of the Los Angeles Lakers franchise for which he delivered five championships and for the athletic mortality he never imagined he'd have to confront when he hurdled people with attitude and that Afro. He has managed to find amusement in both but been especially self-effacing with the latter, always ready with a crushing one-liner.
With dozens of reporters awaiting his entrance before Friday's media availability, Bryant emerged from behind a black curtain wearing a black turtleneck and gray coat and strutted right past, without pausing to stop.
"You guys got to wait," Bryant said without breaking stride. "At this age, I can't hold my pee."
As Bryant received his final All-Star turn this weekend, Shaquille O'Neal, his former teammate and rival, and Allen Iverson, the No. 1 pick from his draft, we're both named finalists for induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Curry, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, Bryant's fellow Western Conference all-star starters, were all nine when Bryant made his all-star debut in 1998 and the ornery snot-nose waived off established legend Karl Malone to go one-on-one with Michael Jordan. Bryant has since dueled with Iverson, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett and blocked LeBron James twice in his previous All-Star appearance in 2013.
"I'm looking around the room and seeing guys that I'm playing with that are tearing the league up that were like four during my first All-Star Game. It's true," Bryant said. "I mean, how many players can say they've played 20 years and actually have seen the game go through three, four generations, you know what I mean? It's not sad at all. I mean, I'm really happy and honored to be here and see this."
Bryant admitted that he needed this farewell tour because he never would've understood how fans and peers revere him, nor have the opportunity reciprocate had he walked away quietly. The whole exercise is more painful to watch than it is to praise. That Bryant is at peace with the end is even more strange because it goes against the maniacal, mercenary persona that Bryant was able to successfully mold and market. But it also gave him one more advantage over O'Neal, whom Bryant has already surpassed in titles and the all-time scoring list.
"I wish I would've had a Shaq Tour, yeah," O'Neal, now an analyst for TNT, said this week in Toronto. "Definitely. I know it would've been a lot of fun. I know I would've got a lot of gifts. It happened the way it happened. You can't complain. Just gotta move on from it."
O'Neal injured his Achilles in 2011 and never played again, denying him to have a similar season-long parade. He added that it's probably best for Bryant to go out this way because the Lakers are "not competitive."
Bryant remains haunted by his two Finals losses to Detroit and Boston, listing them as the greatest regrets of his career. He would've loved to have an exit similar to Peyton Manning, to go out on top with a contending team but he long conceded that he'd never reach his career goal of catching or surpassing Jordan's six titles. "I can't complain about that," Bryant said. "I've enjoyed winning to the tune of five championships and have been very fortunate to have those. Most players, it's very difficult to get one. You've got to be able to take the good with the bad."
Brian Shaw, his former teammate for three titles and a former assistant coach under Phil Jackson for two more in Los Angeles, never thought Bryant would end his career tapping his chest and waving to fans instead of mercilessly trying to rip out their hearts.
"I think it's finally sunk in that he can't play at that level anymore," Shaw said this week at an NBA Cares event in Toronto.
Shaw perhaps played the most important role in protecting Bryant from being seriously hurt by O'Neal. Bryant and O'Neal feuded for most of their time together, but that professional clash grew deeply personal in 2003, when Bryant told investigators in his sexual assault case that O'Neal had paid women to keep quiet about their encounters. O'Neal waited for Bryant in the parking lot, telling teammates that he was going to "[expletive] him up."
Jackson, Mitch Kupchak and several Lakers called Shaw, who was recently retired at the time, to come down to negotiate a compromise so that the team could make one more championship run after adding Malone and Gary Payton. Shaw put Bryant and O'Neal on opposite ends of the room and brought in reinforcements in Malone, Payton and Horace Grant, "because if Shaq had actually went after Kobe, I wouldn't have been able to hold him back."
O'Neal and Bryant settled their differences enough to make one more run to the NBA Finals, but O'Neal was shipped out to Miami immediately afterward, ending one of the most tumultuous but successful unions in NBA history. "If they were able to get along from the beginning, you know, who knows how many championships they would have won?" Shaw said. "That was the best 1-2 punch that I've ever seen."
O'Neal said he considered the relationship fully healed at the 2009 All-Star game in Phoenix, where he and Bryant shared MVP honors. Instead of tussling over who would get the trophy, Bryant leaned down and handed it to O'Neal's son, Shareef. "Of course, he was a big Kobe fan, all little kids are," O'Neal said. "After that, I was like, all that stuff we went through was silly. That was probably the best All-Star game for me, because my son's favorite player gave him something."
"We always had mutual respect. That was always there," Bryant said of O'Neal. "As years progressed, our relationship grew and grew and we're still friendly toward each other. It's always been civil, but when you put two guys in the locker room every single day, you have complete differences on how you should get there, training or whatever, with me, and him, you're going to have confrontations. Absolutely, you're going to have confrontations. But when you go your separate ways, you only see each other once every whatever, it's great."
Bryant doesn't feel the need to lament too much about his best, with him running out of days to bask in this glory, to humbly accept the adulation from foes and fans. His wife, Vanessa, and children, Natalia and Gianna, already joined him for his final game in Boston and are shadowing him through the chill of Toronto. Bryant wanted his kids to see why he relentlessly dedicated himself to those early morning workouts and hours spent in the gym; that they have yielded a 20-year-career that places him in unique company among the game's greats.
Gianna Bryant smiled as her father held her once again and told reporters on Saturday about how she is already starting to show some of the competitiveness of her old man. Bryant then said he has yet to play her one-on-one. He'll have plenty of time for that soon enough.
"As a younger player, I couldn't even see the next day," he said. "No, when you're young, you never think you'll get old. You're always just moment to moment. You think it's never going to end, the body is never going to hurt, never going to give out. … I'm enjoying this whole thing with being around these players and talking to them one more time. The competitiveness in terms of me trying to establish something and prove something, that's gone."
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