- Joined
- Oct 14, 2018
- Messages
- 3,644
I was a basketball player and used to follow recruiting as well. I remember having a little magazine where he was ranked right behind Tim Thomas in his given class, and not really thinking too much about him.
Then he went pro, and without knowing or thinking, I'd thought he would be a bust. I hated him because he clearly copied and mimiced everything MJ. I thought his swagger was fake and he would be another in the lineage of bust Jordan imitators.
That said, I misunderstood him, and what he represented to the game of basketball. When he came into the league, everyone thought MJ was God (maybe he still is), but Kobe wasn't afraid to challenge God and try to beat him. Among the younger players at that time (and today) he was the first guy to truly challenge the possibility that someone could be as good or better than MJ. It was inconceivable in the mid-to-late 90s to think of the impossible. While he wasn't as good overall as MJ, as a scorer he came very close. Kobe was actual proof that someone else could fly and touch the sky. Nowadays: Westbrook, Harden, Irving.....all these guys are more correlative as to the direct impact of Kobe and what he took and expanded from MJ than MJ directly himself.
You will be missed Kobe: from a kid in high school playing, who quasi-made fun of you, to despising you with the Lakers, to watching dumbfoundedly at your 35 ppg season or your ball handling ability, or ability to make impossible shots or to be as clutch as Bird or MJ or to seeing your final game with 60 or to watching and gaining respect for you while you did everything you could with those injuries, I will miss you.
Never has an athlete, performer, anyone, so radically changed my opinion of them from one extreme of another. I thought about my teendom, growing up as a young adult, and all the memories you reminded me of in my own life, today.
Thanks for being unique: a guy who found his passion and actually giving a crap about how you did it.
RIP my underrated icon (and who cares you weren't as good as MJ. What difference does that debate make: you were special and unique).
Then he went pro, and without knowing or thinking, I'd thought he would be a bust. I hated him because he clearly copied and mimiced everything MJ. I thought his swagger was fake and he would be another in the lineage of bust Jordan imitators.
That said, I misunderstood him, and what he represented to the game of basketball. When he came into the league, everyone thought MJ was God (maybe he still is), but Kobe wasn't afraid to challenge God and try to beat him. Among the younger players at that time (and today) he was the first guy to truly challenge the possibility that someone could be as good or better than MJ. It was inconceivable in the mid-to-late 90s to think of the impossible. While he wasn't as good overall as MJ, as a scorer he came very close. Kobe was actual proof that someone else could fly and touch the sky. Nowadays: Westbrook, Harden, Irving.....all these guys are more correlative as to the direct impact of Kobe and what he took and expanded from MJ than MJ directly himself.
You will be missed Kobe: from a kid in high school playing, who quasi-made fun of you, to despising you with the Lakers, to watching dumbfoundedly at your 35 ppg season or your ball handling ability, or ability to make impossible shots or to be as clutch as Bird or MJ or to seeing your final game with 60 or to watching and gaining respect for you while you did everything you could with those injuries, I will miss you.
Never has an athlete, performer, anyone, so radically changed my opinion of them from one extreme of another. I thought about my teendom, growing up as a young adult, and all the memories you reminded me of in my own life, today.
Thanks for being unique: a guy who found his passion and actually giving a crap about how you did it.
RIP my underrated icon (and who cares you weren't as good as MJ. What difference does that debate make: you were special and unique).
