I had no plans to return for Kobe's finale. Flying cross-country for one game seemed impractical.
That's what I tried to tell him, anyway.
"What?!" Kobe bellowed, glaring and smiling simultaneously. "You can't be here at 17 and not be here for f--kin' 37, man!"
Seventeen being Kobe's age when he turned pro. Thirty-seven being his age now.
"Come on, man!" he scolded, chuckling. "Finish the journey, man!"
In those early years, Kobe was branded a loner by his older teammates, aloof and disengaged socially. The age gap was surely part of it.
Yet he could be surprisingly engaging and open, and even self-effacing.
There was the day that Kobe's sisters visited a Lakers practice at L.A. Southwest College, and Kobe happily introduced them to me.
Another day, one of his high school coaches visited. Kobe wryly introduced him as "the guy who taught me not to pass."
In those early years, what was most refreshing about Bryant was that there seemed to be no artifice at all. No flashy clothes or jewelry, no tattoos, no entourage, no reptilian nickname. On the court, he was cocksure, single-minded and ambitious. Off the court, he just seemed like a kid who really loved basketball—and knew he was really good at it.
It's been like this all season: Kobe Bryant laughing, joking, smiling, accepting hugs and well wishes from rivals, entertaining the media with his candor, opening up and letting everyone in.
"This is the Kobe he wanted to be," his former teammate Robert Horry told me.
Cynics saw it all as a ruse, a late-stage image-buffing before he exited the stage for good. I saw something else: a re-emergence of the bright, vibrant 19-year-old I met in 1997. It was as if the Lakers' competitive decline, and his imminent retirement, had freed Kobe to be himself again, to lose the Mamba mask and reclaim his humanity in public.
In the end, there was nothing left to sneer about, no rivals to slay or rings to chase. Just a happy legend, embracing the finality of it all.
Howard Beck | Bleacher Report
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