Editor’s Note: The new series, KOBE: The Making of A Legend, traces Kobe Bryant’s stories from his childhood in Italy to the superstarm of the movement, and as a narrator and father of his post-NBA aspirations. I look closely at hope. The three-part series will resume on Saturday at 9pm ET/PT.
CNN
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Resignation is a difficult outlook for all professional athletes. If you have dedicated over 20 years of your life to most others, but complete your craft and mercilessly pursue titles and admiration, it will lead to even more panic.
It seemed his body had been destroyed by a series of injuries in the final years of his trophy-equipped NBA career. A future beyond hardwood seemed inconceivable but inevitable for the player who gave the game of basketball a whole-blood heart and soul commitment.
“For many writers of the time, Kobe was one of the athletes we were most concerned about, and we were the most concerned about what would happen to his career after basketball ended.” sports journalist Scoop Jackson tells CNN Sports. “He was making this game his life, so he was very open about it. Nothing else means anything else.”
But five years after his untimely death at age 41, Bryant’s post-basketball career is just as remarkable as everything he achieved in his 20 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers. 08 Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award and two final MVP Awards.
It was impossible to foresee. Bryant went on to make a successful multimedia company and won an Oscar in 2018 for his animated short film, “Dear Basketball.” The changes in my career were tough.
“He turned the villain back,” former NBA star Tracy McGrady said in the third installment of the CNN original film and series Kobe: The Making of a Legend documentary. “Reinventing yourself is the way he did it is one of the most notable stories in the history of sports.”
For someone like McGrady, who shared an intimate friendship with Bryant, it was as if Kobe after basketball had transformed into a whole new person.
“We saw how he transformed and how personality he was after he stopped playing basketball. How he smiled, he was with him. The lightness he carried to, and how he lived his life,” adds McGrady. “There’s something other than basketball coming into his life.”
It was through “Dear Basketball” (a poetic homage to the game first released in Player Tribune) that Bryant announced he would retire in 2016. His final act in the NBA was a decent homage to an astounding career, earning a notable score. The Lakers beat the Utah Jazz 101-96 with 60 points.
In the fourth quarter alone, Bryant outscored the Jazz 23-21.
“It was his middle finger for everyone,” Jackson says. “For me, that last game was one of the biggest statements that individual athletes had the ability to make.”
At that point, it was difficult to believe that Bryant had been hampered by injuries in the Achilles tendon, which tore in April 2013 and the rotor cuffs, which were destroyed in January 2015. Still, despite the limited game time of the season before his retirement, he provided little insight into what his life as a storyteller might entail, It provided him with the opportunity to plot the movements.
“I really think about him (starting to prepare for life after basketball) before he was finished, but we didn’t know that,” Jackson says. “He kept it quiet, kept it low and kept it for the people he knew… he’s still learning about this game and other things besides chasing this game. I rarely shared my interest.”
It was through his love for sports that Bryant found his main creative outlet. “Dear Basketball” had a bit of a problem writing him, but he had several months of work before the final form of the poem came to fruition – the five-minute film directed by Glen Keene was a member of Bryant He speaks to John Williams, who has music along with music by famous composers.
The production crew has created an unlikely team. For example, Williams had never been to a basketball game in his life and would ask, “Why me?” When he first received a call from Bryant asking him to write a score.
But what brings them all together and what the final product finally conveys is the nostalgia of childhood and pretending to film a basket that won the game with her father’s roll-up tube socks .
“That’s true for everyone,” Keene says in “Kobe: Creating a Legend.” “We’re all about experts, but in reality, only six year olds still dream.”
“Dear Basketball” won an Oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards, less than two years after Bryant played his final NBA game. However, this perception sparked controversy amid the 2003 charges of the #MeToo movement and sexual assault that came to Bryant.
At the time of the incident, Bryant admitted to adultery with a 19-year-old resort worker in Colorado, but denied allegations of rape, claiming that the encounter was always an agreement. Criminal sexual assault charges a year later after the accused called the district attorney were against Bryant, who instead personally settled in March 2005, saying she no longer wanted to proceed with the lawsuit. It was dropped after saying it focused on civil litigation and its terms. Not disclosed.
Despite a new focus on historic allegations, Bryant’s nomination was not revoked and he eventually took the stage to win the award, giving an acceptance speech his wife and daughters gave along with Keene. I was grateful for this.
“Dear Basketball” is one of the many creative projects Bryant has undertaken in the second chapter of his career, an Oscar and Emmy Award-winning production in his burgeoning work.
He also founded Granity Studios, a multimedia sports content company that developed films, television shows, books and podcasts. This includes “The Wizenard Series,” a collection of sports fantasy books for kids, and a podcast called “The Punies,” about a group of sports-playing neighborhood friends.
But beyond Byrant’s creative efforts, and perhaps more importantly, was his daughter Gianna’s commitment to a basketball career.
Gianna, or Gigi, was 13 when she died five years ago with her father in a helicopter crash. She had already established herself as a promising young basketball player.
Bryant, who renewed his love for the game by coaching Gigi and her teammates, had already named his daughter “Manbashita.”
“Kobe is finished playing. Jackson adds, “This gives you everything.” Other parts of the world as he finally saw where his daughter felt she would play. ”
And that doesn’t mean that Bryant completely cut his ties to the NBA after he retired. He continued to coach league players and formed relationships with Kyrie Irving, Jason Tatum, Devin Booker and Anthony Davis, among other things.
“He was doing his thing that wasn’t connected to the NBA and was affecting a generation of players,” Jackson says. “It was like he was a stealth ninja and really shaped the NBA in a way we didn’t even know what was going on.”
One of the major tragedy of Bryant’s death was that he couldn’t see how he continued to operate beyond the world of basketball. Gigi has also had extreme sadness, as she has never discovered her full potential in the game.
This brutal and heartbreaking approach is rare, but it is common in sports because it can become unrealistic. However, Bryant received it in proof of his lifelong salary for his merciless pursuit of causes that he had taken care of.
“You asked for my fuss, I gave you my heart,” Bryant wrote in “Dear Basketball.”
