November 30, 2021 • 39 mins
High school basketball coach Gregg Downer created a staff of assistants for the purpose of coaching Kobe Bryant. Downer knew what he had in Kobe, and he knew what kind of attention Kobe would draw from opponents, from the media, from everywhere. So he did a really smart, really innovative thing: He brought on four assistants, and each coach would have his own specialized role.
Pre-order Mike Sielski's related book: “The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality" (1/11/22): TheRiseOfKobeBook.com
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Our theme music is “Create Yourself” by Grover Braam feat. Justin Starling: Listen to Create Yourself on Spotify
Mike Egan, who had been a college coach in Delaware, was already on board as Lower Merion’s defensive coordinator. Downer’s older brother, Drew, had a way of talking to people, even teenagers, that put them at ease, so he would be the team’s amateur sports psychologist. Jimmy Kieserman was 26 at the time, had played Division I ball at Miami University and at Rider, and had played professionally in Israel. He was quick. He was tough. He could dunk. And he saw a news report about Kobe one night, and he called up Gregg and volunteered to help in any way he could. He became Kobe’s foil, guarding and harassing him every day at practice. Jeremy Treatman would be the team’s media-relations coordinator. He’d take care of all the interview requests, the reporters, the outside noise. And Gregg would oversee the whole operation. All this because of one 17-year-old kid. Because of Kobe.
Cover photo © Eileen Blass – USA TODAY NETWORK
“I Am Kobe” is a production of Diversion Podcasts in association with iHeartRadio. This season is written and hosted by Mike Sielski. Produced by Jacob Bronstein and directed by Mark Francis. Story editing by Jacob Bronstein with editorial direction from Scott Waxman. Editing, mixing, and sound design by Mark Francis. Production Assistant: Stephen Tompkins. Music Supervisor: Scott Velasquez for Frisson Sync. Executive Producers: Mark Francis and Scott Waxman.
Thanks to Oren Rosenbaum, Susan Canavan, and Jeremy Treatman.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion podcasts. What if they never get the exposure? Were
all right, that will get the exposure, right, I'm gonna
get it, hopeful, little Marrion on the map and uh
doesn't type of person I am. Somebody says I can't
(00:26):
do something. I want to go out and do it
all purpose and do it at an unbelievable rate. I
don't want to clear I don't want to do get
over the ostle. I want to totally clear it. It
was a crisp late afternoon in the fall of and
the men who had coached Kobe Bryant during his senior
(00:47):
year at Lower Merion High School back in had come
together for a little reunion of sorts. There was pizza,
there was good beer, some juicy I p a s.
And there were a lot of memories and there was
a lot of reminiscent I would say that it was
the most incredible coaching staff ever, only because we were young.
(01:09):
We were relatively new at like high level stuff like this,
and it was just five. There were four coaches in me.
(01:30):
I had arranged this meeting so they could jog each
other's memories and share some anecdotes about Kobe's high school career,
especially his senior year. All of us were sitting around
a table on Greg Downer's back of coach. Greg is
still the head boys basketball coach at Lower Mery. He
was hired in nineteen ninety and has been there ever since.
(01:51):
When he was just thirty three years old, he created
a staff of assistance really for the specific purpose of
coaching Kobe Bryant. Downer knew what he had in Cope
and he knew what kind of attention Kobe would draw
from opponents, from the media, from everywhere. So he did
a really smart, really innovative thing. He brought on four
(02:17):
assistance and each coach would have his own specialized role.
Mike Egan, who had been a college coach in Delaware,
was already on board as Lower Marion's defensive coordinator. Downer's
older brother, Drew, had a way of talking to people,
even teenagers, that put them at ease, so he would
(02:38):
be the team's amateur sports psychologist. Jimmy Kaiserman was twenty
six at the time, had played Division one ball at
Miami University and at Writer, and had played professionally in Israel.
He was quick, he was tough, he could dump, and
he saw a news report about Kobe one night and
called up Greg down, volunteering to help in any way
(03:01):
he could. He became Kobe's foil, guarding and harassing him
every day at practice. Jeremy Treatment would be the team's
media relations coordinating. He'd take care of all the interview requests,
the reporters, the outside noise, and Greg would oversee the
whole operation. All this basically because of one seventeen year
(03:24):
old kid, because of Kobe. Now twenty five years later,
they were back together again. Kaiserman couldn't make it to
the reunion, but the other four could. Oh almost forgot
there was one other person there too, bring down Greg's daughters,
(03:44):
who was seven years old at the time. You know,
I think I'd like to think I don't really have
an ego, And I mean I used to await awake
at night wondering if we were gonna score baskets, you know,
literally when we first started, and you know, we were
giving up too many points. And this pre rope is
this with her without Kobe. Beforehand, I was gonna say,
(04:04):
if you were laying awake at night wonder if you're
gonna score when you coach, you had problem before he
definitely has a problem. Before before Kobe, when you first
got the job. Yeah, yeah, I want to call me,
I'm Mike Sealskip and from Diversion podceads, this is I
(04:24):
am Kobe. I love why see why create myself? Create yourself?
Stay nice night, go on, create yourself. You gotta learn
from the great mass. Do we gain line selling? That's
(04:44):
getting time? Episode four, Phenom of Philly. Before Kobe, the
Lower Marian Aces didn't have much of a basketball program.
(05:07):
Before Kobe, their uniforms were often mismatched. A kid would
be wearing a tank top number forty five on the back,
but his short said number twenty one. Before Kobe, the
Aces lost the game fifty four to thirteen, and because
they had so few players to begin with, and so
many of those players had fouled out, they finished the
(05:28):
game with just four on the floor. They were a
team that nobody paid much attention to, even in the
halls of the high school itself. Lower Merion Township, generally speaking,
is a pretty posh area, and the most popular sports
at the school in the late nineteen eighties were the
ones you'd expect to be popular at that kind of school.
(05:51):
Soccer lacrosse foot Then in Greg Downer Kid, and the
basketball team got a little better. Then Kobe Bryant came in,
and by the start of his senior year, his coaches
knew they had the best high school basketball player in
America on their team. They just had to figure out
(06:14):
how to make the most offense. The Kaiserman thing was cool.
I remember when Greg called me, He's like, I got
this guy and the coach with us he played at Miami.
I was like, how did you get that guy? I mean,
that's that's ingenious. It really is, because we knew there's
(06:34):
no one on our team that can cover Kobe. The
ball is gonna be in Kobe's hands. We're not gonna
overthink it. We're not gonna put in the Princeton offense. Right,
You're gonna have to deal with this kid all night.
The ball is gonna be his hand. We're gonna set
up our defense, pressure and like, and we're not gonna
overthink it. We're gonna let him play. We may not
have real ashes at the time, but you know, we
(06:56):
did get along and maybe the role definition was good.
But I think there was maybe a part of us
who was thinking, like, uh, this is like a one
shot deal. Let's not screw it up, you know, let's
not screw it up with like Fickeren or you know,
like you're you're gonna get one crack at Kobe Bryant.
I don't think any of us expected another player quite
(07:17):
like him. Once the Bryant family moved back to the
United States, it didn't take long for Greg Downer to
hear the rumors about this amazing eighth grade basketball player
(07:39):
at balotkin Wood Middle School. But Downer also knew that
Dr George Smith, Kobe's coach at Ballot ran a tight
ship and didn't let any of his players, no matter
how good they were, show off their individual talents. So
Downer went to a Ballot practice to check out Kobe
for himself to get a sense of how good this
kid really was. What he saw blew him away. Well,
(08:04):
I couldn't believe that somebody at the tender age of
thirteen was was that advance with their skills. Um invited
him to a practice with my current varsity and you know,
he was more than point in his own and at
six ft two hundred fourth pals, I knew that he
was gonna get dumb but bigger. But his foundation at
(08:26):
such a young age was was really solid. Good shooter
could pass her good intellect, and my mind started racing
pretty quickly. Asked to uh, what do you give me
down the road? And my initial depression was certainly that
I very have something very special and and your need
(08:47):
on my hands. If Kobe had been a high school
phenom these days, he probably would have transferred to a
well known basketball school like Mont Verde Academy or i
AMG Academy in Florida, a place that produces top notch athletes,
like a factory producers sports cars. Back in the early
nine nineties, though, things were a little different. Downer was
(09:09):
more worried that a private school in the Philadelphia area
might recruit Code, and a few of them did, so
he took a big step toward making sure Kobe wanted
to stay at Lower Merryan Downer knew that Joe Bryant
was coaching girls basketball at a Cuba Hebrew academy, and
the two of them had hit it off when they met,
so Downer hired Joe to be Lower Marian's junior varsity
(09:32):
boys coach. It was a pretty smart idea. Joe was
a former NBA player and he had some coaching experience,
and really was Kobe going to transfer away from the
school where his dad coached. I think there was the
salesmanship to keep him at Lower Marian, to convince the
(09:55):
parents that that I was the right guy with a
job and that that public educ issue could could accomplish
what Kobe needed. Um you know, there there definitely was
a paranoia that he would drift off to one of
the Catholic schools where somebody would swerve Ben and try
to take him. The funny part is Downer never really
(10:27):
had to worry about that. Kobe took kind of an
old school approach to his early career. He stayed and
played for his local hometown high school. His parents could
see him play, his friends could see him play, his
community could see him play and rally around him and
the team. I always like that aspect of him and
his career. It showed loyalty. Here he is talking to
(10:50):
Jeremy treatment about it. I knew that a man was
the right properly grade. I really know Clue dying that
road right. Simber fact that he accepted me a great
coming to a school to practice with his team and
allowed me to stay after Batty and welcome my game.
I knew there was no other places my two sisters
with him, So there was never in the truth to
(11:11):
that to those works went around, never uh got knew
the truth father and my family and coaching the truth
where I was going to Gray Contact and a lot
by ole Bright schools. But I just wanted to go
to home Man because my sisters with him type family.
But even in the years after that eleven grade Roman
(11:32):
was calling in uh Piscopal Germantown Academy. They because of
my father, and I said, I want your sunny coming
to school and be great for him, and saying all
this stuff. My father was listening, but at the same
time he was always happy at the Man, and you
know I wouldn't want to leave. Koby didn't quite have
to resurrect the basketball program when he got to Lower Merry.
(11:52):
The ass had made the district playoffs the year before
under Downers coaching. It looked like they were getting better
and it didn't take for them to see how much
talent the new freshman had and how much he liked
the flat it. Here's Kobe's teammate from Lower Marrian Guy Stewart,
this freshman year. I mean when he came in, you
could just you can kind of see he was different.
(12:15):
It wasn't your typical freshman that came in. I mean
he was you know, six three at this time and
probably waited, you know, and five pounds. But you could
just see the way he moved on the court and
he understood the game that he was going to be different. Now,
at that time, it was just he was going to
be a different type of player. You know, he could
have just been a great high school player and went
(12:38):
on and play college and then that was it. Right.
But like you think of you know, his dad being
in the NBA, and you know, him being tall and
his sisters were tall. You know, you were like, okay this,
you know, he could he could be something. He shot
a lot. It was freshman year, um, but you know
that was to be expected because we you know, we
weren't as good as we we should have been. Oh
(13:00):
they weren't good. Period. The Aces went four and twenty
in Kobe's freshman season. It seems impossible to go four
and twenty when you have Kobe Bryant on your roster.
But as Stewart said, Kobe shot a lot in fact,
he shot too much and his teammates resented him for it.
There were also a bunch of injuries to key players,
(13:22):
including to Kobe. He fractured his kneecap and missed the
season's final few weeks. But everything brightened up for him
his sophomore year when Jermaine Griffin, who had grown up
in Queens, New York, transferred into Lower Marian and joined
(13:44):
the basketball team. The two of them were among the
relatively few black students in the school, and they connected
immediately over their love of basketball and rap music. Better yet,
for the Aces, Griffin was the perfect compliment to Kobe
you on the court. He was smart, tough, played tenacious defense,
(14:05):
and didn't need to shoot the ball off to help
the team win games. Lower Marian went sixteen and six
in Kobe's sophomore year and reached the second round of
the district playoffs, and there was no doubt any longer
that Kobe was there to stay. It was like Jamaine
with the Savior, because the hen will come to Lower
(14:25):
Marian at the right time, right man, which guy Coba
he came into the right time, right round. It's just
a great seven because it's someone that I can be
saying the basketball so what I'm comfortable with? All right?
He came I really wrongly going every day. Hey, this
(15:04):
is Mike Sealsky, host and writer of I Am Kobe.
This podcast project came out of my work on a
related book called The Rise Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit
of Immortality. If you want to explore other parts of
Kobe's story, check out The Rise. It's not just a
book version of the podcast. I dive deeper into some
of the topics covered in this series, and even some
(15:26):
that we don't cover at all. Kobe's upbringing, his family,
his identity, his effect on his friends and teammates, his
journey into the n b A, and his earliest days
with the Lakers. The Rise Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit
of Immortality is out now. Just head over to the
Rise of Kobe book dot com and you can buy
(15:47):
it from any of your favorite retailers. That's The Rise
of Kobe Book dot Com. Thanks So. Kobe was entrenched
at Lower Merio, but Joe spent just one year as
the j V coach before he got a better opportunity
(16:07):
at a familiar place, his alma mater LaSalle University. The
head coach there, Speedy Morris, needed to fill an opening
for an assistant, and one of his friends recommended Joe
for the job. The Higher maid Sense LSAL was a
small college in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Only, but
it had a strong basketball program for years under Morris.
(16:35):
The LaSalle Explorers had made the n c A Tournament
four times in the previous six years. One season they
went thirty and two and nearly reached the Sweet six
team and LaSalle had a tradition of recruiting and getting
the best high school player in or around Philadelphia. Peck
Joe had been that player at Bartram High School in
(16:55):
the nineteen seventies. But now the program needed a little boost,
and maybe Joe could provide. I know all about the
boost that the program needed there. The year that Joe
came back to LASA was the same year I started
at LaSalle myself as a freshman. Eventually I started covering
(17:16):
the team for the student newspaper. I got to know
Speedy Morris well, and I met Joe Bryant too, But
I didn't know anything about Kobe During his first couple
of years at Lower Merion, nobody really did, which is
kind of weird when you think about it. I mean,
you think it would be a big story, right. It
had all the elements. A once great basketball player was
(17:39):
now coaching at his old school in his hometown and
his son was a rising star at a local high school.
Except it wasn't a big story because at the time,
there was really only one person in the entire media
market who recognized that it was a story at all.
Jeremy Treatment. Here he is talking about a six teen
(18:00):
year old Kobe Bryant for a segment on the Inquiry
High School Sports show. Kobe Bryant has a maturity not
seen in most sixteen year old superstars. He credits that
to the strength of his family, especially his relationship with
his father, former La Salan seventy six star Joe Bryant
(18:20):
Joe Jelly being Bryant, the popular hometown hero, was a
two time At this point, Jeremy was still coaching at
a key behabor where he and Joe had met and
become friends, but he was also working as a freelance
(18:41):
reporter for the biggest newspaper in Pennsylvania and the biggest
media outlet in the entire Delaware Valley. The paper I
worked for now the Philadelphia Inquiry. As a reporter, Jeremy
covered a bunch of Lower Marian's games during Kobe's freshman
and sophomore years, and he wrote a bunch of stories
about those games, talking to Kobe and Greg down or
(19:02):
after everyone getting to be friends with both of them.
But he couldn't persuade his editors at the Inquirer to
let him do what he wanted to do, a big
blowout feature all about this rising local basketball phenomenon, Kobe Bryant.
Jeremy says they were more interested in focusing on players
from the city's public and Catholic leagues, and he couldn't
(19:25):
understand why they were missing this obvious story that was
staring them in the face. There's two levels of the
frustration there. One was among my friends in general public
and believe me when I was telling a dot co.
But the second level of frustration was worse. My editor
at the time wouldn't give me the opportunity to write
about him, and I pitched him in ninth grade, tenth grade,
(19:47):
eleventh grade, and by the end of eleventh grade he
had come around. But he ended up giving it to
another writer, Christma Cadis, and his exact word was, it's
Christmas be He's our he's our high school basketball writer.
And I remember it was in a meeting in front
of many many people. I said, I've been pitching this
for three years. He said, Chris's speed. That was this
guy where Jeremy was crushed. This was going to be
(20:11):
the first big story ever about a kid. Jeremy knew
was going to be huge. In his mind, he was
the logical choice to cover Kobe. Nobody on the staff
knew him, or Joe or Greg down or better. But
Jeremy did catch a break. The editor told him that
The Inquirer was starting a TV show devoted entirely to
(20:33):
high school sports. And I was like, oh my god,
I've been waiting for this all my life. I'm twenty
years old. This is it, and this is like TV
on air. Yeah, it's gonna be on Fox or Challenge
seventeen or whatever it was on. And they said, well, okay,
well you're the guys us to know high schools. Uh,
if you have to pitch one story to us, This guy,
(20:53):
Sean Docker, he said, do you have to pitch one
story for us, what would it be. I said, well,
there's this guy with the three point five with a
good because I think school in the country, speaks Italian
and Sapanish. His dad playing the NBA, and I believe
he's the best player in the country. And he think.
The first thing he said was when do we meet him?
And I was like, I found my place. How long
is which anything? Grade? Uh? Coach down on myself. We're
(21:19):
watching the room day and after game, he just said
to me, goes, does anybody realize that the next uncle
Jordan is in r GM. Uh. He was in the
gym and school out in the morning as the high
school kid. Uh. He was the last one to leave.
He stayed extra to shoot like five hunter jump shots. Uh.
He was very focus. We had a couple of practices
(21:40):
that were canceled. He was boy king out. He was
so angry that the practices were canceled. Now Jeremy had
an outlet to tell the world what he knew they
needed to know. The one big thing that he felt
(22:01):
had become his mantle to carry. Kobe Bryant was going
to be one of the best basketball players the world
had ever seen. And in his junior year at lower Merion.
Kobe started to show everyone just that because he spent
the entire summer of doing pretty much nothing but playing basketball.
(22:22):
He came back to school a little bigger, a little stronger,
a little smarter, his skills more refined. The Aces lost
their first game, then won games in a row. Kobe
ended up averaging more than thirty one points a game.
He had forty points in one game, forty two in another.
(22:44):
An opposing coach said, if you hold Kobe to fifteen points,
you'll win by thirty. Kobe read that comment and took
it as a slight against his teammates. So when it
came time to play that school, he spent all night
passing the ball to those teammates. He ended up with
fifteen points and seventeen assists, and lower Merryan one. By
(23:08):
twenty two, Mike Egan was in his first season as
one of Greg Downer's assistants, and he couldn't believe what
he was seeing from Kobe. I knew he was good,
but you know he's a I guess he's a sixteen
year old kid. At that day, he just earned sixteen
UM and then every day he would do something in
(23:29):
practice and I would look at the other coaches that
would say, can you believe that? I mean, it could
be something as simple as, you know, a move he
made on the baseline. He had a really strange habit
of his junior year. He kept working on this move
on the baseline and he kept stepping out of bounds
and you know, we blow the whistle. You're out of bounds.
(23:51):
What are you doing? And then he started getting closer
and closer. It was just kind of a weird story
about him just trying to you know, he knew that
the highest level of basketball is about inches and margins
and just how close can I get to that edge
without going over it? Guys. Stewart was a senior on
(24:12):
that team, one of its leaders, but he wasn't the leader,
and he kind of knew it. Kobe was the real
leader of that team. He was very demanding. He was
very furious on the court. He wanted you to play
your role and do it great. He pushed you um
every practice. He he never took off a practice. He
(24:35):
was always challenging his teammates. You know, we would play
these games where you know, we would have to guard
him and he would he would The way he played
like He didn't care who you were. He didn't care
if you were his teammate and practice or not. He
was going to go at you because in his mind,
he's like, if I can challenge you and and and
(24:56):
into guarding me better, you can guard anybody, you know.
If if if I'm pushing everybody to be better, we're
all going to be better as a team. And and
and that was kind of like his mindset, right, He's
gonna push everybody. He's going to push himself because the
ultimate goal is to win a championship and to win games.
(25:24):
The Aces won a lot of games in Kobe's junior season.
They went twenty six and five, They won the Central
League title. They made it all the way to the
district championship game. Lower Merion hadn't won a district championship
in years, and now here were Kobe and his teammates
about to play at DuPont Pavilion on the campus of
(25:45):
Villanova University, and the arena was packed and loud, and
everybody had forgotten that the team had gone four and
twenty just a couple of years early. It was an
amazing turnaround. There was just one problem. Lower Marian was
about to play the Chester High School Clippers, and Chester
(26:07):
had the best high school basketball program in Pennsylvania. Just
the year before, the Clippers had won the state championship,
the third in the school's history. They've won five more since.
Terry Twoey has covered Chester basketball for forty years for
the Delaware County Daily Times. Basketball is everything in the
(26:29):
city of Chester. It's it's their protein, that's their six Flyers,
Eagles or whatever. Not that they're not Sixers flyers or
Eagles fans, but yeah, they live and die with the
Clippers on the basketball For the city of Chester itself
could not have been more Unlike Lower Merion Township, of
the forty people who lived there were black. It had
(26:53):
a history of redlining, blockbusting, and political corruption. Drug markets
cropped up in the main teen eighties. By the mid
nineteen nineties, Chester had seen a huge drop in population
and prosperity. Searches on to find whoever shot and killed
a thirteen year old boy and injured two adults in
Chester and two subspects meets Donna under Earl rust right
(27:15):
Now and a deadly shooting that was called camera in Chester.
Take all the polize in Chester or searching for a
gunman after one man is killed and another is hurt
in a shooting. Gun fired up to just after six
last night, it was the poorest city in Pennsylvania and
the second most dangerous city in America. According to my newspaper,
The Philadelphia Inquirer. Between the years two thousand and two
(27:37):
thousand fourteen, Chester average fifty three homicides per one hundred
thousand people, the highest rate of any city in the country.
Basketball was the one unifying institution there. It was the
one thing that made everyone in Chester proud. It's kind
(28:00):
two diametrically different areas, and obviously, you know, Chester is
a you know, for lack of a better term, you know,
the press city Economically, Lower Marian is an affluent suburban
community that has a little more you know, finances behind
it than Chester. I think the two biggest sports in
(28:22):
Chester for a lot of years were basketball and baseball.
I'm actink at one time the city of Chester had
produced Major League Baseball players than any other city. But
you know, it's it's something that you know, in the playgrounds,
it's it's huge. You know, you go down to Memorial
Park in Chester and you used to be you know,
(28:43):
leads down there in the summertime and pick up games
that were just lacious. Chester has been a state power
and at the high school level since the early nineteen
early to mid nineteen fifties, and it's just you know, basketball,
it's a city game and Chester, you know, being a
(29:03):
being a city at one time, a thriving city that
had you know, factories and things like that, that just
kind of manifested into the sport of choice. The Clippers
had at least eight guys maybe more who could start
on any high school team in the state. Lower Marian
had Well, Lower Marian had Kobe, and Lower Marian didn't
(29:26):
have a chance. The final score was Chester seventy seven,
Lower Marian fifty. Here's Aces coach Greg Downer again. What
I make of it is we're not ready. Uh you know,
we've got to grow some more. We've got much more
work to do. And I think it was some growing
(29:46):
pains for us when the Central League compete for the
district title, make some noise and states and twenty seven
point loss in the district final and maybe that's not
even competing for the for the district title, and we
got balanced a little bit early versus Hazelton in the
in the state quarters, and you know it, it was
a progression, And you know, I didn't have the sense
(30:10):
that that we could win the whole thing Kobe's junior year,
because I really was just in awe as to how
good Chester was. That lost to Chester stun but not
(30:40):
as much as the one that ended Lower Merrion season
a few days later to Hazelton in the second round
of the state playoffs. The game was tied late in regulation.
Let's let defensive coordinator Mike Egan set the scene. We
had the ball with the tie game under ten seconds
left in Kobe. You know, we had what we wanted.
(31:01):
We had the ball in Kobe's hand the middle of
the court. Um, he went to the basket and coach
his sons dripped Kobe and went down and um, I
don't know if he didn't get the shot off, but
he didn't make the shot, could have lost the game
right there. Instead, they lost in overtime. No district championship,
no state championship. It was the final high school game
(31:24):
for the team's seniors. The locker room afterward was sad
and asylum as a church. Kobe was the last guy
to speak there um, and he started to say something
and then he just started to cry and started just
kept saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, crying,
(31:45):
and it was just fascinating look at him because he, um,
you know, he sometimes come off as as being an
arrogant guy or a cocky guy or um, you know,
a lot of easy what he was and he was
just a great, great team and he felt, um, you know,
as a leader of the team, as the best player
(32:07):
in the team, he should have found a way for
us to win that night. No one I was felt
that way, obviously. But during that round table with Greg
Downer's house last fall, I asked him what the hardest
part about coaching Kobe was. We often don't think about
star athletes in those terms. We assume that it must
(32:28):
be easy to coach them because they're so talented and
because everything comes so naturally to them. But that's not
always true. In fact, it's rarely true. Expectations start to increase,
people start to pay more attention to you and your team,
everything starts to become more important. Greg, his brother, Drew,
(32:49):
and Mike Egan batted the question around for a while.
What's the limelight to be an internalized pressure distractions, and
you know, I said, like, we're we're one Kobe sprang
back away from not winning the Central League, you know,
And I think the expectation that sounds like you the
(33:11):
the expectation as time went on coming off the ninety
five was kind of stay title or bus. But I
think we're worried about whether he could handle all the exposure.
He always worried about whether he would get caught up
in that. Yeah, we could lose his focus or he
never did, but he always worried. I would say, Greg,
you really there was a lot of pressure on you,
(33:35):
right Gregy, young guys, young coach. He's got this prodigy
who's now you know, top five, top three, top player
in the country, and you know that that was hard
(33:55):
and it was only going to get harder over the
following year. For Kobe, for his family, for Greg Downer,
for everyone affiliated with the Lower Merian boys basketball program.
Think about, here's Kobe Bryant, just as his junior season
is ending. He's emerging as one of the best high
school basketball players in the country, maybe the best. His
(34:17):
father is coaching at a local Division one college that
is desperate to recruit a player of Kobe's caliber to
return it's basketball program to glory. Meanwhile, next year, Kobe's
high school team is going to be considered one of
the favorites to win a district championship and or a
(34:38):
state championship, which means young Kobe Bryant is caught in
the middle of a whole mess of expectations and forces
and agendas and opinions. If lower Marian doesn't win a
state championship, people will say that Kobe is overrated, that
he's just a selfish gunner who isn't really that good.
(35:02):
But there are still plenty of people out there who
don't believe lower Marian is all that good even with Kobe.
There are still plenty of people out there doubting Kobe Bryant,
And make no mistake, he hears every single one of them.
Remember against the argument when of the teaching in the school,
now in the teacher like the Southern teacher gam Mr Collin, Right,
(35:28):
this is when I would a junior. We're like to
start the playoffs, and he's come up to me. He's
talking to artist trash and you have to be just
a lot of testing you, y'all never win a state championship?
Do you honestly win state championship? Right? Yes? Right here
are you will never win a state championship? Simple fact.
Too many people playing out there, many streight teams. I
think will never have been right, he said, I'm like, man,
(35:52):
come to that. I'm gonna tell you flies. Just watch.
That's next week on I Am Kobe. I Am Kobe
(36:15):
is a production of the Version podcasts in association with
I Heart Radio. This season is written and hosted by
me Mike Sealsky. It's produced by Jacob Bronstein and directed
by Mark Francis, Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editorial
direction from Scott Waxman, editing, mixing and sound design by
Mark Francis. Stephen Tompkins is our production assistant. Our theme
(36:38):
music is Create Yourself by Grover Brown featuring Justin Starling
find Create Yourself wherever you stream music. Music supervisor is
Scott Velasquez for Freesan Sinc. Executive producers are Mark Francis
and Scott Waxman. Join the conversation about I Am Kobe
on social media on Twitter and Instagram. It's at diversion
(37:02):
pots thanks to rain Rosenbaum, Susan Canavan and Jeremy Treatment.
I love our brides before the sun. They don't understand
when I said to grind is fun. Never clock you
out even when my work is done. If they're trying
to block me, I might hurt someone through the blood
sweat and says, we persevered, stay tilling in, let it
keep the horses, and then if they don't believe in themselves,
(37:23):
gave revert to find now the Tampa's head. So I'm
telling them that's my a. This the reason why I
mnna work so damn different to the negatives. I can't
listen to see me at the time. You can't listen
for I'm ana mote to play like cash see I
pay my dudes because taxes gotta work. I think and
grind ahead of his time. So i'mone saying that they
(37:44):
made you. Don't tell them you create yourself the best
Finn watch us, but by that time you gotta sneak
clock then break clock break. We create ourselves, watch speak,
clock watch Steve, create my self, shot climb, signs up
and create yourself. They nice ain't so hard to create yourself.
(38:10):
You gotta learn from the great minds. But we ain't
lying to tell them next. Any time this talent wasn't given,
it was made the future. Any time I could change,
you better tell them that I made it back home.
As I walked through the hearts of the fame, I
came from the valley of the Shadow with death waiting
for a silver spoons. Don't hold your breath, same town,
sat drains. But I did it with less. I know
(38:31):
one at the beach, so there's nothing to guess. Yeah,
there's nothing to guess. It's our times. Tell them we
up next. We don't got any regrets. I did it
with my soul hands, and we never forget as my an.
This the reason why my work so damn different to
the negatives. I can't listen see me at the time.
You can't listen for where rebuild, re shape, give me
(38:54):
your eye. You got to risk take do it now.
When I'm saying while waves, I was saying that they
made you. Tell them you create yourself on the best
you finn l watch us by. It's by that time.
You've got to sneak click, then break clack, break we
create yourself, Watch me, quatch me, watch Steve, watch to
create myself exact client signs up and create yourself. Say
(39:22):
nice and ain't go on create yourself. You gotta line
from the great minds, No we ain't lying. Tell them
next anytime. Diversion Podcasts
Diversion podcasts. What if they never get the exposure? Were
all right, that will get the exposure, right, I'm gonna
get it, hopeful, little Marrion on the map and uh
doesn't type of person I am. Somebody says I can't
(00:26):
do something. I want to go out and do it
all purpose and do it at an unbelievable rate. I
don't want to clear I don't want to do get
over the ostle. I want to totally clear it. It
was a crisp late afternoon in the fall of and
the men who had coached Kobe Bryant during his senior
(00:47):
year at Lower Merion High School back in had come
together for a little reunion of sorts. There was pizza,
there was good beer, some juicy I p a s.
And there were a lot of memories and there was
a lot of reminiscent I would say that it was
the most incredible coaching staff ever, only because we were young.
(01:09):
We were relatively new at like high level stuff like this,
and it was just five. There were four coaches in me.
(01:30):
I had arranged this meeting so they could jog each
other's memories and share some anecdotes about Kobe's high school career,
especially his senior year. All of us were sitting around
a table on Greg Downer's back of coach. Greg is
still the head boys basketball coach at Lower Mery. He
was hired in nineteen ninety and has been there ever since.
(01:51):
When he was just thirty three years old, he created
a staff of assistance really for the specific purpose of
coaching Kobe Bryant. Downer knew what he had in Cope
and he knew what kind of attention Kobe would draw
from opponents, from the media, from everywhere. So he did
a really smart, really innovative thing. He brought on four
(02:17):
assistance and each coach would have his own specialized role.
Mike Egan, who had been a college coach in Delaware,
was already on board as Lower Marion's defensive coordinator. Downer's
older brother, Drew, had a way of talking to people,
even teenagers, that put them at ease, so he would
(02:38):
be the team's amateur sports psychologist. Jimmy Kaiserman was twenty
six at the time, had played Division one ball at
Miami University and at Writer, and had played professionally in Israel.
He was quick, he was tough, he could dump, and
he saw a news report about Kobe one night and
called up Greg down, volunteering to help in any way
(03:01):
he could. He became Kobe's foil, guarding and harassing him
every day at practice. Jeremy Treatment would be the team's
media relations coordinating. He'd take care of all the interview requests,
the reporters, the outside noise, and Greg would oversee the
whole operation. All this basically because of one seventeen year
(03:24):
old kid, because of Kobe. Now twenty five years later,
they were back together again. Kaiserman couldn't make it to
the reunion, but the other four could. Oh almost forgot
there was one other person there too, bring down Greg's daughters,
(03:44):
who was seven years old at the time. You know,
I think I'd like to think I don't really have
an ego, And I mean I used to await awake
at night wondering if we were gonna score baskets, you know,
literally when we first started, and you know, we were
giving up too many points. And this pre rope is
this with her without Kobe. Beforehand, I was gonna say,
(04:04):
if you were laying awake at night wonder if you're
gonna score when you coach, you had problem before he
definitely has a problem. Before before Kobe, when you first
got the job. Yeah, yeah, I want to call me,
I'm Mike Sealskip and from Diversion podceads, this is I
(04:24):
am Kobe. I love why see why create myself? Create yourself?
Stay nice night, go on, create yourself. You gotta learn
from the great mass. Do we gain line selling? That's
(04:44):
getting time? Episode four, Phenom of Philly. Before Kobe, the
Lower Marian Aces didn't have much of a basketball program.
(05:07):
Before Kobe, their uniforms were often mismatched. A kid would
be wearing a tank top number forty five on the back,
but his short said number twenty one. Before Kobe, the
Aces lost the game fifty four to thirteen, and because
they had so few players to begin with, and so
many of those players had fouled out, they finished the
(05:28):
game with just four on the floor. They were a
team that nobody paid much attention to, even in the
halls of the high school itself. Lower Merion Township, generally speaking,
is a pretty posh area, and the most popular sports
at the school in the late nineteen eighties were the
ones you'd expect to be popular at that kind of school.
(05:51):
Soccer lacrosse foot Then in Greg Downer Kid, and the
basketball team got a little better. Then Kobe Bryant came in,
and by the start of his senior year, his coaches
knew they had the best high school basketball player in
America on their team. They just had to figure out
(06:14):
how to make the most offense. The Kaiserman thing was cool.
I remember when Greg called me, He's like, I got
this guy and the coach with us he played at Miami.
I was like, how did you get that guy? I mean,
that's that's ingenious. It really is, because we knew there's
(06:34):
no one on our team that can cover Kobe. The
ball is gonna be in Kobe's hands. We're not gonna
overthink it. We're not gonna put in the Princeton offense. Right,
You're gonna have to deal with this kid all night.
The ball is gonna be his hand. We're gonna set
up our defense, pressure and like, and we're not gonna
overthink it. We're gonna let him play. We may not
have real ashes at the time, but you know, we
(06:56):
did get along and maybe the role definition was good.
But I think there was maybe a part of us
who was thinking, like, uh, this is like a one
shot deal. Let's not screw it up, you know, let's
not screw it up with like Fickeren or you know,
like you're you're gonna get one crack at Kobe Bryant.
I don't think any of us expected another player quite
(07:17):
like him. Once the Bryant family moved back to the
United States, it didn't take long for Greg Downer to
hear the rumors about this amazing eighth grade basketball player
(07:39):
at balotkin Wood Middle School. But Downer also knew that
Dr George Smith, Kobe's coach at Ballot ran a tight
ship and didn't let any of his players, no matter
how good they were, show off their individual talents. So
Downer went to a Ballot practice to check out Kobe
for himself to get a sense of how good this
kid really was. What he saw blew him away. Well,
(08:04):
I couldn't believe that somebody at the tender age of
thirteen was was that advance with their skills. Um invited
him to a practice with my current varsity and you know,
he was more than point in his own and at
six ft two hundred fourth pals, I knew that he
was gonna get dumb but bigger. But his foundation at
(08:26):
such a young age was was really solid. Good shooter
could pass her good intellect, and my mind started racing
pretty quickly. Asked to uh, what do you give me
down the road? And my initial depression was certainly that
I very have something very special and and your need
(08:47):
on my hands. If Kobe had been a high school
phenom these days, he probably would have transferred to a
well known basketball school like Mont Verde Academy or i
AMG Academy in Florida, a place that produces top notch athletes,
like a factory producers sports cars. Back in the early
nine nineties, though, things were a little different. Downer was
(09:09):
more worried that a private school in the Philadelphia area
might recruit Code, and a few of them did, so
he took a big step toward making sure Kobe wanted
to stay at Lower Merryan Downer knew that Joe Bryant
was coaching girls basketball at a Cuba Hebrew academy, and
the two of them had hit it off when they met,
so Downer hired Joe to be Lower Marian's junior varsity
(09:32):
boys coach. It was a pretty smart idea. Joe was
a former NBA player and he had some coaching experience,
and really was Kobe going to transfer away from the
school where his dad coached. I think there was the
salesmanship to keep him at Lower Marian, to convince the
(09:55):
parents that that I was the right guy with a
job and that that public educ issue could could accomplish
what Kobe needed. Um you know, there there definitely was
a paranoia that he would drift off to one of
the Catholic schools where somebody would swerve Ben and try
to take him. The funny part is Downer never really
(10:27):
had to worry about that. Kobe took kind of an
old school approach to his early career. He stayed and
played for his local hometown high school. His parents could
see him play, his friends could see him play, his
community could see him play and rally around him and
the team. I always like that aspect of him and
his career. It showed loyalty. Here he is talking to
(10:50):
Jeremy treatment about it. I knew that a man was
the right properly grade. I really know Clue dying that
road right. Simber fact that he accepted me a great
coming to a school to practice with his team and
allowed me to stay after Batty and welcome my game.
I knew there was no other places my two sisters
with him, So there was never in the truth to
(11:11):
that to those works went around, never uh got knew
the truth father and my family and coaching the truth
where I was going to Gray Contact and a lot
by ole Bright schools. But I just wanted to go
to home Man because my sisters with him type family.
But even in the years after that eleven grade Roman
(11:32):
was calling in uh Piscopal Germantown Academy. They because of
my father, and I said, I want your sunny coming
to school and be great for him, and saying all
this stuff. My father was listening, but at the same
time he was always happy at the Man, and you
know I wouldn't want to leave. Koby didn't quite have
to resurrect the basketball program when he got to Lower Merry.
(11:52):
The ass had made the district playoffs the year before
under Downers coaching. It looked like they were getting better
and it didn't take for them to see how much
talent the new freshman had and how much he liked
the flat it. Here's Kobe's teammate from Lower Marrian Guy Stewart,
this freshman year. I mean when he came in, you
could just you can kind of see he was different.
(12:15):
It wasn't your typical freshman that came in. I mean
he was you know, six three at this time and
probably waited, you know, and five pounds. But you could
just see the way he moved on the court and
he understood the game that he was going to be different. Now,
at that time, it was just he was going to
be a different type of player. You know, he could
have just been a great high school player and went
(12:38):
on and play college and then that was it. Right.
But like you think of you know, his dad being
in the NBA, and you know, him being tall and
his sisters were tall. You know, you were like, okay this,
you know, he could he could be something. He shot
a lot. It was freshman year, um, but you know
that was to be expected because we you know, we
weren't as good as we we should have been. Oh
(13:00):
they weren't good. Period. The Aces went four and twenty
in Kobe's freshman season. It seems impossible to go four
and twenty when you have Kobe Bryant on your roster.
But as Stewart said, Kobe shot a lot in fact,
he shot too much and his teammates resented him for it.
There were also a bunch of injuries to key players,
(13:22):
including to Kobe. He fractured his kneecap and missed the
season's final few weeks. But everything brightened up for him
his sophomore year when Jermaine Griffin, who had grown up
in Queens, New York, transferred into Lower Marian and joined
(13:44):
the basketball team. The two of them were among the
relatively few black students in the school, and they connected
immediately over their love of basketball and rap music. Better yet,
for the Aces, Griffin was the perfect compliment to Kobe
you on the court. He was smart, tough, played tenacious defense,
(14:05):
and didn't need to shoot the ball off to help
the team win games. Lower Marian went sixteen and six
in Kobe's sophomore year and reached the second round of
the district playoffs, and there was no doubt any longer
that Kobe was there to stay. It was like Jamaine
with the Savior, because the hen will come to Lower
(14:25):
Marian at the right time, right man, which guy Coba
he came into the right time, right round. It's just
a great seven because it's someone that I can be
saying the basketball so what I'm comfortable with? All right?
He came I really wrongly going every day. Hey, this
(15:04):
is Mike Sealsky, host and writer of I Am Kobe.
This podcast project came out of my work on a
related book called The Rise Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit
of Immortality. If you want to explore other parts of
Kobe's story, check out The Rise. It's not just a
book version of the podcast. I dive deeper into some
of the topics covered in this series, and even some
(15:26):
that we don't cover at all. Kobe's upbringing, his family,
his identity, his effect on his friends and teammates, his
journey into the n b A, and his earliest days
with the Lakers. The Rise Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit
of Immortality is out now. Just head over to the
Rise of Kobe book dot com and you can buy
(15:47):
it from any of your favorite retailers. That's The Rise
of Kobe Book dot Com. Thanks So. Kobe was entrenched
at Lower Merio, but Joe spent just one year as
the j V coach before he got a better opportunity
(16:07):
at a familiar place, his alma mater LaSalle University. The
head coach there, Speedy Morris, needed to fill an opening
for an assistant, and one of his friends recommended Joe
for the job. The Higher maid Sense LSAL was a
small college in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Only, but
it had a strong basketball program for years under Morris.
(16:35):
The LaSalle Explorers had made the n c A Tournament
four times in the previous six years. One season they
went thirty and two and nearly reached the Sweet six
team and LaSalle had a tradition of recruiting and getting
the best high school player in or around Philadelphia. Peck
Joe had been that player at Bartram High School in
(16:55):
the nineteen seventies. But now the program needed a little boost,
and maybe Joe could provide. I know all about the
boost that the program needed there. The year that Joe
came back to LASA was the same year I started
at LaSalle myself as a freshman. Eventually I started covering
(17:16):
the team for the student newspaper. I got to know
Speedy Morris well, and I met Joe Bryant too, But
I didn't know anything about Kobe During his first couple
of years at Lower Merion, nobody really did, which is
kind of weird when you think about it. I mean,
you think it would be a big story, right. It
had all the elements. A once great basketball player was
(17:39):
now coaching at his old school in his hometown and
his son was a rising star at a local high school.
Except it wasn't a big story because at the time,
there was really only one person in the entire media
market who recognized that it was a story at all.
Jeremy Treatment. Here he is talking about a six teen
(18:00):
year old Kobe Bryant for a segment on the Inquiry
High School Sports show. Kobe Bryant has a maturity not
seen in most sixteen year old superstars. He credits that
to the strength of his family, especially his relationship with
his father, former La Salan seventy six star Joe Bryant
(18:20):
Joe Jelly being Bryant, the popular hometown hero, was a
two time At this point, Jeremy was still coaching at
a key behabor where he and Joe had met and
become friends, but he was also working as a freelance
(18:41):
reporter for the biggest newspaper in Pennsylvania and the biggest
media outlet in the entire Delaware Valley. The paper I
worked for now the Philadelphia Inquiry. As a reporter, Jeremy
covered a bunch of Lower Marian's games during Kobe's freshman
and sophomore years, and he wrote a bunch of stories
about those games, talking to Kobe and Greg down or
(19:02):
after everyone getting to be friends with both of them.
But he couldn't persuade his editors at the Inquirer to
let him do what he wanted to do, a big
blowout feature all about this rising local basketball phenomenon, Kobe Bryant.
Jeremy says they were more interested in focusing on players
from the city's public and Catholic leagues, and he couldn't
(19:25):
understand why they were missing this obvious story that was
staring them in the face. There's two levels of the
frustration there. One was among my friends in general public
and believe me when I was telling a dot co.
But the second level of frustration was worse. My editor
at the time wouldn't give me the opportunity to write
about him, and I pitched him in ninth grade, tenth grade,
(19:47):
eleventh grade, and by the end of eleventh grade he
had come around. But he ended up giving it to
another writer, Christma Cadis, and his exact word was, it's
Christmas be He's our he's our high school basketball writer.
And I remember it was in a meeting in front
of many many people. I said, I've been pitching this
for three years. He said, Chris's speed. That was this
guy where Jeremy was crushed. This was going to be
(20:11):
the first big story ever about a kid. Jeremy knew
was going to be huge. In his mind, he was
the logical choice to cover Kobe. Nobody on the staff
knew him, or Joe or Greg down or better. But
Jeremy did catch a break. The editor told him that
The Inquirer was starting a TV show devoted entirely to
(20:33):
high school sports. And I was like, oh my god,
I've been waiting for this all my life. I'm twenty
years old. This is it, and this is like TV
on air. Yeah, it's gonna be on Fox or Challenge
seventeen or whatever it was on. And they said, well, okay,
well you're the guys us to know high schools. Uh,
if you have to pitch one story to us, This guy,
(20:53):
Sean Docker, he said, do you have to pitch one
story for us, what would it be. I said, well,
there's this guy with the three point five with a
good because I think school in the country, speaks Italian
and Sapanish. His dad playing the NBA, and I believe
he's the best player in the country. And he think.
The first thing he said was when do we meet him?
And I was like, I found my place. How long
is which anything? Grade? Uh? Coach down on myself. We're
(21:19):
watching the room day and after game, he just said
to me, goes, does anybody realize that the next uncle
Jordan is in r GM. Uh. He was in the
gym and school out in the morning as the high
school kid. Uh. He was the last one to leave.
He stayed extra to shoot like five hunter jump shots. Uh.
He was very focus. We had a couple of practices
(21:40):
that were canceled. He was boy king out. He was
so angry that the practices were canceled. Now Jeremy had
an outlet to tell the world what he knew they
needed to know. The one big thing that he felt
(22:01):
had become his mantle to carry. Kobe Bryant was going
to be one of the best basketball players the world
had ever seen. And in his junior year at lower Merion.
Kobe started to show everyone just that because he spent
the entire summer of doing pretty much nothing but playing basketball.
(22:22):
He came back to school a little bigger, a little stronger,
a little smarter, his skills more refined. The Aces lost
their first game, then won games in a row. Kobe
ended up averaging more than thirty one points a game.
He had forty points in one game, forty two in another.
(22:44):
An opposing coach said, if you hold Kobe to fifteen points,
you'll win by thirty. Kobe read that comment and took
it as a slight against his teammates. So when it
came time to play that school, he spent all night
passing the ball to those teammates. He ended up with
fifteen points and seventeen assists, and lower Merryan one. By
(23:08):
twenty two, Mike Egan was in his first season as
one of Greg Downer's assistants, and he couldn't believe what
he was seeing from Kobe. I knew he was good,
but you know he's a I guess he's a sixteen
year old kid. At that day, he just earned sixteen
UM and then every day he would do something in
(23:29):
practice and I would look at the other coaches that
would say, can you believe that? I mean, it could
be something as simple as, you know, a move he
made on the baseline. He had a really strange habit
of his junior year. He kept working on this move
on the baseline and he kept stepping out of bounds
and you know, we blow the whistle. You're out of bounds.
(23:51):
What are you doing? And then he started getting closer
and closer. It was just kind of a weird story
about him just trying to you know, he knew that
the highest level of basketball is about inches and margins
and just how close can I get to that edge
without going over it? Guys. Stewart was a senior on
(24:12):
that team, one of its leaders, but he wasn't the leader,
and he kind of knew it. Kobe was the real
leader of that team. He was very demanding. He was
very furious on the court. He wanted you to play
your role and do it great. He pushed you um
every practice. He he never took off a practice. He
(24:35):
was always challenging his teammates. You know, we would play
these games where you know, we would have to guard
him and he would he would The way he played
like He didn't care who you were. He didn't care
if you were his teammate and practice or not. He
was going to go at you because in his mind,
he's like, if I can challenge you and and and
(24:56):
into guarding me better, you can guard anybody, you know.
If if if I'm pushing everybody to be better, we're
all going to be better as a team. And and
and that was kind of like his mindset, right, He's
gonna push everybody. He's going to push himself because the
ultimate goal is to win a championship and to win games.
(25:24):
The Aces won a lot of games in Kobe's junior season.
They went twenty six and five, They won the Central
League title. They made it all the way to the
district championship game. Lower Merion hadn't won a district championship
in years, and now here were Kobe and his teammates
about to play at DuPont Pavilion on the campus of
(25:45):
Villanova University, and the arena was packed and loud, and
everybody had forgotten that the team had gone four and
twenty just a couple of years early. It was an
amazing turnaround. There was just one problem. Lower Marian was
about to play the Chester High School Clippers, and Chester
(26:07):
had the best high school basketball program in Pennsylvania. Just
the year before, the Clippers had won the state championship,
the third in the school's history. They've won five more since.
Terry Twoey has covered Chester basketball for forty years for
the Delaware County Daily Times. Basketball is everything in the
(26:29):
city of Chester. It's it's their protein, that's their six Flyers,
Eagles or whatever. Not that they're not Sixers flyers or
Eagles fans, but yeah, they live and die with the
Clippers on the basketball For the city of Chester itself
could not have been more Unlike Lower Merion Township, of
the forty people who lived there were black. It had
(26:53):
a history of redlining, blockbusting, and political corruption. Drug markets
cropped up in the main teen eighties. By the mid
nineteen nineties, Chester had seen a huge drop in population
and prosperity. Searches on to find whoever shot and killed
a thirteen year old boy and injured two adults in
Chester and two subspects meets Donna under Earl rust right
(27:15):
Now and a deadly shooting that was called camera in Chester.
Take all the polize in Chester or searching for a
gunman after one man is killed and another is hurt
in a shooting. Gun fired up to just after six
last night, it was the poorest city in Pennsylvania and
the second most dangerous city in America. According to my newspaper,
The Philadelphia Inquirer. Between the years two thousand and two
(27:37):
thousand fourteen, Chester average fifty three homicides per one hundred
thousand people, the highest rate of any city in the country.
Basketball was the one unifying institution there. It was the
one thing that made everyone in Chester proud. It's kind
(28:00):
two diametrically different areas, and obviously, you know, Chester is
a you know, for lack of a better term, you know,
the press city Economically, Lower Marian is an affluent suburban
community that has a little more you know, finances behind
it than Chester. I think the two biggest sports in
(28:22):
Chester for a lot of years were basketball and baseball.
I'm actink at one time the city of Chester had
produced Major League Baseball players than any other city. But
you know, it's it's something that you know, in the playgrounds,
it's it's huge. You know, you go down to Memorial
Park in Chester and you used to be you know,
(28:43):
leads down there in the summertime and pick up games
that were just lacious. Chester has been a state power
and at the high school level since the early nineteen
early to mid nineteen fifties, and it's just you know, basketball,
it's a city game and Chester, you know, being a
(29:03):
being a city at one time, a thriving city that
had you know, factories and things like that, that just
kind of manifested into the sport of choice. The Clippers
had at least eight guys maybe more who could start
on any high school team in the state. Lower Marian
had Well, Lower Marian had Kobe, and Lower Marian didn't
(29:26):
have a chance. The final score was Chester seventy seven,
Lower Marian fifty. Here's Aces coach Greg Downer again. What
I make of it is we're not ready. Uh you know,
we've got to grow some more. We've got much more
work to do. And I think it was some growing
(29:46):
pains for us when the Central League compete for the
district title, make some noise and states and twenty seven
point loss in the district final and maybe that's not
even competing for the for the district title, and we
got balanced a little bit early versus Hazelton in the
in the state quarters, and you know it, it was
a progression, And you know, I didn't have the sense
(30:10):
that that we could win the whole thing Kobe's junior year,
because I really was just in awe as to how
good Chester was. That lost to Chester stun but not
(30:40):
as much as the one that ended Lower Merrion season
a few days later to Hazelton in the second round
of the state playoffs. The game was tied late in regulation.
Let's let defensive coordinator Mike Egan set the scene. We
had the ball with the tie game under ten seconds
left in Kobe. You know, we had what we wanted.
(31:01):
We had the ball in Kobe's hand the middle of
the court. Um, he went to the basket and coach
his sons dripped Kobe and went down and um, I
don't know if he didn't get the shot off, but
he didn't make the shot, could have lost the game
right there. Instead, they lost in overtime. No district championship,
no state championship. It was the final high school game
(31:24):
for the team's seniors. The locker room afterward was sad
and asylum as a church. Kobe was the last guy
to speak there um, and he started to say something
and then he just started to cry and started just
kept saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, crying,
(31:45):
and it was just fascinating look at him because he, um,
you know, he sometimes come off as as being an
arrogant guy or a cocky guy or um, you know,
a lot of easy what he was and he was
just a great, great team and he felt, um, you know,
as a leader of the team, as the best player
(32:07):
in the team, he should have found a way for
us to win that night. No one I was felt
that way, obviously. But during that round table with Greg
Downer's house last fall, I asked him what the hardest
part about coaching Kobe was. We often don't think about
star athletes in those terms. We assume that it must
(32:28):
be easy to coach them because they're so talented and
because everything comes so naturally to them. But that's not
always true. In fact, it's rarely true. Expectations start to increase,
people start to pay more attention to you and your team,
everything starts to become more important. Greg, his brother, Drew,
(32:49):
and Mike Egan batted the question around for a while.
What's the limelight to be an internalized pressure distractions, and
you know, I said, like, we're we're one Kobe sprang
back away from not winning the Central League, you know,
And I think the expectation that sounds like you the
(33:11):
the expectation as time went on coming off the ninety
five was kind of stay title or bus. But I
think we're worried about whether he could handle all the exposure.
He always worried about whether he would get caught up
in that. Yeah, we could lose his focus or he
never did, but he always worried. I would say, Greg,
you really there was a lot of pressure on you,
(33:35):
right Gregy, young guys, young coach. He's got this prodigy
who's now you know, top five, top three, top player
in the country, and you know that that was hard
(33:55):
and it was only going to get harder over the
following year. For Kobe, for his family, for Greg Downer,
for everyone affiliated with the Lower Merian boys basketball program.
Think about, here's Kobe Bryant, just as his junior season
is ending. He's emerging as one of the best high
school basketball players in the country, maybe the best. His
(34:17):
father is coaching at a local Division one college that
is desperate to recruit a player of Kobe's caliber to
return it's basketball program to glory. Meanwhile, next year, Kobe's
high school team is going to be considered one of
the favorites to win a district championship and or a
(34:38):
state championship, which means young Kobe Bryant is caught in
the middle of a whole mess of expectations and forces
and agendas and opinions. If lower Marian doesn't win a
state championship, people will say that Kobe is overrated, that
he's just a selfish gunner who isn't really that good.
(35:02):
But there are still plenty of people out there who
don't believe lower Marian is all that good even with Kobe.
There are still plenty of people out there doubting Kobe Bryant,
And make no mistake, he hears every single one of them.
Remember against the argument when of the teaching in the school,
now in the teacher like the Southern teacher gam Mr Collin, Right,
(35:28):
this is when I would a junior. We're like to
start the playoffs, and he's come up to me. He's
talking to artist trash and you have to be just
a lot of testing you, y'all never win a state championship?
Do you honestly win state championship? Right? Yes? Right here
are you will never win a state championship? Simple fact.
Too many people playing out there, many streight teams. I
think will never have been right, he said, I'm like, man,
(35:52):
come to that. I'm gonna tell you flies. Just watch.
That's next week on I Am Kobe. I Am Kobe
(36:15):
is a production of the Version podcasts in association with
I Heart Radio. This season is written and hosted by
me Mike Sealsky. It's produced by Jacob Bronstein and directed
by Mark Francis, Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editorial
direction from Scott Waxman, editing, mixing and sound design by
Mark Francis. Stephen Tompkins is our production assistant. Our theme
(36:38):
music is Create Yourself by Grover Brown featuring Justin Starling
find Create Yourself wherever you stream music. Music supervisor is
Scott Velasquez for Freesan Sinc. Executive producers are Mark Francis
and Scott Waxman. Join the conversation about I Am Kobe
on social media on Twitter and Instagram. It's at diversion
(37:02):
pots thanks to rain Rosenbaum, Susan Canavan and Jeremy Treatment.
I love our brides before the sun. They don't understand
when I said to grind is fun. Never clock you
out even when my work is done. If they're trying
to block me, I might hurt someone through the blood
sweat and says, we persevered, stay tilling in, let it
keep the horses, and then if they don't believe in themselves,
(37:23):
gave revert to find now the Tampa's head. So I'm
telling them that's my a. This the reason why I
mnna work so damn different to the negatives. I can't
listen to see me at the time. You can't listen
for I'm ana mote to play like cash see I
pay my dudes because taxes gotta work. I think and
grind ahead of his time. So i'mone saying that they
(37:44):
made you. Don't tell them you create yourself the best
Finn watch us, but by that time you gotta sneak
clock then break clock break. We create ourselves, watch speak,
clock watch Steve, create my self, shot climb, signs up
and create yourself. They nice ain't so hard to create yourself.
(38:10):
You gotta learn from the great minds. But we ain't
lying to tell them next. Any time this talent wasn't given,
it was made the future. Any time I could change,
you better tell them that I made it back home.
As I walked through the hearts of the fame, I
came from the valley of the Shadow with death waiting
for a silver spoons. Don't hold your breath, same town,
sat drains. But I did it with less. I know
(38:31):
one at the beach, so there's nothing to guess. Yeah,
there's nothing to guess. It's our times. Tell them we
up next. We don't got any regrets. I did it
with my soul hands, and we never forget as my an.
This the reason why my work so damn different to
the negatives. I can't listen see me at the time.
You can't listen for where rebuild, re shape, give me
(38:54):
your eye. You got to risk take do it now.
When I'm saying while waves, I was saying that they
made you. Tell them you create yourself on the best
you finn l watch us by. It's by that time.
You've got to sneak click, then break clack, break we
create yourself, Watch me, quatch me, watch Steve, watch to
create myself exact client signs up and create yourself. Say
(39:22):
nice and ain't go on create yourself. You gotta line
from the great minds, No we ain't lying. Tell them
next anytime. Diversion Podcasts
Host
Mike Sielski
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