December 14, 2021 • 41 mins
In 1995 it was common for pro and college players to work out, scrimmage, and play pickup games together during the NBA offseason. Philadelphia 76ers General Manager John Lucas was so impressed with local high school basketball phenom Kobe Bryant that he asked if Kobe wanted to work out with the Sixers. Several of the Sixers’ players would be there, including power forward Sharone Wright and the team’s 7-foot-6-inch center, Shawn Bradley. Kobe, of course, said yes.
But when you hear about Kobe’s workouts in the summer of 1995, you hear about Jerry Stackhouse. He had been a high school phenom himself just a few years earlier. The Sixers had taken Stackhouse with the third overall pick in the 1995 NBA draft. At North Carolina, he’d been a state player of the year, the Sports Illustrated National Player of the Year, and taken the Tar Heels to the Final Four. He was supposed to be the Sixers’ savior. Stackhouse was playing in those summer scrimmages and pickup games and you would have thought he would dominate them--and Kobe. Except their battles on the court back then have taken on the aura of myth and legend ever since, in a way that has always put Stackhouse in Kobe’s shadow.
Pre-order Mike Sielski's related book: “The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality" (1/11/22): TheRiseOfKobeBook.com
Join the conversation about “I Am Kobe” on social media: on Twitter and Instagram: @diversionpods
Our theme music is “Create Yourself” by Grover Braam feat. Justin Starling: Listen to Create Yourself on Spotify
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.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion podcasts. I really thought to myself about the future,
and you know, I always came up with the same
conclusion that I always wanted to be famous. When I
was a little I always wanted to be a great
basketball player. When you work hard, when you achieve something,
you set a goal. My goal is to be a
(00:28):
great basketball player. To be famous. Then you can expect that.
You know, you can't be on TV all the time
and not expect people you know who you are and
coming to you actually for autograph. So I accepted. I accepted,
and I saw pluss if I was a little kid
and I looked up at somebody and I wanted an autograph.
I want to basket with an autograph, and they said no,
(00:50):
I'd be crushed. So when somebody comes into me I
asked for autograph, I'm not going I say short. In
(01:12):
the summer of the head coach and general manager of
the Philadelphia seventy sixers was a man named John Lucas.
Lucas had spent a star crossed fourteen years in the
NBA as a quick, left handed and troubled point guard.
A drug and alcohol addiction had nearly ruined his career,
but he had turned his life around, and as a
(01:33):
coach he had a bit of a Pollyanna view of players.
He always saw the very very best in that always
believed they would reach their highest potential. He was a dreamer.
He just wasn't a particularly good NBA coach. During the season,
the Sixers won twenty four games under Lucas and lost
(01:54):
fifty eight. Here, they blew a twenty one lead in
a gut wrenching loss to chart Was Barkley and the
Phoenix Suns in front of their home crowd in Philly.
Final score the Sun setting a franchise record with their
ninth straight victory, and they do it in a most
(02:16):
improbable way. At John Lucas will ruminate about this one
Phoenix one oh eight s seven. One night in March,
John Lucas attended a Lower Merion High School playoff game
(02:36):
with his family at the Polesto. It wasn't that surprising
for Lucas to attend the game, after all, his daughter
Tarvia was a junior at Lower Marian. But just as
Lucas stepped into the arena, something did surprise him. He
ran into a guy who he had played against dozens
of times in the NBA, he ran into Joe Bryant.
(02:57):
John Lucas had heard of Kobe Bryant, but he didn't
know that Kobe was Joe's son. So after Lucas watched
Lower Marian win, after he watched Kobe scored twenty six
points in just twenty seven minutes of action, he got
an idea. Back then, it was common for pro and
college players to work out, scrimmage and play pickup games
(03:18):
together during the NBA off season, kind of like an
unofficial summer league. Lucas was so impressed with Kobe that
he thought the Sixers might be able to draft him
the following year. So he called up the Bryant's and
asked if Kobe wanted to work out with the team
that summer full court games at the field house at St.
Joseph's University and at nearby Episcopal Academy. Several of the
(03:41):
Sixers players would be there, including power forward Sharon Right
and the team's seven ft six inch center Shawn Bradley.
Kobe of course said yes. Then Lucas called his old
backcourt mate and buddy from the University of Maryland, Mo Howard,
Joe's old friend from high school Lucas gave Howard an assignment.
(04:05):
It was his job to oversee these scrimmages and to
make sure that Kobe played in as many of them
as he wanted. Mo Howard still lives in Philadelphia and
he's still a big name in basketball around the city.
He gets asked about that summer of ninety five a lot,
but he never minds talking about it. He was there
each day to see the turning point in Kobe Bryant's
(04:26):
basketball career and in his life. Finally, describe what you
saw from Kobe during that summer when John Lucas had
you running those scrimmages at St. Joe's in Episcopal Wow. Wow,
(04:47):
I'm Mike seal Scope and from Diversion Podcasts, this is
I am Kobe st w state to create myself. Create yourself,
very nice. Create yourself got a pretty great minds. But
(05:11):
we ain't time. Episode six. The summer of Mo Howard
(05:32):
had played with and against Kobe in Sunday morning pickup
games at a y m c A in Center City, Philadelphia,
back when Kobe was just thirteen years old. He knew
how good the kid was, at least he thought he knew,
and he were playing those games and like he won
and held his own, but to play against the pros
at the level that he did was really surprised. In
(05:55):
two story, so we're sitting there, it's Maurice Chiefs, myself
and Harold Cats. Just for the record, Maurice Cheeks was
a Hall of Fame point guard who spent eleven of
his fifteen NBA seasons with the Sixers. In the summer,
he was one of their assistant coaches, and Harold Katz
was the team's owner and a total basketball junkie. He
(06:19):
would stay up late to watch NBA games then quiz
his executives and coaches about players around the league. And
Carol Kats is watching Guys scimmage and he says about Kobe,
where is he from? And Maurice Cheeks says a Laura Marian.
(06:39):
Harold Katt says to Maurice, well, I don't want to
know where he lives, but where is he from? And
Maurice says He's from Lower Merion High School and Harold
Cats looks at him with his look of surprise, saying huh.
And then Maurice goes on to tell him that he's
Joe Bryant's son, so even you know, the guy who
(07:02):
was the owner of the team was very, very surprised
and how skilled Kobe was. At that time. Kobe wasn't
the only Lower Marian player competing in those scrimmages. Emery Dabney,
a talented point guard from West Philadelphia who had played
summer ball with Kobe and the Aces, was transferring into
(07:22):
Lower Marian for his sophomore year. John Lucas had seen
him play and invited him to the workouts too. It
was crazy. I remember the first couple of days, I
was nervous. It was very surreal, to be honest, because
as a fifth year on myself and you're playing with
these guys at an NBA. It was surreal. But then
after the first couple of workouts, you're like, okay, like
(07:43):
I used to playing with these guys. And who were
some of the guys in the gym. Richard Dumas, Vernon Maxwell,
Jared Stockhouse, a guy who played in North Carolina named
Donna Williams. Some pretty good players, uh, some older NBA.
I remember Willie Burton, I don't never remember that name
played for the six was back in the day. It
was some really good players and Kobe right away. Didn't
(08:05):
care who they were, he didn't care what they had
done before. He was trying to test to see how
good he was. So he was going right at all
those guys. And that's how kind of the robbery between
him and dark Stackhouse kind of started. Ah, Yes, Jerry Stackhouse.
(08:31):
When you hear anyone talk about Kobe's workouts in the
summer of you hear about Jerry Stackhouse. He had been
a high school phenom himself just a few years earlier,
and he'd become a human highlighted names during his time
at North Carolina. He's He's Jaman, Slimming Crab, Jap, slip Little.
(09:06):
The Sixers had taken Stackhouse with a third overall pick
in NBA Draft. At North Carolina, he'd been Sports Illustrated
National Player of the Year and had taken the tar
Heels to the Final Four. He was supposed to be
the Sixer savior. Stackhouse was playing in those summer scrimmages
and pickup games too, and you would have thought he
would dominate them and Kobe, except their battles on the
(09:29):
court back then have taken on the aura of myth
and legend ever since. In a way that has always
put Stackhouse in Kobe shadow. I saw this. I watched
those scrimmages. I watched those workouts, and you know, there
were some days that Jerry would get the best of Kobe,
(09:51):
and there were some days that Kobe would get the
best of Jerry. But Kobe did it in a more
spectacular fashion, right. So I witnessed one day we were
scrimmaging out Episcopal Bowl and Kobe and Jerry were going
head to head with each other as they did, and
(10:11):
Maurice Cheeks and I was standing there watching, and if
I'm mistaken, Jerry Stackhouse was the second pick that year.
He was a third pick. So Maurice Cheeks looks at
me and he says, if Jerry Stackhouse is number three,
Kobe has to be three. A Kobe's friend, Jeremy Treatment,
(10:35):
who was about to go from covering him to coaching him,
went to two of those scrimmages. Listened to his voice
as he tells me his impressions of Kobe from those games.
And he wasn't backing down anybody. He had a boldness
about him. The thing that was so called when Joe
Bryant called me and said, I don't even need to go.
Sean Bradley calls the house and says, I'll pick up.
(10:56):
At seven. They were picking him up. They wounded him
to come. He seemed a little young, but he also
seemed like it belonged. It just was like he's sixteen
and he's playing with twenty seven year old NBA players.
It was It was kind of crazy. But I was
not surprised that he held his own I was not
surprised that he gave from Stackhouse all he could handle.
(11:29):
Stackhouse did not take kindly to these comparisons to Code.
He still doesn't. He's now the head men's basketball coach
at Vanderbilt University, and when I reached out to him
and Vanderbilt Sports information office to see if he would
speak to me from my book about Kobe, he declined.
And he kind of has a point. By the time
the Sixers drafted him, he had already been compared to
(11:50):
Michael Jordan's mostly because both of them had gone to
North Carolina and were high flying acrobats when they had
the basketball in their hands and a chance to dunk it.
But Michael and Kobe were guards, straight up shooting guards.
Stackhouse wasn't Stackhouse had played power forward in high school
and at North Carolina. He had never played guard in
(12:11):
his life until the Sixers drafted him. He wasn't used
to chasing smaller, quicker players around screens or squaring up
for twenty ft jump shots. He and Kobe had different
sets of skills and were different players, and people thought
the teenager was better. It was a total no win
situation for Stackhouse. If he was better than Kobe, well
(12:34):
he should be. Kobe was just a high school kid.
And if Kobe out played him, what did that say
about the guy who was supposed to be the Sixers
franchise player. His frustration was growing with every scrimmage. Here's
Emery Dabney. Then at one point they Stackhouse started found
him hard and they almost got into it. They you know,
(12:55):
Stackhouse grabbed them and we had to kind of break them.
Those two up. He was relentless because, like I said,
for a guy in high school who's not even is
going at the number one overall pick, like going at
him relentlessly. It was kind of crazy. And but honestly,
Brendon Maxwell, I don't know if you remember les called
Mad Max. He he's the one that really instigated it
(13:15):
because I remembers meet him and Kovid in the same team.
I forget who the other two players were. But every
time he gave Covid a ball and Stackhouse was gardener,
he would just go kill him, kill him, like for
the whole, the whole possession. And it was like no
one else would touch the ball, and Renna Maxwell come
down and give him the ball, tell him to kill him.
So after a while, you know, Stackhouse wasn't too happy
(13:38):
about him. No, Stackhouse wasn't happy. But Kobe had to
be elated. Here he was holding his own against NBA players,
and he was just turning seventeen that August, and often
he was more than holding his own. In fact, to
put it bluntly, Kobe was showing that he already surpassed
(14:00):
some of them when it came to the intangibles that
were necessary to succeed in the league. When I was
talking to Mo Howard about those games, he said something
about Kobe that has stuck in my memory ever since.
It captured perfectly the player Kobe was then and the
player he would become. What I saw was unique work.
(14:23):
Unlike any of the other pros and college players who
participated in those open runs. H he was the first
one there every day. He was the last one of
these every day, every day without fail. I just couldn't
believe that he was that highly skilled, like playing against
(14:47):
pro guys. He was so highly skilled and motivated that,
you know, I was a little surprised. Kobe's workouts didn't
involve just best the ball either. He and Dabney would
run on the track at St. Joseph's University too, before
heading to the field House to play. A few days
(15:07):
that summer, the field House was closed, so the NBA
guys would be playing at the gym at Episcopal Academy,
which was right across the strungle track. Minds just August
and we would get in the car and when you
drive over to a pisco, you know, I'm probably not
even a two minute drive. It's outfter the workouts, you know.
I get in the car Kobe and it's uh ninety
(15:27):
degrees outside, and he pulls the windows up and he
turns the heat on, and I'm like, Kobe, like, what
are you doing? I might have a heart attack and
I can't what are you doing? He's like, I'm about
to go play in the stackhouse. I gotta stay warm.
I don't want to cool down before before I play.
I'm like, all right, what do you I can't do this.
I have a heart attack. And he stops at the
light and he goes, you can get out, Kobe. Let
(15:51):
him crack the window a little. But I can't think
of a better metaphor for who Kobe Bryant was then
and where he thought, no, where he knew he was going.
If you're with me, if you believe in me, if
you're willing to sacrifice like I am, you can come
along for the ride. If you're not, you can get out. Hey.
(16:25):
This is Mike Selsky, 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
(16:48):
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
(17:08):
it from any of your favorite retailers. That's the Rise
of Kobe book dot Com. Thanks. When Kobe wasn't running
(17:36):
full court with Jerry Stackhouse and the rest of those
guys and those uber intense pickup games, he was traveling
around the United States on his Amateur Athletic Union teams
better known as the a U Circuit. He was up
and down the East coast of Las Vegas, all over,
going to camps, playing in tournaments with other big time
college recruits. Of course, given his plans and goals, it
(17:57):
might not be right to call him a recruit. The
highlight of that summer of ninety five was in early
July in te Neck, New Jersey, at the prestigious A
b c D Camp, which was sponsored by Adidas and
sneaker mogul Sonny Vacar Picaro had founded A B c D.
In The camp gathered the highest ranked high school players
(18:18):
in the country in one place. It was considered the
marquee event of the summer in high school hoops. Greg
Downer and Mike Egan, Kobe's coaches at Lower Marian, went
up there to see him play. Here's Egan. He was
just phenomenal. There he was and were a lot of
the kids. And this is where his maturity really came
(18:39):
into play, where a lot of these guys were looking
at it as fun and show voting and who you know,
how many guys sent me? And he was there because
at that point he was considered a top five player
in the country. In Tim Thomas, Leicester are all Jeremain
Neal and sometimes you hollow it was you a little
(19:00):
higher than him. And Kobe went up there and never
said of this. Does we know he even up there
with a mission. He wants to come out of there
being called the number one player in the country. And
at the end of that week he was the consensus
not a one player in country. Kobe had scored ten
(19:25):
eighty out of a possible six on his s A
T S. He was a very good student. He had
grown particularly close to his tenth grade English teacher, Jeane Mastriano.
In fact, she became an intellectual mentor to him. The
two of them remained in touch throughout his life. Mastriano
spent a lot of time in her class delving into
the concept of the hero's journey. Her students watched Star
(19:46):
Wars and class, for example, to understand the symbolism behind
Luke Skywalker's path to becoming a Jedi, they read Joseph
Campbell's famous book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Mastriano
told me that Kobe loved it all. One of the
things that he really soaked up was the hero's journey,
which is something I talked about at the beginning of
(20:09):
the year, throughout the year. At the end of the year,
it kind of followed the arc of the whole year,
the whole idea that you're going into an unknown here
and you need to take risks. We all need to
take risks, and if you don't take risks, then you're
not going to happen experience. It's going to be exhilarating.
We need to scare yourself. Do you think he saw
himself on that kind of hero's journey. Absolutely. He believed
(20:30):
in his number one dream, which was that he was
going to realize his life as a basketball player, and
that he was going to go in that direction. He
was convinced he was going to do that. How could
he be so sure though, especially at such an early
stage of his life. Where did that confidence come from?
(20:57):
I think there's a clue in something Mastriano told me.
I asked her what Kobe was like in class, how
he carried himself, how he acted and behaved. You know,
the stereotype of the high school jock doesn't care much
about his grades, doesn't need to worry about his homework
because he's going to get a football scholarship or a
basketball scholarship, or a swimming scholarship. That wasn't Kobe. He
(21:18):
had this relentless curiosity, and he challenged Mastriano just like
she would challenge him, in a good way, not in
a bad way. He was confident that he could go
back and forth with her that because of his life
experiences and the path he was on, he already existed
on her level intellectually and professionally, and she in turn
(21:39):
appreciated that quality in him. He wasn't much of a talker,
but the energy that he exhumed was palpable. Since I
have when I looked back on him, somebody wouldn't hesitate
to say, why are we learning this? Not in a
terribly antagonistic way, but like, this is just not doing
a thing for me. I don't see where this is going.
Could it please justify? And I love that. I love
(22:03):
the kid who's edgy, who's argumentative. It's just such wonderful
than There was no question that Kobe could get into
any college he wanted, but it was becoming obvious to
everyone around him how his focus was narrowing to just
one thing, basketball, you know. And then here's Mikey when
(22:23):
he worked at things so much. His junior year, he
was a student. He was still trying to get his
grades up and his s A T s up and
make sure there was no issues with college, which there
would not have been anyway. But every day he got
better and every day he we saw something from him
that we'd be lying if we said we knew he
could be would be an vy a superstar as a junior.
(22:44):
But then between his junior and senior year, that's when
his game really elevated. And when he came back as
a senior, it was all basketball. And then we started
looking at each other and say, this kid's gonna be really,
really something. The expectations for Lower Marian's basketball team Kobe's
(23:05):
senior year were just about as high as the expectations
for its star player. Anything less than a district championship
or state championship or both would be considered a disappointment.
But in an early season test at Kobe's old stopping
grounds from the summer, the St. Joe's field House, the
Aces got stopped by Saint Anthony of Jersey City. St.
(23:26):
Anthony was one of the two or three best high
school teams in the country, maybe the best, and they
were coached by the great Bob Hurley, a member of
the Basketball Hall of Fame. This clip from CBS explains
both Curly's accolades and his dedications to the program. With
an unyielding determination and by relentlessly striving for perfection on
(23:49):
the floor, Bob Hurley has built the basketball program at St.
Anthony's High School into a perennial powerhouse, and we're getting
ready for the state tournament. We can't go down and
just run nothing. Flawa Marian was never really in the
game against St. Anthony. They lost by fifteen points, and
(24:13):
Kobe had twenty eight of those forty seven points. A
quarter century later, Curly still remembers that game and Kobe's
performance in it very well eight really, and he had
no he had no help tony other players. We were
able to cheat off them and uh, you know, help
against him. And then after the game, he come over
to me and asked if we could talk, and we
(24:33):
sat down and sat down on the bleachers at St.
Joe's and he talked about what things I think he
needed to do to become up at a player. And
I remember talking to him about how the first half
had ended with we had stolen the ball from him
and we scored to end half and I put us
up one and he kind of put his chin down
(24:55):
and kind of walked off the court. And the second
half sought it, and the first four minutes of the
second half he wasn't dominant like he could be. And
I talked to him about his reaction to that mistake
and how how important erasing that mistake would be with
the way he would play early in the second half
(25:15):
of the game. Totally understood, thank me so much for it.
And then you know, we farther ways, but you know,
he just was mature beyond his years. But we played
against unbelievable players over the years, and he's the best
player we ever played against. You know you're sek average
over thirty game where people got thirty against St. Anthony, say,
(25:36):
should have got a trophy. That's no minor compliment from
a coach like Bob Hurley, And it was pretty revealing
that Kobe would seize the opportunity to sit down with
(25:57):
her to pick his brain. Kobe didn't see Hurly as
an opposing coach. He saw him as a resource. It
was like Kobe was saying to himself, losing the St.
Anthony hurts, but I can get better in the long
run because of it. An even bigger test for Kobe
and Lower Marion came after the St. Anthony Laws. The
(26:17):
last week of December, the team flew down to Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina for the Beach Ball Classic. Now usually when
you think of Myrtle Beach, you think of golf courses,
but the Beach Ball Classic was a major event in
high school basketball and eight team tournament that featured some
of the best players in America. One of them was
(26:38):
Lester Earl, a six ft eight jumping jack who ended
up playing at L s U and Kansas. Another was
Mike Bibby, a point guard who was the second pick
in the NBA draft in and ended up playing in
the league for fourteen years. Here's Scott County High School
coach Billie Hicks talking about the Beach Ball Classic in
(26:59):
two thousand four. Team, I'll tell you every time that
we're we get a chance to play here, we really
feel blessed because you know, there's a lot of great
tournaments in America highscrew tournaments, but you know, nothing comes
close to the Beach Ball But the biggest star at
(27:22):
the Classic wasn't Lester Earl or Mike Biddy. It was Kobe.
The Aces played three games in the tournament, and there
were so many people flocking to Kobe that it was
difficult for him to get to his family after each game.
A couple of times that I started just pulling them
back in the in the back room, in the locker room.
Start talking to him then, because I think it's unfair
(27:43):
for my family. Will wait. I saw all the autographs.
I think, I think that's unfair. But when I stopped before,
I started wising up and tell him the coming back
so I can talk to him there. I came by
the locker room and I just saw all these people
saying I'm like, oh right, you know, teenagers, teenage boys,
teenage girl. Oh man, it was guys, kind of crazy.
(28:06):
But the escort just gave me a seat, so you know,
you sit down as sign him if you want to,
or you don't have to sign him at all. So
show I said, now I have. I just said down
that it's an auto autographs what I was doing. Honest,
that's how many people about. He sounds like he's already
used to all this attention, like this is just par
(28:27):
for the course for him. Yes, of course people are
going to want my autograph. Well it's a little unfair,
but hey, that's the price of fame. It's one of
the things that always strikes me about listening to these
tapes of Kobe. He never seems overwhelmed by any of this,
the attention, the pressure, the expectations, none of it. It
(28:47):
was like this was a business trip, like this is
what he was supposed to be doing with his life
(29:10):
away from the convention center. Kobe stayed in his room
a lot on the trip, sleeping, resting, thinking. He went
out a few times at night with friends, but not
that much. I know that you're gonna have options like
that you either gonna go out, uh go swimming as
an example, UH go party and go play video games
(29:33):
and things like that. And for some people that may
be relaxing. I know Michael Joyd likes to play golf
for a game Magic miss as the music. I just
like to sleep. I feel that I played very well.
When I'm rested, I got my legs under me and
I can run all day. So I just relaxed, turned
the TV off and just swept in. But I enjoy thinking. Yeah,
(29:55):
I thinking about the game. I was thinking about the
moves I was gonna make. I was gonna tap the team.
I'm gonna come out shooting and come out passing type
moves I was gonna make. Can you see every game
seems different for me. One game I'll come out and
I feel like crossover move it was the best, and
I feel maybe it's to pull up jump shot and
(30:15):
fade away three. So I really got focused in it.
We tried to think and and say, well, how do
I feel now. I really thought about the game a lot,
and I've also also thought about the future. It was
(30:38):
no wonder so many people wanted Kobe's autograph and Laura
Marion's first game at the Beach Ball Classic, a victory
over a school from Ohio. He scored forty three points.
It was a spectacular performance and Kobe was on his
way to another one in the Aces. Next game, they
were rolling against Jenks High School from Oklahoma, and Kobe
(30:58):
had thirty one points when he made one bad decision
and everything about the game and lower Marian's season changed.
So I think we're on like ten twelve and he
just growed in one against four and ah, he just
he made a rare, really bad decision and guy jowing off,
they drew the offensive foul, and he sat right next
(31:20):
to me on the bench. Game went into overtime. We
might have lost sixteen the two in the overtime. I
don't know exactly what I think he was seventeen the two.
I was close watching his teammates melt down in overtime.
Kobe kept muttering the same phrase over and over again,
just no goddamn independence, no goddamn independency to skip. Mike
(31:40):
Egan described Kobe's reaction to the lowest It was after
that game, one of the few times I saw Kobe
really really lose his temper um. Where we sat in
the locker room, and I said something again, guys, you
you have to get better. You're not as good as
you think you are. And the other coach is all.
(32:00):
He says some more things, and Greg said, does anyone
on the team have anything to say? And Kobe absolutely
went off, screaming, yelling, you can't back down. He used
foul language. He kept saying, you can't back down, you
can't back down. You can't at him back down. Later
that night, Greg Downer gathered the entire team in his
(32:21):
hotel room and delivered a speech calling out each of
the players, including Kobe. It sounds weird what could he
possibly have complained about with respect to Kobe, But according
to Treatment, he found something. You gotta understand the pressure
of your teammates are feeling to playing with you, and
you gotta bring the best out of them, and you
gotta trust in them too. This to me, is an
(32:45):
interesting moment in Kobe's development. All his life when it
comes to basketball, the person he has listened to most
is his father. Joe has been the biggest influence on him.
But now out Greg Downer is challenging him in a
way he's never been challenged before. Downer isn't saying Kobe,
(33:07):
you have to make yourself better. He's saying, Kobe, you
have to make your teammates better. As we know from
the rest of Kobe's career, that wasn't necessarily the easiest
thing for him to do, But Downer is telling him,
we won't win if you don't do it. The approach
worked right away. Inspired by downer speech, the Aces went
(33:30):
out and won their third and final game in the tournament.
Kobe scored forty three points in that one, took the
Dunk Contest capped the Beach Ball Classic. It was the
last event and Kobe desperately wanted to participate. There was
one problem, though. Sometime during the tournament, he had injured
his right wrist. It hadn't hurt badly enough that he
(33:50):
couldn't play in the games, but much of his arm
was wrapped in a big white bandage, like his arm
belonged to a mummy. Tell me about the Dunk Contest, Well,
there's all kinds of theories, conspiracy theories on white Kobe's
risk was hurting them. Greg Simples to this day was
from signing autographs. I thought he got hurt. I can't remember.
(34:11):
It was probably a commodation. Lester Earl was going to
be Kobe's biggest rival in the dunk contest. If Kobe
could actually compete Shariah and Shaya, Kobe's sisters didn't want
him to. They thought it was too risky. And I
just remember sisters founding the door and I'm leading with Kobe,
you're not dunking, You're not dunk here, and I'm like, hope,
you don't need to do this. I remember saying like
it's like I got this. What are you're kidding? Because
(34:33):
I'm dunking And we've seen him dunk in a game,
We've seen him dunk into practice, but we've never like
seen him talk. No, no, Greg and no, nobody had
seen this contest starts this Lester Earls doing ship that
I've never seen from NBA players, and Kobe matches leading
that the harder Lester all makes something because he was
(34:53):
going first, then Kobe would do. For his last dunk,
Earl jumped over a ball RADI. Each of the judges
gave him a perfect tent. Technically, the best Kobe could
do was tiring. No matter how good his final dunk
was didn't matter. He asked three of his lower Marian
teammates to stay in the lane just in front of
the basket and duck their heads. And I remember looking
(35:16):
at his sister's faces, like don't do it, don't do it,
and he just jumped right over him dunk and he went.
So yeah. Technically the contest was a tie, but everyone
there in the Myrtle Beach Convention Center that night knew
who had really want. I'm pretty sure he saw me.
He winked. I mean that was just magic. Like God,
(35:37):
this guy just can live up the hype on anything.
It's like like he was hurt, he had no business
dunk in, and he just goes and has a performance
at lifetime. And that's why when I when I leave
the very next year, when he entered in the in
the dunk conscience is a rookie, NBA said, you've got this.
I didn't even need to watch. I knew who's gonna in.
(36:05):
As Jeremy and I sat by the bay on Long
Beach Island and talked about Kobe. Almost twenty five years later,
a few hundred yards away, at a house two doors down,
three kids were playing in a small swimming pool. You
probably heard their voices in the background while Jeremy was talking.
They were playing right when we were talking about Kobe
and Myrtle Beach, Kobe with the NBA plans, Kobe flying
(36:29):
over his teammates despite a sore wrist to throw down
an incredible dunk. Those voices were a nice reminder of
the person Jeremy and I were talking about. We were
talking about Kobe Bryant before he had played his first
game with the Lakers, before he had even met Shaquille
O'Neil or Phil Jackson or Pau Gasol, before he'd won
(36:52):
five NBA championships and been a league MVP, before the
battles and controversies with Shack and Phil, before he had
become a husband and a father, before Eagle Colorado, before
he had even accomplished everything he was going to accomplish
in high school. We were talking about Kobe Bryant when
(37:13):
he was just seventeen years old. We were talking about
a kid. In the next episode, I'm going to tell
you the story of how that kid pulled off one
of his greatest feats as a high school basketball star.
I saw it a message, so we be a championship day.
How could player like this got stepping up with other bands.
(37:35):
We knew that the is our time every week game
you stepped up on the quarter That's next week on
I Am Code. I Am Kobe is a production of
(38:03):
The Version Podcasts, an association with I Heart Radio. This
season is written and hosted by me Mike Sealskier. 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
(38:24):
our production assistant. Our theme 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
(38:47):
and Instagram. It's at Diversion Pods thanks to Oran Rosenbaum,
Susan Cannavan and Jeremy Treatment. The brisby Flo the Son
and they don't want to stand when I say the
blinds fall, and 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 tends. We perseveit,
stay tilling it, let it keep the horses, and then
(39:09):
if they don't believe in themselves, gave a vert to
find now the tampons heads. So I'm telling them, ask
my a, 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 I'm anna mote
to play like cashes see I pay my dudes because
taxes gotta work that they can grind ahead of his time.
(39:30):
So I'm gonna saying that they 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 me quack, watch create myself.
SAI signs up and create yourself. Stay nice, go hard,
(39:56):
create yourself. You gotta learn from the great minds. So
we ain't lying to tell them next get any time.
This talent wasn't given. It was made. If future any
time I can change 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 us. Spoons, don't hold your breath, sat Town,
(40:16):
sat Train. But I did it with less. I know
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.
(40:36):
You can't listen for where red build, reach shape, give
me your eye. You got to risk take do it now.
When I'm saying why waves, I was saying that they
made You'll tell them you create yourself the best you
finn watch us, but it's bad that time. You gotta
stay clock then break clock break. We create ourselves. I
(41:00):
sweep quest right, sweeping to create myself. Exacts like that,
sim self, create yourself, say nice and nain, go on,
create yourself. You gotta learn from the great minds. But
we ain't lying telling this game time Ye Diversion Podcasts
Diversion podcasts. I really thought to myself about the future,
and you know, I always came up with the same
conclusion that I always wanted to be famous. When I
was a little I always wanted to be a great
basketball player. When you work hard, when you achieve something,
you set a goal. My goal is to be a
(00:28):
great basketball player. To be famous. Then you can expect that.
You know, you can't be on TV all the time
and not expect people you know who you are and
coming to you actually for autograph. So I accepted. I accepted,
and I saw pluss if I was a little kid
and I looked up at somebody and I wanted an autograph.
I want to basket with an autograph, and they said no,
(00:50):
I'd be crushed. So when somebody comes into me I
asked for autograph, I'm not going I say short. In
(01:12):
the summer of the head coach and general manager of
the Philadelphia seventy sixers was a man named John Lucas.
Lucas had spent a star crossed fourteen years in the
NBA as a quick, left handed and troubled point guard.
A drug and alcohol addiction had nearly ruined his career,
but he had turned his life around, and as a
(01:33):
coach he had a bit of a Pollyanna view of players.
He always saw the very very best in that always
believed they would reach their highest potential. He was a dreamer.
He just wasn't a particularly good NBA coach. During the season,
the Sixers won twenty four games under Lucas and lost
(01:54):
fifty eight. Here, they blew a twenty one lead in
a gut wrenching loss to chart Was Barkley and the
Phoenix Suns in front of their home crowd in Philly.
Final score the Sun setting a franchise record with their
ninth straight victory, and they do it in a most
(02:16):
improbable way. At John Lucas will ruminate about this one
Phoenix one oh eight s seven. One night in March,
John Lucas attended a Lower Merion High School playoff game
(02:36):
with his family at the Polesto. It wasn't that surprising
for Lucas to attend the game, after all, his daughter
Tarvia was a junior at Lower Marian. But just as
Lucas stepped into the arena, something did surprise him. He
ran into a guy who he had played against dozens
of times in the NBA, he ran into Joe Bryant.
(02:57):
John Lucas had heard of Kobe Bryant, but he didn't
know that Kobe was Joe's son. So after Lucas watched
Lower Marian win, after he watched Kobe scored twenty six
points in just twenty seven minutes of action, he got
an idea. Back then, it was common for pro and
college players to work out, scrimmage and play pickup games
(03:18):
together during the NBA off season, kind of like an
unofficial summer league. Lucas was so impressed with Kobe that
he thought the Sixers might be able to draft him
the following year. So he called up the Bryant's and
asked if Kobe wanted to work out with the team
that summer full court games at the field house at St.
Joseph's University and at nearby Episcopal Academy. Several of the
(03:41):
Sixers players would be there, including power forward Sharon Right
and the team's seven ft six inch center Shawn Bradley.
Kobe of course said yes. Then Lucas called his old
backcourt mate and buddy from the University of Maryland, Mo Howard,
Joe's old friend from high school Lucas gave Howard an assignment.
(04:05):
It was his job to oversee these scrimmages and to
make sure that Kobe played in as many of them
as he wanted. Mo Howard still lives in Philadelphia and
he's still a big name in basketball around the city.
He gets asked about that summer of ninety five a lot,
but he never minds talking about it. He was there
each day to see the turning point in Kobe Bryant's
(04:26):
basketball career and in his life. Finally, describe what you
saw from Kobe during that summer when John Lucas had
you running those scrimmages at St. Joe's in Episcopal Wow. Wow,
(04:47):
I'm Mike seal Scope and from Diversion Podcasts, this is
I am Kobe st w state to create myself. Create yourself,
very nice. Create yourself got a pretty great minds. But
(05:11):
we ain't time. Episode six. The summer of Mo Howard
(05:32):
had played with and against Kobe in Sunday morning pickup
games at a y m c A in Center City, Philadelphia,
back when Kobe was just thirteen years old. He knew
how good the kid was, at least he thought he knew,
and he were playing those games and like he won
and held his own, but to play against the pros
at the level that he did was really surprised. In
(05:55):
two story, so we're sitting there, it's Maurice Chiefs, myself
and Harold Cats. Just for the record, Maurice Cheeks was
a Hall of Fame point guard who spent eleven of
his fifteen NBA seasons with the Sixers. In the summer,
he was one of their assistant coaches, and Harold Katz
was the team's owner and a total basketball junkie. He
(06:19):
would stay up late to watch NBA games then quiz
his executives and coaches about players around the league. And
Carol Kats is watching Guys scimmage and he says about Kobe,
where is he from? And Maurice Cheeks says a Laura Marian.
(06:39):
Harold Katt says to Maurice, well, I don't want to
know where he lives, but where is he from? And
Maurice says He's from Lower Merion High School and Harold
Cats looks at him with his look of surprise, saying huh.
And then Maurice goes on to tell him that he's
Joe Bryant's son, so even you know, the guy who
(07:02):
was the owner of the team was very, very surprised
and how skilled Kobe was. At that time. Kobe wasn't
the only Lower Marian player competing in those scrimmages. Emery Dabney,
a talented point guard from West Philadelphia who had played
summer ball with Kobe and the Aces, was transferring into
(07:22):
Lower Marian for his sophomore year. John Lucas had seen
him play and invited him to the workouts too. It
was crazy. I remember the first couple of days, I
was nervous. It was very surreal, to be honest, because
as a fifth year on myself and you're playing with
these guys at an NBA. It was surreal. But then
after the first couple of workouts, you're like, okay, like
(07:43):
I used to playing with these guys. And who were
some of the guys in the gym. Richard Dumas, Vernon Maxwell,
Jared Stockhouse, a guy who played in North Carolina named
Donna Williams. Some pretty good players, uh, some older NBA.
I remember Willie Burton, I don't never remember that name
played for the six was back in the day. It
was some really good players and Kobe right away. Didn't
(08:05):
care who they were, he didn't care what they had
done before. He was trying to test to see how
good he was. So he was going right at all
those guys. And that's how kind of the robbery between
him and dark Stackhouse kind of started. Ah, Yes, Jerry Stackhouse.
(08:31):
When you hear anyone talk about Kobe's workouts in the
summer of you hear about Jerry Stackhouse. He had been
a high school phenom himself just a few years earlier,
and he'd become a human highlighted names during his time
at North Carolina. He's He's Jaman, Slimming Crab, Jap, slip Little.
(09:06):
The Sixers had taken Stackhouse with a third overall pick
in NBA Draft. At North Carolina, he'd been Sports Illustrated
National Player of the Year and had taken the tar
Heels to the Final Four. He was supposed to be
the Sixer savior. Stackhouse was playing in those summer scrimmages
and pickup games too, and you would have thought he
would dominate them and Kobe, except their battles on the
(09:29):
court back then have taken on the aura of myth
and legend ever since. In a way that has always
put Stackhouse in Kobe shadow. I saw this. I watched
those scrimmages. I watched those workouts, and you know, there
were some days that Jerry would get the best of Kobe,
(09:51):
and there were some days that Kobe would get the
best of Jerry. But Kobe did it in a more
spectacular fashion, right. So I witnessed one day we were
scrimmaging out Episcopal Bowl and Kobe and Jerry were going
head to head with each other as they did, and
(10:11):
Maurice Cheeks and I was standing there watching, and if
I'm mistaken, Jerry Stackhouse was the second pick that year.
He was a third pick. So Maurice Cheeks looks at
me and he says, if Jerry Stackhouse is number three,
Kobe has to be three. A Kobe's friend, Jeremy Treatment,
(10:35):
who was about to go from covering him to coaching him,
went to two of those scrimmages. Listened to his voice
as he tells me his impressions of Kobe from those games.
And he wasn't backing down anybody. He had a boldness
about him. The thing that was so called when Joe
Bryant called me and said, I don't even need to go.
Sean Bradley calls the house and says, I'll pick up.
(10:56):
At seven. They were picking him up. They wounded him
to come. He seemed a little young, but he also
seemed like it belonged. It just was like he's sixteen
and he's playing with twenty seven year old NBA players.
It was It was kind of crazy. But I was
not surprised that he held his own I was not
surprised that he gave from Stackhouse all he could handle.
(11:29):
Stackhouse did not take kindly to these comparisons to Code.
He still doesn't. He's now the head men's basketball coach
at Vanderbilt University, and when I reached out to him
and Vanderbilt Sports information office to see if he would
speak to me from my book about Kobe, he declined.
And he kind of has a point. By the time
the Sixers drafted him, he had already been compared to
(11:50):
Michael Jordan's mostly because both of them had gone to
North Carolina and were high flying acrobats when they had
the basketball in their hands and a chance to dunk it.
But Michael and Kobe were guards, straight up shooting guards.
Stackhouse wasn't Stackhouse had played power forward in high school
and at North Carolina. He had never played guard in
(12:11):
his life until the Sixers drafted him. He wasn't used
to chasing smaller, quicker players around screens or squaring up
for twenty ft jump shots. He and Kobe had different
sets of skills and were different players, and people thought
the teenager was better. It was a total no win
situation for Stackhouse. If he was better than Kobe, well
(12:34):
he should be. Kobe was just a high school kid.
And if Kobe out played him, what did that say
about the guy who was supposed to be the Sixers
franchise player. His frustration was growing with every scrimmage. Here's
Emery Dabney. Then at one point they Stackhouse started found
him hard and they almost got into it. They you know,
(12:55):
Stackhouse grabbed them and we had to kind of break them.
Those two up. He was relentless because, like I said,
for a guy in high school who's not even is
going at the number one overall pick, like going at
him relentlessly. It was kind of crazy. And but honestly,
Brendon Maxwell, I don't know if you remember les called
Mad Max. He he's the one that really instigated it
(13:15):
because I remembers meet him and Kovid in the same team.
I forget who the other two players were. But every
time he gave Covid a ball and Stackhouse was gardener,
he would just go kill him, kill him, like for
the whole, the whole possession. And it was like no
one else would touch the ball, and Renna Maxwell come
down and give him the ball, tell him to kill him.
So after a while, you know, Stackhouse wasn't too happy
(13:38):
about him. No, Stackhouse wasn't happy. But Kobe had to
be elated. Here he was holding his own against NBA players,
and he was just turning seventeen that August, and often
he was more than holding his own. In fact, to
put it bluntly, Kobe was showing that he already surpassed
(14:00):
some of them when it came to the intangibles that
were necessary to succeed in the league. When I was
talking to Mo Howard about those games, he said something
about Kobe that has stuck in my memory ever since.
It captured perfectly the player Kobe was then and the
player he would become. What I saw was unique work.
(14:23):
Unlike any of the other pros and college players who
participated in those open runs. H he was the first
one there every day. He was the last one of
these every day, every day without fail. I just couldn't
believe that he was that highly skilled, like playing against
(14:47):
pro guys. He was so highly skilled and motivated that,
you know, I was a little surprised. Kobe's workouts didn't
involve just best the ball either. He and Dabney would
run on the track at St. Joseph's University too, before
heading to the field House to play. A few days
(15:07):
that summer, the field House was closed, so the NBA
guys would be playing at the gym at Episcopal Academy,
which was right across the strungle track. Minds just August
and we would get in the car and when you
drive over to a pisco, you know, I'm probably not
even a two minute drive. It's outfter the workouts, you know.
I get in the car Kobe and it's uh ninety
(15:27):
degrees outside, and he pulls the windows up and he
turns the heat on, and I'm like, Kobe, like, what
are you doing? I might have a heart attack and
I can't what are you doing? He's like, I'm about
to go play in the stackhouse. I gotta stay warm.
I don't want to cool down before before I play.
I'm like, all right, what do you I can't do this.
I have a heart attack. And he stops at the
light and he goes, you can get out, Kobe. Let
(15:51):
him crack the window a little. But I can't think
of a better metaphor for who Kobe Bryant was then
and where he thought, no, where he knew he was going.
If you're with me, if you believe in me, if
you're willing to sacrifice like I am, you can come
along for the ride. If you're not, you can get out. Hey.
(16:25):
This is Mike Selsky, 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
(16:48):
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
(17:08):
it from any of your favorite retailers. That's the Rise
of Kobe book dot Com. Thanks. When Kobe wasn't running
(17:36):
full court with Jerry Stackhouse and the rest of those
guys and those uber intense pickup games, he was traveling
around the United States on his Amateur Athletic Union teams
better known as the a U Circuit. He was up
and down the East coast of Las Vegas, all over,
going to camps, playing in tournaments with other big time
college recruits. Of course, given his plans and goals, it
(17:57):
might not be right to call him a recruit. The
highlight of that summer of ninety five was in early
July in te Neck, New Jersey, at the prestigious A
b c D Camp, which was sponsored by Adidas and
sneaker mogul Sonny Vacar Picaro had founded A B c D.
In The camp gathered the highest ranked high school players
(18:18):
in the country in one place. It was considered the
marquee event of the summer in high school hoops. Greg
Downer and Mike Egan, Kobe's coaches at Lower Marian, went
up there to see him play. Here's Egan. He was
just phenomenal. There he was and were a lot of
the kids. And this is where his maturity really came
(18:39):
into play, where a lot of these guys were looking
at it as fun and show voting and who you know,
how many guys sent me? And he was there because
at that point he was considered a top five player
in the country. In Tim Thomas, Leicester are all Jeremain
Neal and sometimes you hollow it was you a little
(19:00):
higher than him. And Kobe went up there and never
said of this. Does we know he even up there
with a mission. He wants to come out of there
being called the number one player in the country. And
at the end of that week he was the consensus
not a one player in country. Kobe had scored ten
(19:25):
eighty out of a possible six on his s A
T S. He was a very good student. He had
grown particularly close to his tenth grade English teacher, Jeane Mastriano.
In fact, she became an intellectual mentor to him. The
two of them remained in touch throughout his life. Mastriano
spent a lot of time in her class delving into
the concept of the hero's journey. Her students watched Star
(19:46):
Wars and class, for example, to understand the symbolism behind
Luke Skywalker's path to becoming a Jedi, they read Joseph
Campbell's famous book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Mastriano
told me that Kobe loved it all. One of the
things that he really soaked up was the hero's journey,
which is something I talked about at the beginning of
(20:09):
the year, throughout the year. At the end of the year,
it kind of followed the arc of the whole year,
the whole idea that you're going into an unknown here
and you need to take risks. We all need to
take risks, and if you don't take risks, then you're
not going to happen experience. It's going to be exhilarating.
We need to scare yourself. Do you think he saw
himself on that kind of hero's journey. Absolutely. He believed
(20:30):
in his number one dream, which was that he was
going to realize his life as a basketball player, and
that he was going to go in that direction. He
was convinced he was going to do that. How could
he be so sure though, especially at such an early
stage of his life. Where did that confidence come from?
(20:57):
I think there's a clue in something Mastriano told me.
I asked her what Kobe was like in class, how
he carried himself, how he acted and behaved. You know,
the stereotype of the high school jock doesn't care much
about his grades, doesn't need to worry about his homework
because he's going to get a football scholarship or a
basketball scholarship, or a swimming scholarship. That wasn't Kobe. He
(21:18):
had this relentless curiosity, and he challenged Mastriano just like
she would challenge him, in a good way, not in
a bad way. He was confident that he could go
back and forth with her that because of his life
experiences and the path he was on, he already existed
on her level intellectually and professionally, and she in turn
(21:39):
appreciated that quality in him. He wasn't much of a talker,
but the energy that he exhumed was palpable. Since I
have when I looked back on him, somebody wouldn't hesitate
to say, why are we learning this? Not in a
terribly antagonistic way, but like, this is just not doing
a thing for me. I don't see where this is going.
Could it please justify? And I love that. I love
(22:03):
the kid who's edgy, who's argumentative. It's just such wonderful
than There was no question that Kobe could get into
any college he wanted, but it was becoming obvious to
everyone around him how his focus was narrowing to just
one thing, basketball, you know. And then here's Mikey when
(22:23):
he worked at things so much. His junior year, he
was a student. He was still trying to get his
grades up and his s A T s up and
make sure there was no issues with college, which there
would not have been anyway. But every day he got
better and every day he we saw something from him
that we'd be lying if we said we knew he
could be would be an vy a superstar as a junior.
(22:44):
But then between his junior and senior year, that's when
his game really elevated. And when he came back as
a senior, it was all basketball. And then we started
looking at each other and say, this kid's gonna be really,
really something. The expectations for Lower Marian's basketball team Kobe's
(23:05):
senior year were just about as high as the expectations
for its star player. Anything less than a district championship
or state championship or both would be considered a disappointment.
But in an early season test at Kobe's old stopping
grounds from the summer, the St. Joe's field House, the
Aces got stopped by Saint Anthony of Jersey City. St.
(23:26):
Anthony was one of the two or three best high
school teams in the country, maybe the best, and they
were coached by the great Bob Hurley, a member of
the Basketball Hall of Fame. This clip from CBS explains
both Curly's accolades and his dedications to the program. With
an unyielding determination and by relentlessly striving for perfection on
(23:49):
the floor, Bob Hurley has built the basketball program at St.
Anthony's High School into a perennial powerhouse, and we're getting
ready for the state tournament. We can't go down and
just run nothing. Flawa Marian was never really in the
game against St. Anthony. They lost by fifteen points, and
(24:13):
Kobe had twenty eight of those forty seven points. A
quarter century later, Curly still remembers that game and Kobe's
performance in it very well eight really, and he had
no he had no help tony other players. We were
able to cheat off them and uh, you know, help
against him. And then after the game, he come over
to me and asked if we could talk, and we
(24:33):
sat down and sat down on the bleachers at St.
Joe's and he talked about what things I think he
needed to do to become up at a player. And
I remember talking to him about how the first half
had ended with we had stolen the ball from him
and we scored to end half and I put us
up one and he kind of put his chin down
(24:55):
and kind of walked off the court. And the second
half sought it, and the first four minutes of the
second half he wasn't dominant like he could be. And
I talked to him about his reaction to that mistake
and how how important erasing that mistake would be with
the way he would play early in the second half
(25:15):
of the game. Totally understood, thank me so much for it.
And then you know, we farther ways, but you know,
he just was mature beyond his years. But we played
against unbelievable players over the years, and he's the best
player we ever played against. You know you're sek average
over thirty game where people got thirty against St. Anthony, say,
(25:36):
should have got a trophy. That's no minor compliment from
a coach like Bob Hurley, And it was pretty revealing
that Kobe would seize the opportunity to sit down with
(25:57):
her to pick his brain. Kobe didn't see Hurly as
an opposing coach. He saw him as a resource. It
was like Kobe was saying to himself, losing the St.
Anthony hurts, but I can get better in the long
run because of it. An even bigger test for Kobe
and Lower Marion came after the St. Anthony Laws. The
(26:17):
last week of December, the team flew down to Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina for the Beach Ball Classic. Now usually when
you think of Myrtle Beach, you think of golf courses,
but the Beach Ball Classic was a major event in
high school basketball and eight team tournament that featured some
of the best players in America. One of them was
(26:38):
Lester Earl, a six ft eight jumping jack who ended
up playing at L s U and Kansas. Another was
Mike Bibby, a point guard who was the second pick
in the NBA draft in and ended up playing in
the league for fourteen years. Here's Scott County High School
coach Billie Hicks talking about the Beach Ball Classic in
(26:59):
two thousand four. Team, I'll tell you every time that
we're we get a chance to play here, we really
feel blessed because you know, there's a lot of great
tournaments in America highscrew tournaments, but you know, nothing comes
close to the Beach Ball But the biggest star at
(27:22):
the Classic wasn't Lester Earl or Mike Biddy. It was Kobe.
The Aces played three games in the tournament, and there
were so many people flocking to Kobe that it was
difficult for him to get to his family after each game.
A couple of times that I started just pulling them
back in the in the back room, in the locker room.
Start talking to him then, because I think it's unfair
(27:43):
for my family. Will wait. I saw all the autographs.
I think, I think that's unfair. But when I stopped before,
I started wising up and tell him the coming back
so I can talk to him there. I came by
the locker room and I just saw all these people
saying I'm like, oh right, you know, teenagers, teenage boys,
teenage girl. Oh man, it was guys, kind of crazy.
(28:06):
But the escort just gave me a seat, so you know,
you sit down as sign him if you want to,
or you don't have to sign him at all. So
show I said, now I have. I just said down
that it's an auto autographs what I was doing. Honest,
that's how many people about. He sounds like he's already
used to all this attention, like this is just par
(28:27):
for the course for him. Yes, of course people are
going to want my autograph. Well it's a little unfair,
but hey, that's the price of fame. It's one of
the things that always strikes me about listening to these
tapes of Kobe. He never seems overwhelmed by any of this,
the attention, the pressure, the expectations, none of it. It
(28:47):
was like this was a business trip, like this is
what he was supposed to be doing with his life
(29:10):
away from the convention center. Kobe stayed in his room
a lot on the trip, sleeping, resting, thinking. He went
out a few times at night with friends, but not
that much. I know that you're gonna have options like
that you either gonna go out, uh go swimming as
an example, UH go party and go play video games
(29:33):
and things like that. And for some people that may
be relaxing. I know Michael Joyd likes to play golf
for a game Magic miss as the music. I just
like to sleep. I feel that I played very well.
When I'm rested, I got my legs under me and
I can run all day. So I just relaxed, turned
the TV off and just swept in. But I enjoy thinking. Yeah,
(29:55):
I thinking about the game. I was thinking about the
moves I was gonna make. I was gonna tap the team.
I'm gonna come out shooting and come out passing type
moves I was gonna make. Can you see every game
seems different for me. One game I'll come out and
I feel like crossover move it was the best, and
I feel maybe it's to pull up jump shot and
(30:15):
fade away three. So I really got focused in it.
We tried to think and and say, well, how do
I feel now. I really thought about the game a lot,
and I've also also thought about the future. It was
(30:38):
no wonder so many people wanted Kobe's autograph and Laura
Marion's first game at the Beach Ball Classic, a victory
over a school from Ohio. He scored forty three points.
It was a spectacular performance and Kobe was on his
way to another one in the Aces. Next game, they
were rolling against Jenks High School from Oklahoma, and Kobe
(30:58):
had thirty one points when he made one bad decision
and everything about the game and lower Marian's season changed.
So I think we're on like ten twelve and he
just growed in one against four and ah, he just
he made a rare, really bad decision and guy jowing off,
they drew the offensive foul, and he sat right next
(31:20):
to me on the bench. Game went into overtime. We
might have lost sixteen the two in the overtime. I
don't know exactly what I think he was seventeen the two.
I was close watching his teammates melt down in overtime.
Kobe kept muttering the same phrase over and over again,
just no goddamn independence, no goddamn independency to skip. Mike
(31:40):
Egan described Kobe's reaction to the lowest It was after
that game, one of the few times I saw Kobe
really really lose his temper um. Where we sat in
the locker room, and I said something again, guys, you
you have to get better. You're not as good as
you think you are. And the other coach is all.
(32:00):
He says some more things, and Greg said, does anyone
on the team have anything to say? And Kobe absolutely
went off, screaming, yelling, you can't back down. He used
foul language. He kept saying, you can't back down, you
can't back down. You can't at him back down. Later
that night, Greg Downer gathered the entire team in his
(32:21):
hotel room and delivered a speech calling out each of
the players, including Kobe. It sounds weird what could he
possibly have complained about with respect to Kobe, But according
to Treatment, he found something. You gotta understand the pressure
of your teammates are feeling to playing with you, and
you gotta bring the best out of them, and you
gotta trust in them too. This to me, is an
(32:45):
interesting moment in Kobe's development. All his life when it
comes to basketball, the person he has listened to most
is his father. Joe has been the biggest influence on him.
But now out Greg Downer is challenging him in a
way he's never been challenged before. Downer isn't saying Kobe,
(33:07):
you have to make yourself better. He's saying, Kobe, you
have to make your teammates better. As we know from
the rest of Kobe's career, that wasn't necessarily the easiest
thing for him to do, But Downer is telling him,
we won't win if you don't do it. The approach
worked right away. Inspired by downer speech, the Aces went
(33:30):
out and won their third and final game in the tournament.
Kobe scored forty three points in that one, took the
Dunk Contest capped the Beach Ball Classic. It was the
last event and Kobe desperately wanted to participate. There was
one problem, though. Sometime during the tournament, he had injured
his right wrist. It hadn't hurt badly enough that he
(33:50):
couldn't play in the games, but much of his arm
was wrapped in a big white bandage, like his arm
belonged to a mummy. Tell me about the Dunk Contest, Well,
there's all kinds of theories, conspiracy theories on white Kobe's
risk was hurting them. Greg Simples to this day was
from signing autographs. I thought he got hurt. I can't remember.
(34:11):
It was probably a commodation. Lester Earl was going to
be Kobe's biggest rival in the dunk contest. If Kobe
could actually compete Shariah and Shaya, Kobe's sisters didn't want
him to. They thought it was too risky. And I
just remember sisters founding the door and I'm leading with Kobe,
you're not dunking, You're not dunk here, and I'm like, hope,
you don't need to do this. I remember saying like
it's like I got this. What are you're kidding? Because
(34:33):
I'm dunking And we've seen him dunk in a game,
We've seen him dunk into practice, but we've never like
seen him talk. No, no, Greg and no, nobody had
seen this contest starts this Lester Earls doing ship that
I've never seen from NBA players, and Kobe matches leading
that the harder Lester all makes something because he was
(34:53):
going first, then Kobe would do. For his last dunk,
Earl jumped over a ball RADI. Each of the judges
gave him a perfect tent. Technically, the best Kobe could
do was tiring. No matter how good his final dunk
was didn't matter. He asked three of his lower Marian
teammates to stay in the lane just in front of
the basket and duck their heads. And I remember looking
(35:16):
at his sister's faces, like don't do it, don't do it,
and he just jumped right over him dunk and he went.
So yeah. Technically the contest was a tie, but everyone
there in the Myrtle Beach Convention Center that night knew
who had really want. I'm pretty sure he saw me.
He winked. I mean that was just magic. Like God,
(35:37):
this guy just can live up the hype on anything.
It's like like he was hurt, he had no business
dunk in, and he just goes and has a performance
at lifetime. And that's why when I when I leave
the very next year, when he entered in the in
the dunk conscience is a rookie, NBA said, you've got this.
I didn't even need to watch. I knew who's gonna in.
(36:05):
As Jeremy and I sat by the bay on Long
Beach Island and talked about Kobe. Almost twenty five years later,
a few hundred yards away, at a house two doors down,
three kids were playing in a small swimming pool. You
probably heard their voices in the background while Jeremy was talking.
They were playing right when we were talking about Kobe
and Myrtle Beach, Kobe with the NBA plans, Kobe flying
(36:29):
over his teammates despite a sore wrist to throw down
an incredible dunk. Those voices were a nice reminder of
the person Jeremy and I were talking about. We were
talking about Kobe Bryant before he had played his first
game with the Lakers, before he had even met Shaquille
O'Neil or Phil Jackson or Pau Gasol, before he'd won
(36:52):
five NBA championships and been a league MVP, before the
battles and controversies with Shack and Phil, before he had
become a husband and a father, before Eagle Colorado, before
he had even accomplished everything he was going to accomplish
in high school. We were talking about Kobe Bryant when
(37:13):
he was just seventeen years old. We were talking about
a kid. In the next episode, I'm going to tell
you the story of how that kid pulled off one
of his greatest feats as a high school basketball star.
I saw it a message, so we be a championship day.
How could player like this got stepping up with other bands.
(37:35):
We knew that the is our time every week game
you stepped up on the quarter That's next week on
I Am Code. I Am Kobe is a production of
(38:03):
The Version Podcasts, an association with I Heart Radio. This
season is written and hosted by me Mike Sealskier. 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
(38:24):
our production assistant. Our theme 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
(38:47):
and Instagram. It's at Diversion Pods thanks to Oran Rosenbaum,
Susan Cannavan and Jeremy Treatment. The brisby Flo the Son
and they don't want to stand when I say the
blinds fall, and 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 tends. We perseveit,
stay tilling it, let it keep the horses, and then
(39:09):
if they don't believe in themselves, gave a vert to
find now the tampons heads. So I'm telling them, ask
my a, 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 I'm anna mote
to play like cashes see I pay my dudes because
taxes gotta work that they can grind ahead of his time.
(39:30):
So I'm gonna saying that they 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 me quack, watch create myself.
SAI signs up and create yourself. Stay nice, go hard,
(39:56):
create yourself. You gotta learn from the great minds. So
we ain't lying to tell them next get any time.
This talent wasn't given. It was made. If future any
time I can change 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 us. Spoons, don't hold your breath, sat Town,
(40:16):
sat Train. But I did it with less. I know
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.
(40:36):
You can't listen for where red build, reach shape, give
me your eye. You got to risk take do it now.
When I'm saying why waves, I was saying that they
made You'll tell them you create yourself the best you
finn watch us, but it's bad that time. You gotta
stay clock then break clock break. We create ourselves. I
(41:00):
sweep quest right, sweeping to create myself. Exacts like that,
sim self, create yourself, say nice and nain, go on,
create yourself. You gotta learn from the great minds. But
we ain't lying telling this game time Ye Diversion Podcasts
Host
Mike Sielski
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com