Shawn Bradley’s New Life, QB Evolution, When Kobe Ruled Philly

Former NBA star Shawn Bradley was living out an idyllic retirement in Utah until one day a tragic bike ride left him paralyzed when a driver hit him from behind. SI contributing writer Brian Burnsed is here to tell us how Bradley; his wife, Carrie; and their family have been forever changed by this experience.

SI Daily Cover: Life After 7'6": Shawn Bradley, Paralyzed in a Bike Crash, Knows ‘It’ll Never Be the Same’

Quarterbacks study the game of football and their competitors incessantly, so when a standout performer like Aaron Rogers develops a “foot pop” or Lamar Jackson starts bending his throws around defenders, players are bound to copy their moves. SI staff writer and mad genius Conor Orr delivers a treatise on the evolutionary development of quarterbacks with some solid blocking by world-renowned biologists from Harvard University.

SI Cover story: In the Throws of Change

On the anniversary of Kobe Bryant’s death, we welcome Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski, whose new book delves into what Kobe was like as a young phenom before he became a basketball legend. Sielski joins us to tell the entertaining story behind the unlikely college that almost landed Kobe before he decided to jump straight to the NBA. 

Excerpt, The Ones Kobe Left Behind

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
On this episode of Sports Illustrator Weekly, SI staff writer
Connor Or explains how the evolution of the quarterback position
has led to an NFL revolution. Then Philadelphia Inquired columnist
Mike Sealski joins us to discuss his new book and
tell the entertaining story behind the college that almost landed
Kobe Bryant before he jumped straight to the NBA. But

(00:25):
first we begin with the tragic tale of former NBA
big man Shawn Bradley and how his life has been
radically altered after a bicycle crash left him paralyzed. It's January.
I'm your host John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and an
I Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrator Weekly. With the

(00:49):
second pick in the NBA Draft, the Philadelphia seventies sixers
select Sean Bradley from Brigham Young University. This is how
Sean Bradley, all seven ft six of him, entered the NBA,
one picked behind Chris Webber, one ahead of Penny Hardaway.
Sean Bradley lasted two years in Philly, then a couple

(01:12):
with the Nets, before John Calipari shipped him off to
the Mavericks. He had finished his career in Dallas, playing
nine seasons there. He retired in two thousand five and
moved to St. George, Utah. Beautiful little town in southwest Utah,
a couple hours north of Vegas. It's a two hour
drive through the desert, really pretty drive. It's near a

(01:33):
couple of national parks or sins of canyons. There's biking,
there's hiking. This is Brian Burn said. He spent time
with Shawn Bradley, his wife, Carry and their family to
write a recent profile in Sports illustrated this typical weather
for here. This is quite nice without humidity. Where he

(01:53):
had remarried to a woman named Carrie. And night after
we met, he pulled up to my house, leaned out
the back window the kids and then drives like what
do I say if you could drive? If you let

(02:15):
me drive? Okay, all night, let's go right. Carrie has
three kids. Sean adopted them all, and really he had
created this kind of new family unit. They had a happy,
quiet life in St. George. He to stay in shape.
He was on his bicycle quite a bit. The bike
he found as a refuge for his mental health as

(02:37):
well as his physical health. So really kind of an
idyllic sort of retired life in his late forties with this,
with this loving family and and a beautiful home in
a beautiful setting. On January one, Sean was taking one
of his typical rides on a two lane residential street.
There's a wide emergency lane off to the right. Sean

(02:58):
was coming through a roundabout, and so I'm like, okay,
I gotta be careful with the round about signaled slowed down,
signal to turn. Went through the roundabout, and I was
just literally as long as white line right here. I
thought I saw someone in this parked car, So I
need to be sure that I go around it far
enough if they don't see me. If they opened it,
he was worried. Okay, I want to give this car space.

(03:20):
If they open their door, that could cause a dangerous collision.
He signals, does everything you're supposed to. The driver behind him,
apparently distracted or in a hurry, hit him. His front
wheel turns, the bike stops cold. That's three plus pounds
going airborne. Land's head first hits the car, hits the concrete,

(03:44):
and it is it is painfully close to his home.
He was almost almost home. The driver continued on. It
was a young mother, and she continued on on their
way to pick up her kid from school. Later came
back talked with the police. They ultimately opted not to

(04:04):
charge her despite the evidence, and she knew that she
hit somebody right. She said that she saw him tumbling
through the air in her rear view mirror, but maintained
that she had given him enough room and never really
copped to bumping into him, even though his GPS data
showed he'd accelerated from twelve to seventeen miles an hour instantaneously.

(04:26):
What you're not going to do on a cool down
ride going uphill. So he had been bumped, the data suggested,
but they didn't charge her. The Bradley's, for their part,
did not to sue. So, Sean's hit by this car,
He's painfully close to home. Who finds him? What happens?

(04:46):
So there was a woman in the parked car, uh
and she got out and immediately tended to him. I
believe she's the one who called ambulance, got there pretty quick.
Does he wake up on his own? Does he call someone?
What happens next? Sean, for his part, he woke up
in a daze, initially thought he couldn't breathe with scared
he'd suffocate to know if his diaphragm was working. He

(05:08):
couldn't move anything, just his eyes initially at first. Eventually
he's able to move his shoulders, just a slight shrug
of his shoulders, and that was enough to let him know, Okay,
I have some motion. Maybe I'll start to get some
things back. But it's still just as you can see
in the photos of accompanied the story, he's he was
in agony. It was terrifying for him. Word traveled fast

(05:32):
up the street. Carrie came out and saw the crash site,
saw Sean on the ground. The E M T s
on site were worried about stuffing him into the ambulance.
Is he gonna fit? They almost couldn't shut the doors.
They're eventually able to get them shut. Raced off to
the hospital. That left carry there to collect the bike
and scramble to get to the hospital to see what

(05:54):
fate awaited her and her husband. When they get to
the hospital, how soon before the doctors tell Sean exactly
what's going on here. They'd seen that vertebrae had shifted,
that his spinal cord had been pinched. They knew that
there had been damaged somewhere around the C six vertebrae.
That's what shifted, and they knew they had to get
in and operate on him to fuse it, to lock

(06:14):
the vertebrate back in place, to keep that stable. That's
priority one. And then coming out of surgery, it's a
waiting game. Breathing too, as bad as it can get.
He's in the I c U for three weeks and
they don't know what fate awaits him. They know generally speaking,
someone with that sort of C six injury that that
means limited motion in the arms, may regain some use
of their hands, maybe some slight feeling in the torso

(06:36):
again it varies, but more than likely no use of
the legs, some limitations on breathing. So it's a it's
a complex injury, but it was not. It was certainly
not a rosy prognosis. That day when he's fully conscious again,
what's his mindset, what's Carrie's mindset, what's their interaction, like,
what are they going through in that moment? Once he

(06:58):
gets out of the I c U. After those first weeks,
it becomes okay, I have to confront this drastically different
new life, you know, imagine you you are a former athlete.
You have this perfect idyllic life. Your body has been
the means through which you have an identity, through which
you've made a fortune, through which you've kind of connected
with the world, and now it's just suddenly gone. And
you have this new family that knows you as this tall,

(07:21):
stable figure and now you're you're something different. This isn't
quite better for worse. Typically means it's probably my biggest
challenge and all this I would be possible, right because
I'm not that person anymore. I mean I am I'm Sean.
I'm still you know why. I still have things offer.

(07:42):
I saw my my wits about me, my thoughts and
my attitudes. But it's changed. What is his day to
day Like Carrie obviously cannot do it alone given his size,
even if he was an avertised person. You need it

(08:04):
definitely helps to have caretakers to help you get in
out of bed. He has someone come in the morning,
help him to make sure he has a bowel movement,
clean up any messes he's had, get him dressed, and
that process takes all of that takes about an hour,
get him proper medication, move him using this. It's called
a Hoyer lift. It looks like a small crane with
a fabric sling on it. Move him from the bed

(08:25):
into his massive custom electric wheelchair that weighs nearly five pounds,
and then he can start his day. He's limited, he
can't go upstairs and his beautiful home, can't go down
to the basement. And then at night they reverse that process.
The caretaker comes back and helps him get ready for bed,
and gets him in bed and cleans him up, and
and has to fix his legs and these slings that

(08:46):
enable him to shift in the middle of the night.
He sets an alarm every three hours so we can
shift his legs so he doesn't develop bedsore. So it's
a constant logistical struggle, only made harder by his size.
What if the doctors told him about long term? Is
this permanent? Is there any chance that he might get
some sensation back? Generally speaking, for an injury like this,

(09:09):
the most improvement happens in the first six months, and
he did have some improvement. He regained some function in
his hands. He's able to feed himself now, um, so
he's regained some measure of independence. With that. He uses
his fingers to drive the electric wheelchair. But as far
as long term prognosis, it really varies and the doctors
don't know. And Sean says that some days he can
feel a little bit more tingling in his torso, or

(09:30):
his obliques might fire, or he might feel his abs fire,
and so they'll try to do some exercises to activate
those and see what response they can get, and then
it goes away and it varies day to day. So
whatever whatever new sensations he has, they try to do
some targeted exercises and rehab for that to see if
they can establish any new neural pathways. We have to
take what's on today, what's turned on today, what worked

(09:50):
right now? Right these things work a little bit. Let's
let's maximize what we have right there, Solders, My arms
were great, in my head were good. You know, I
have a little bit of feeling in my abs and chest.
Let's back. We're going to maximize what we have today.
If something turns on tomorrow, we'll go for that. There.
The athletes mentality has helped him. There. A lot of
people only do it two or three, and he's the

(10:11):
rehab team and Dallas especially it's an athlete Focus Rehab
facility has said that they can just tell you know,
this was a pro athlete, that mentality has helped him
because these are grueling. Can you give us a brief
rundown of some of the exercises that Sean has been doing,
and lately that's included shooting Basketball's right, it has UH
in addition to his strength exercises where he's learning to

(10:35):
transition himself from a bed to his wheelchair and back.
That's really the core of his rehab. The team in
Dallas did have him UH several times go out to
the basketball court, and it's ultimately designed to help his dexterity,
but it's in a familiar setting and it's a place
where he might be inclined to push himself. The day
I was with him, they had him shoot a volleyball
to start, because it's a little less unwieldy than a

(10:57):
full size basketball. He parked himself near the near the
rim and was was shooting little two three ft shots
under the rim and was making a few of the volleyball.
The basketball is a bit more of a challenge for him,
just because he's got so little function in his arms
and hands, but he was able to make a couple.
It was hartening to see him out in that environment again.
The court was even painted with a Mavericks theme, but

(11:18):
also a jarring reminder of how different his life is now.
He also, obviously was a professional athlete for a long
time he played in the NBA. He a lot of
his identity, I would imagine, was wrapped up in being
a large, physical specimen who does something that very few
human beings can do. And now his life has changed,

(11:39):
and I'm wondering how he's processing that. So the physical
challenge is bigger than anything we can found. But the
loss of identity, the loss of independence, the strain on
mental health, that's what he wrestles with the most every day.
He took great pride in being the tallest guy in
the room, um and being looked up to in person,

(11:59):
in metaphorically right, look, come into the room. I I'm
the tallest always my life. It was a lot more
emotional than I ever thought I would be, because I
look at things that I've done without even questioning. And
now he does still get noticed everywhere he goes. You
can't miss eight hundred pounds of man in electric wheelchair

(12:22):
moving into a room. It's just, you know, you've never
seen anything like it. Every eye still goes towards him.
What the gazes are different, right, what people are thinking
is different. He knows that he understands that Dallas is
really where Sean sort of found a basketball home. Mavericks
owner Mark Cuban and Shawn's former teammates Michael Finley and
Dirk Nowitzki also play a big part in the story, Brian,

(12:44):
Where do they come in? Cuban and Dirk popped on
a plane and flew out to see Sean at his
home in St. George, Utah. So they crammed him into
the hospital minivan. His legs were draped over the front
seats to get them there. And he went and saw
his old friends at his home, and Dirk kicked the
ball all around, kicked a soccer ball around with his
adopted son, who's a soccer college soccer player, uh, and

(13:05):
the three of them just talked. They caught up. It
was just a moment of normalcy, he said. They couldn't
have been more gracious or caring or loving, and it
just felt like old times despite all that had changed.
And as beautiful of an hour or so as that
was for Sean. He said the next day was really
traumatic for him. It was really tough because he was
used to them looking at him as a peer, looking

(13:25):
up to him a teammate, and now he's he's changed,
and they were looking at him literally looking down on him,
empathizing with him. But still that you know, he's not
the seven six guy in the room anymore. Sean is
famously a man of faith. He's a lifelong practicing Mormon.
What does that mean to his life? Now, that's a
great question. And I did. I asked him about his

(13:45):
faith a few times because I wondered, if you're a
man of such a minute of faith. He's built his
life around his faith. He put the NBA off to
go on a mission, etcetera. Right, I mean, it's it's
a huge part of his life. But I want to
just put to do some person. I want to do
a good personal help people. But I can And maybe
this is a way of I'm not I'm not saying

(14:07):
I want to other than a good example now, but
I want to my life in a way that's positive
enough beating And he said it didn't shake his faith,
that did not make him question, did not make him
doubt it was something he could lean on through all this,
and that's been a source of emotional support for him.
The parts of his identity that are wrapped up in
faith have persevered through it all and that's been a

(14:27):
great comfort to him. And I'm wondering, you know, Sean
told you and the piece that the piece should really
be about carry, not him. So what can you tell
me about their relationship and how she and the kids
are handling this without them in the scenario without carry specifically,
I don't know where Sean, where Seawan's mental state would
be because she she was the most relentlessly positive person

(14:50):
I've met in quite some time, just NonStop, and she
admitted as much that she does it because she can't
take a moment to pause. Because when she takes the
moments to pause or to stop move of being, or
just stop helping or just stop trying to make someone happy,
that's when the totality of it hits her. And she would,
she said sometimes she would have to take a moment
when she slowed down. When Sean was in the hospital,

(15:11):
she come home to shower and she collapsed in the
closet and cry, because that was she took a moment
to think in the process, but those moments are fleeting.
I mean, she really does. She's there for Sean all
the time. It's her top concern all the time, and
he doesn't want it to be. He wants he wants
her to learn to let go a bit. The carriage
she's giving me in the family is amazing. In order

(15:34):
to live this life, there needs to be a support
system and exchanged their life in such a way it's
really put a huge burden on especially carry I mean
there's ten thousand things that she shouldn't have to be
worried about that you know, ten months ago she wasn't

(15:55):
worried about, or she was we were able to tackle
because she wouldn't in a way, we could both easy
to burden as well. I guess what her burdens now
I'm And that's why one of my biggest challenge, I
don't know how I can use the burden of me.

(16:21):
Like Sean said, you know, we didn't sign up for this.
She didn't sign up for this, and yet she's doing it.
And I think a lot of families out there can
relate to that in one way or the other. And
that was an important theme we wanted to explore. You

(16:44):
were with the family leading up to Christmas and they
were decorating the tree, and you asked Sean a pretty
pointed question about decorating the with the family. What did
you ask him and how did he respond? Well, So
I was struck. I was watching them decorate the tree.
It was a massive tree, about twelve feet tall, certainly
not one that you or I could reach without some help,

(17:06):
and one that I remember watching him I was a kid.
I would grew up in Atlanta. Watched him at a
Hawks Mavericks game and he would grab the rim in
pre game and stretch flat footed a ten foot rim.
And so I was reminded of that and looking up
at that tall tree and thinking about him decorating that tree,
you know how far he could reach up and watching
him as the kids are on step stools and ladders

(17:27):
and carries too, and he has to be off to
the side in his chair. It just broke my heart
because I know, again that's it's just a symbol, it's
an identity thing. He's the tall guy. He's going to
reach the top, He's gonna help. And so after I'd
watched him decorated, I just when he and I had
a kind of final one on one conversation. I asked
him how tough that was for him to sit at
the side and not be able to help and not
be able to reach the top anymore, reach higher than

(17:48):
anyone almost in the world could reach in those sort
of little family situations, and he broke down, Yeah, the
tall I'm gonna put the star on the river, or
someone absolutely can't at the start of the or now
my son has to grab the ladder and move around,
you know, six different ways, which is fine because he's
willing to do it, but you know, putting terry on

(18:11):
my shoulders, I haven't heard a death great part of
the top of the tree that those are special moments.
It was a bittersweet moment for him. He was happy
to be alive, happy to be with his family, happy
to be with people who he loved and who were
helping him through all this, but he was just so
heartbroken that it couldn't be what it was. You've outlined

(18:34):
a number of dark moments that he's been trying to
get through. Is he able to find purpose in that
he has? And he that was a big part of
why he wanted to do the piece and was ready
to start talking. It was, Hey, I I have been
through this. Yes, we have been through this. Yes, but
because of love and support and the foundations we have,

(18:56):
we're able to find little silver linings every day, find hope,
fine moments of happiness. Date nights are tough with Carrie,
but maybe if they're coming back from rehab, he told
me a story where they just stopped at a little
yogurt shop for a cookie and dessert for fifteen minutes
and forgot about it all. And you don't go through
life as successful as you can without your family, but

(19:17):
you don't go through a situation like this without your family.
We had a little lifetime in a short period of time,
because if we hadn't unified as much as we clad,
like I mean, the kids in our striking relationships, there's
no way we can do this. What was reporting this
story like for you? Just as a human being emotionally,
I can't imagine what it's like to be Shaun or

(19:39):
what it's like to be carried, but it's my job
to try to feel that along with them as best
I can. I'd come home and talk to my wife,
you know, and just talk about how grateful I am
for what we have, and you know, you never know.
As blissful as their life was, it gets up ended
in an instant, and that could be any of us
in any circumstance, and we're we're lucky to have what
we have. You can't divorce yourself from the emotion to

(20:00):
do these stories and do them well and connect with
people that are willing to be brave and vulnerable like
Shawn and Carry were with me. You have to connect
with them on an emotional level too. You're not just
gathering facts and writing them down right, so it definitely
they all stick with you, and this this one will
definitely stick with me for a long time. It was
a beautiful, tragic, touching peace. Brian Burne said, thank you,

(20:22):
thanks so much. Brian burn said, as a contributing writer
for Sports Illustrated, we'll link to his piece in our
show notes. It's titled Life After seven six. Sean Bradley,
paralyzed in a bike crash, knows it will never be
the same. Up next, a deep dive on how NFL
quarterbacks have evolved and how that progression has changed the

(20:45):
sport forever. We'll try to make get a great while
to live struggling around at the eight game now looks
flames it back at the hands Amatis caught up for

(21:05):
the two. Connor Or is a staff writer for Sports
Illustrated and The Monday Morning Quarterback who wrote about the
revolutionary adjustments that have lately been made to how NFL
quarterbacks play the position. Forget about the old way of
doing things. Guys like Aaron Rodgers, Kyler Murray and Patrick
Mahomes have changed everything we thought we knew about the

(21:26):
right way to play quarterback, and as Or explains it,
that evolution traces back to the quarterbacks who came before
them and some other things you might not expect. All right,
For years, Connor, we've heard about sort of the right
way to play quarterback, that there was an archetype. You

(21:46):
want big guys with big arms who stay in the pocket.
But all of that has changed a little bit, at
least of late, and there's been what you called, what
you wrote about for Sports Illustrated, a quarterback evolution and
a coaching revolution as a result. We can sort of
trace all of this to Aaron Rodgers, of all people,
and something called the foot pop, which you describe as

(22:08):
an Irish step dance. Which I suppose makes Aaron Rodgers
and Michael Flatley of quarterbacks. But what is the foot pop?
How was it discovered? Why is it so important to
this quarterback evolution? So the football is really interesting. Um,
it was uncovered basically in the depths of football Twitter.
So there's an emerging class of quarterback coaches out there

(22:29):
who we're looking to do things differently. And one of
the things that they were doing was looking at slow
motion mechanics and throws and all this kind of stuff
from the best quarterbacks in the NFL. And one of
the coaches, will Hewlett, who actually is Caleb Williams, his
personal quarterbacks coach, he saw this a long time ago

(22:50):
and started tweeting about it, and then a lot of
people started talking about it. He started teaching it to
some of his younger kids once they sort of mastered
the mechanics of it, and uh, it just caught on
and he saw he could do so much more. And really,
what it is is it's just this strange little thing
where normally quarterback coaches are gonna teach you to keep
your lead foot planted, um, because it's gonna help you

(23:11):
get stronger. This is almost like like a little piston
and an engine. It just pops up really quick before
it comes down. So it was like the foot comes
down as the ball's coming out, and you can do
things from different body angles. You can stretch your throwing distance,
all these really kind of cool things that we didn't
know we're possible for that and correct me if I'm wrong,

(23:31):
But it's like almost sort of like a mini bunny hop,
and an outfielder might take it's a little bit like that,
but it's almost like your back foot is still normal.
It's that lead foot that just sort of like pops
up just a little bit, so almost like a modified
crow hop from the outfield, I would say, but almost,
um like if you had to keep your back foot down.
Being that we're a podcast, will have to paint that

(23:54):
picture with words. Yes, but you rite that it unlocked
Roger's arm talent in ways that no one could conceive.
So how does he go from being Aaron Rodgers was
already good, to being Aaron Rodgers, who's even better? Yes,
So I made a I made a big interviewing mistake
when I was talking to Aaron Rodgers for this story,
and I was like, oh, so it made you be
able to make all these crazy throws. And his response

(24:16):
was sort of like, I'm Aaron Rodgers, I can I
can make most of those. Um. But what it did
was so he's had knee problems for almost his entire career,
Like he said, he's had knee problems for like nineteen years,
and so they're just really weird things like if he's
rolling out, for example, it limited the way that he
was able to maybe he had to stick to like

(24:37):
a throw that was in the short to medium range,
because it's like, Okay, if I bend my knee this way,
I'm totally screwed. I'm just gonna twist my body into
a pretzel and I'm not gonna be able to exist anymore.
But with this little move when he's on the run,
like he can pop the foot up. It saves sort
of the pressure, and then it allows your body to
kind of like torque in a way that you can

(24:57):
like you can almost throw across your body with the
same sort of power and distance that you would have
just from a set motion. And so you'll see things that, um,
you know, I talked to some people who observe the
Packers offense for this story, and they're like, yeah, I
mean there's just stuff that they can call in a
playbook that we didn't know you even needed to defend,

(25:18):
because it's like, why would I put a guy over
there if the quarterbacks over here, he's not going to
be able to make that throw and then lo and
behold he starts torching people with this, and so everybody's
got to kind of react and move around. Yeah, I
mean that part is important, I think because it's a
copycat league and it's Aaron Rodgers doing it, so I
think it gives it automatic credibility. Whereas if you had

(25:39):
say Daniel Jones doing it and I love to throw
shade at the New York Giants anytime, like, but if
you had somebody like that doing it, then maybe you
don't get that same sort of credibility. So I'm wondering,
because it is a copycat league, does it give permission
to other teams and other quarterbacks to try something that
they might have otherwise seen as forbidden. I think not
at first, right, Because so here's the interesting thing. One

(26:02):
of the coaches that teaches it said, you know, I'm
teaching it to my kids and then they're going to
college and their coaches are saying stop that, and then
they're calling me, and I'm saying, why would we stop it?
Aaron Rodgers does it? And then the coach says, well,
your prospect isn't Aaron Rodgers. And he said, my response is,
how do we get another Aaron Rodgers if we don't

(26:24):
start acting like Aaron Rodgers? And it's kind of a
really interesting back and forth argument. He said. It's kind
of in split where he's had some college coaches just
say you're not allowed to do this anymore. But I
would say that the growing majority of college coaches now
are saying, you know what, why are we going to
try to fix something that isn't broken. This is cool.
If it works and you can hit all your throws

(26:45):
and everything looks the same, I don't care how it
comes out of your hands. As long as it's everything
is sort of productive. So I think that is the
growing consensus that as long as it's consistent and you're
winning with it, who cares. As you mentioned, I mean,
coach just tend even though it is a copycat league,
coaches tend not to want to be sort of super radical,
at least not be the first guys to try these things.

(27:08):
They want to keep their jobs too. So what kind
of pushback or reluctance or footpop deniers are we looking at.
There are a lot of footpop deniers out there, and
it's interesting, like, so there are coaches out there who
are incensed at Like there's a lot of Instagram videos
of kids doing footpops now, which is a thing. It's
like football TikTok, and the coaches are filming it in

(27:30):
the slow mo cinematic iPhone mode and there are people
that are like, you're ruining these kids and stop doing that.
And so there's sort of a war being raged on
where you say, well, we have to teach them the fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals,
And then there is the new crowd that's like, fundamentals
don't really exist, right because a clean pocket doesn't exist,

(27:51):
an uncontested throw doesn't exist, and unathletic defense doesn't exist.
So we're throwing out the textbook. And so I found
it to be really fascinating. It really depends on who
you fall in with. You know, you could be a
quarterback guru who still teaches things the way that they
did back in the nineteen sixties, or seventies, or you
could be one of these guys that is just um

(28:11):
when coach told me a third of their practice, now
I get ninety minutes with a kid. A third of
that practice is just doing whatever you want, like throwing
the ball side arm like you're a diving shortstop, or
you know, spinning around and just doing the weirdest thing
you can imagine. Because he's like, because that's most of
what you're gonna have to do in the NFL. Now, Yeah,
that part I think is key because it's not just

(28:34):
Aaron Rodgers who has decided, Okay, I'm gonna work on
this foot pop thing all of a sudden. We have
a lot of people in the NFL who are sort
of quarterback freelancing on what would otherwise be traditional fundamentals, right,
and you have Kyler Murray and Lamar Jackson throwing jump
passes or Patrick Mahomes who you mentioned shortstops throwing side arms.
We see that all the time where Patrick Mahomes is

(28:56):
changing his arm angle and dropping down to avoid a defenders.
So is this just sort of like the natural extension
of what we're seeing with the foot pop Now it's
you know, Kyler Murray and Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes
and all these other quarterbacks who who have decided, yeah,
I can do this in a non traditional way. Yeah.
And so the foot pop made that anomaly acceptable, so

(29:18):
that other anomalies could be similarly acceptable. So I talked
to Lamar Jackson's quarterbacks coach, who had a really interesting perspective. Right,
this is a guy who doesn't have a lot of
big time clients. He is a high school English teacher,
and they practice in a park alongside like kids in Florida.
This is not like, you know, an ivan drago operation.

(29:39):
And so he said, when Lamar started throwing the ball
side arm during games, for example, like I think his
first playoff game, he almost like bent a ball around
like a defender's head, like it was like a free
kick in soccer. And the coach is freaking out because
he's like, Okay, everyone's gonna blame this on me. I'm
gonna be looked at as the guy who ruined Lamar Jackson.

(30:01):
I'm never gonna get any clients again. And then he said,
but what if the next time we practice, at the
end of practice, we just keep doing it and you
keep throwing its side arm and you build it in
to your repertoire and you make it consistent. He said.
You know, at the end of every practice, Lamar plays
with all the kids at the park, so they're tackling
each other and diving around, and they're chasing him around

(30:22):
and he's just throwing the ball over his shoulder and
stuff like that. But they will take things from those
freelance periods with the kids that work and that feel
normal and that feel kind of like they could help,
and then they'll build them into the practice routines. So
next week, for fifteen minutes, you're gonna throw the ball
side arm. For fifteen minutes, you're gonna like pretend you're
falling down and throw it backwards over your shoulder, and like,

(30:44):
you know, we're going to get as good at all
this stuff as the other stuff, because in a game,
it's just disapplicable as drop back, clean throw, all that
kind of stuff. So all this stuff feels new, But
I think sometimes we also have a recency bias right
where we go, Oh, you know, Patrick Mahomes and Kyler Murray,
Lamar Jackson are so dynamic and they're the first guys
to do it. But then I think about in order

(31:07):
for there to be an evolution, there must have been
someone or something that they evolved from. And there are
plenty of precursors in my mind where I go, oh, right,
Randall Cunningham was doing that, or Steve Young was doing that,
or Michael Vick more recently was doing that. There's play
from about the twelve and there's Vick As you talked
about John Roling and watching downfield for the shot Jackson

(31:28):
Whiscellars called the opening play all the way for a
touchdown yards. Is that sort of a natural extension for
these guys. Yeah. I think their existence um and success
allowed for the modern quarterback to be able to push
the envelope a little bit, right. I think it's every

(31:49):
successive generation is a little bit more envelope pushing. And
when Aaron Rodgers said, was being able to watch Brett
Farve for four years or whatever was huge because he
didn't really like his footwork was impeccable, but it looked
a lot different than what everybody else was doing, and
like it was beautiful, but it was not textbook, and
so he it kind of got me thinking and it

(32:10):
gave me mental permission to say, Okay, then I can
do things my own way too, and he said that
he was always drawn to people like that. He mentioned
Steve Young and Randall Cuttingham as two other examples, and
he said, yeah, I mean, without those guys, I'm probably
not feeling that internal permission to be able to go
out there and do that. So, for sure, like those
sort of outlaws, and maybe we got one or two

(32:32):
of those a decade for the last few decades gave
us what we have now, which is, like I don't know,
probably a third of the league is not abiding by
these traditional, sort of dusty old quarterback standards. This natural
progression of quarterbacks would in anybody else's hands be a
typical straight sports story, Connor, but this was not in

(32:52):
anybody else's hands. This was in your hands. And you
are not a typical sports writer, and you got a
little weird with this one. And that's something I want
to get into. Explain to the listeners and to me, please,
what all this has to do with wizards in Puerto
Rico and elephants in Southeast Africa and dear mice from
ten thousand years ago. Yeah, So we were talking about

(33:16):
the idea of evolution and I sent an email to
Harvard's evolutionary theory department, and Dr Hopie Hochstra email me
back and she was like, Hey, I'd love to talk
to you about this, but someone from Harvard before that
called me and was like, let me just explain evolution
to you because I don't think you understand it. And

(33:36):
then like, before you talk to any of these really
smart people about this, let me just make you not
seem as much of an idiot. And it was very helpful.
And uh so when Dr Hochstra called I like googled
her really quickly and I was like, oh my god,
Like this woman is the science rock star. Right. She
basically reproved Darwin's evolutionary theory, but in a way that

(33:59):
we never or understood it before, that evolutionary change can
happen over the course of a light our lifetime. Like, no,
it doesn't take tens of thousands of years. It takes
like eight months, nine months, you know, or whatever. And
so they did an experiment with field mice where they
went to Nebraska. They bought a bunch of land off
of this dude that they met at a bar named
wild Bill, and yeah, because why why not? So they

(34:23):
put dark and light mice and all these different enclosures, right,
and so they had dark soil and light soil, and
what happens naturally is light mice on dark soil get
killed by predators at a much faster rate because they
can see them dark mice. And the same for the
other thing. But over like the course of one or

(34:43):
two generations, the gene in the mice got passed down
to make them more adaptable to their environments. So the
light mice became lighter, the dark mice became darker, and
over time they were able to survive. And there's a
lot of these really interesting studies that are going on
about evolutionary speed in science. So another one was the

(35:05):
elephants in Mozambique. Because of the civil war, they're being
hunted for their tusks, and and just like a matter
of like one generation, the rate of tusk less elephants
fell dramatically because they're adapting right there, Like if these
kids are born with tusks, they're screwed. And so these
elephants are just being born without tusks at a much

(35:25):
faster rate than before. Same with lizards in Puerto Rico,
right where urbanization cut into the jungle. So all of
a sudden they sort of weighed out there, and within
two generations their toe pads get bigger. They can climb buildings,
they can stick to metal like they've never known anything
other than trees before, and they become faster to avoid
cars and bikes and all this other stuff. And so

(35:48):
it's sort of like analogous to like the way that
we change as people. Animals are doing this, and so
it's this like cool moment where it's like, Okay, we're
all sort of this one big thing and no matter
what life throws at us can kind of find a
way to survive. Quarterbacks have evolved. Connor Or, I greatly
enjoyed listening to you and reading you grow your sportswriter,

(36:09):
Lizard to Pad. Thank you for doing this, Thank you
for having me. You can read connor or Sports Illustrated
cover story in the Throes of Change on SI dot com.
After the Break the Wild True Story of the College.
Kobe Bryant almost attended, but didn't. He's a columnist for

(36:40):
the Philadelphia in Choir and the author of the fabulous
new book Rise, Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality.
You've heard him on the Crossover with Howard Beck and
now he's here, Mike Selski. Welcome to Sports Illustrated Weekly. God,
it's great to be with you, my friends. Thanks for
doing this. Yes, congrats on the book. It's getting great reviews.
It's a subject that you and I know intimately we

(37:02):
have sort of a unique perspective on this. We're both
from Philadelphia, we're both roughly the same age as Kobe
would have been. Kobe went to a neighboring high school
not far from mind. I watched him demolish our high school,
which is why when we went off to college, I
was excited to think, oh, maybe, you know, maybe he
will also go to college and not just jump straight
to the pros. And I think Mike, in retrospect, looking back,

(37:23):
everybody just thinks, well, of course Kobe was always going
to jump right to the pros. But there was a
time when that was in question. And I want you
to set the stage for people. It's Kobe Bryant in
his senior year and he's deciding whether to go to
college or make the jump to the professional level. Explain
to everybody the hype surrounding him at the time. So
what was interesting about this guns and kind of taking

(37:44):
this trip down memory lane was how that height built
really gradually over the first three years that he was
in high school to the point where you look back
on and you're like, why aren't people in the media
and in the Philadelphia area making a bigger deal about
the fact that suburban city school has the son of

(38:07):
a former sixer on it and he's really good and
he is probably gonna turn out to be a Division
one recruit at a minimum. Right like freshman year sophomore
year for Kobe, there's very little written about him, or
even there's some buzz, but you really had to be
plugged in to hear it. And it's during that time
that he's really thinking, you know, I want to play

(38:28):
in the NBA, but college is probably where I'm gonna go.
And then junior his junior year, lower Marian really takes off.
They make the district championship game, they lose, but they
make it, and the team is better than it's ever been.
And so entering Kobe senior year, now he's a thing.
Now It's this been kind of gradual growing and building
and building, and entering his senior year, he's probably I

(38:52):
don't think it goes too far to say, like the
biggest basketball entity in the Philadelphia area, because the Sixers
are so bad. They are there at the bottom of
the Eastern Conference. They're god awful, and so it's Kobe
who's the star of the area. Yeah, and you're not
under selling that because Kobe goes as a high schooler

(39:13):
to practice with the Sixers, who are professional players, and
that's really when the hype and the buzz started to
ramp up. I mean again, I had seen him dunk on,
you know, my high school classmates, and that's one thing.
It's another thing when you hear that this kid from
Lower Marion who's jelly Bean Bryant's son, is now practicing
with the Sixers during his downtime. Tell us about what
some of those practices were like. Because Kobe didn't just

(39:35):
play well and acquit himself well, he basically dominated these guys.
Well he did and he didn't. All right, So there's
been a lot of myth making around the summer of
and a lot of it is true. You know, Kobe
is sixteen years old, about to turn seventeen, and he
is scrimmaging and practicing and working out with Jerry Stackhouse

(39:57):
and Rick Mulhorne and Vernon Maxwell and Sean Bradley and
Sharone right in a bunch of Division one players who
are in the Philadelphia area at that time. And you
have to remember that, you know, the year before, the
Sixers had taken Jerry Stackhouse with the number three overall
pick in the draft. Kobe Bryant from Great Stock. If
father Joe telling me Bryant played for the Sixers is
now assistant coach with was South Joe Bryant. In fact,

(40:20):
as I said, coming Brant practice with the Sixers from
time to time, play for him right out, and so
he's playing against these guys and some days he is
dominating them, and some days they're beating him too. And
it's a situation where because he's young and because he
goes on to be great, some of the stories that
have been told about that summer are a little bit

(40:41):
amped up, right, Like, Jerry Stackhouse did not talk to
me for this book. He turned down an interview request,
And part of the reason I suspect he did is
that he's tired of hearing these stories and tired of
having to talk about how Kobe Bryant demolished him and
dominated him during that summer, because while Kobe did outplay
him at times, Stack got the better of him too.

(41:04):
But the point is a sixteen seventeen year old kid
really shouldn't be holding his own against NBA players. There's
an anecdote in the book where Maurice Cheeks, who is
an assistant coach at the time, and Harold Katz, the
team's owner at the time, we're talking and Cats asks Cheeks,
who is this guy you know? Oh, he's Kobe Bryant.
He's he's from Lower Marian And Cat says, no, I
don't care where he lives. Where does he play like college?

(41:27):
Your team does he play for? And more Cheeks is like, no,
he plays at Lower Merion High School. And so that
adds to the lore of that summer, and to your point,
that's a turning point for Kobe because once he gets
through that summer, even as he's in the middle of
that summer, he realizes, you know what, I don't have
to go to college. I don't have to go to
Duke North Carolina anywhere else. I can make the jump

(41:51):
because I've gone toe to toe with all these guys
and held my own and I can do it at
the highest level. Yeah. Not surprisingly, Kobe pretty quickly realizes
that he could play at the professional level, which does
away with the idea of him going to college. But
there was for a time some thought that he would
still go to college. You mentioned Duke, you mentioned North Carolina,
and you mentioned somewhere else. Somewhere else is where you

(42:13):
and I come in, Mike, because the somewhere else was
Lasau University, a small liberal arts school in North Philadelphia,
where Joe Bryant, Kobe's dad, who played in the NBA,
went to college and at the time, jelly Bean Brian
as he's nicknamed, was an assistant coach for then head
coach Speedy Morris. The other reason why it's significant is
because both you and I went to Lasau University and

(42:36):
we're there at the time. I was a freshman, you
were a junior. And again the buzz on campus, the
whispers start to grow into full throated screams. What if
Kobe Bryant doesn't go to the NBA. What if he
doesn't go to Duke in North Carolina? What if he
comes to his father's alma mater and reboots a long
dormant men's basketball program, and how excited were we at

(42:57):
the time, and what did Lasa I'll do in taking
some very interesting steps to try to court Kobe Bryant. Well,
I mean, you have to put this in context, right,
guns Like LISAL had been a good, a really good
program for what it was in the MAC. It pretty
much could get to the tournament every year, had players
like Lionel Simmons and Doug Overton. And when I was
a kid and you were a kid, they were really

(43:18):
good teams locally. Then they moved to they make the
disastrous decision to go to the Midwestern Collegiate Conference. So
they're playing teams in the Midwest like Detroit Mercy and
all this. So the program is down. It's dormant, like
you said. So the idea, just the idea itself of
getting a player like Kobe Bryant was incredible to us
as students. They're like, oh my gosh, this could really happen.

(43:39):
His dad played here, coaches here, all that stuff. So
LISU is thinking the same thing. So it's athletic director
at the time, a god named Bob Mullen. The guy
had the idea of changing conferences and causing all this
problem decides he's gonna pull out all the stops to
try to get Kobe. He gives Joe Bryan a raise,
which is the first thing he does. But the more
interesting thing is that Kobe's second older sister, Shaya I

(44:04):
love the story, is a volleyball player at Lower Marion.
So one day John Kunzier, the women's volleyball coach at LASAL,
gets a knock on the door and it's from an
administrator at LASA who says, I have good news for you.
We came up with another scholarship for you in the program,
and we're giving it to an athlete named Shaya Bryant.

(44:25):
And the coach John comes literally goes, who is Shaya Briant?
I have never recruited her. I don't know who she is.
I haven't who is this? And LASAL gives Kobe's sister
a full athletic scholarship for volleyball in the hopes that
that will entice him and Joe to have Kobe come
to LASAL, and in retrospect, is just so desperate, kind

(44:48):
of small time in a way that you look back
on it and laugh. But by the same token, when
Kobe was a sophomore in high school and a junior,
he thought about it, you know, he thought about, Hey,
I can to play for my dad. We can get
all these other guys who I play with on the
a U circuit, like Rip Hamilton's and Sheen Holloway and
Larry Kentner and all these guys, and we'll do the

(45:10):
Fab five part two at LaSalle And then the summer
ninety five rolls around and he's like, yeah, the hell
with that. Yeah, And that's the end of that. How
was his sister as a volleyball player. I mean, obviously
the head volleyball coach was taken by surprise here. But
she did okay, right, she did okay in the one
year she was there. Shariah Kobe's the older of Kobe's

(45:31):
two sisters, was actually a much better volleyball player and
had a terrific career at Temple. Shaa was pretty good.
She stayed for one year at Lasau and then after
Kobe ended up with the Lakers, she and Joe and
Pam moved out to the West Coast to be with
Kobe and lived with him. So you're saying, in retrospect,
it seems sort of small time and desperate and we
laugh about it, but that's not all Lassau was willing

(45:52):
to do to get Kobe Bryant. There were these rumors
that Speedy Morris, who was sort of a LaSalle legend
and a Big five legend for people who aren't acquainted
with Big five basketball, it's a big deal in Philadelphia.
It includes Villanova st Joe, LaSalle, Temple, and Penn and
Speedy had fallen on some hard times. The program had
fallen on some hard times, but he was still an

(46:12):
institution at LASA University. But according to the reporting in
the book, you think they would have been willing to
throw him overboard and elevate Joe Bryant if Kobe would
have gone there, right, There was discussion of that yedge.
This was kind of Joe's grand plan. There's a column
written into your former paper, my current paper, the Phiotoelphia,
inquired by a legendary columnist, Bill Lyon. It basically says

(46:34):
LASA should stay by Speedy Morris, and Lasal does, and
so this grand plan is never hashed and kind of
by that time, Kobe and Joe already know Lsalian happening.
Kobe's going to the NBA. Sonny Vacaro is where it's at,
not Speedy Morris. Yeah, and you and I both love
Speedy Morris. But given the choice between Kobe and Speedy,
I would have gone Kobe too. But it doesn't work

(46:56):
out that way. Lasal does not get Kobe Bryant. He
decides to jump to the NBA. But still, despite making
that decision, Mike, there's still a chance he might stay
in Philadelphia. Right there. It's not a foregone conclusion that
he ends up being drafted by the Hornets and traded
to the Lakers. There was a time when we thought, hey,
he might have landed with the Sixers. Well, the Sixers

(47:16):
have the number one overall pick in the draft, and
there are discussions in their front office amongst their scouts
and player personnel people, do should we take Kobe? Yes? Yeah.
Tony de Leo is a longtime executive for the team
and scout was very much supportive of that idea. He
wanted them to take Kobe. There were a couple other
people in there who did, but you have to put

(47:37):
that into context. To number one, it's Allen Iverson who
they wanted. You can kind of hardly rip them for
wanting to take Allen Iverson with the first pick in
the nineteen NBA Draft. The Philadelphia seventy six is select
Allen Iverson from Georgetown University. It's so taking a school

(48:00):
player is perceived to be far riskier than taking a
college player, especially one that's built like Kobe. Right, Kevin
Garnett had come out the year before. He's seven feet tall,
he's muscular, he's built like a grown man. Kobe six
six and a guard, and there's just this risk associated
with taking a high school kid, so they play it

(48:21):
safe and take a I having said that, one of
Kobe's coaches at Lower Marion does in fact call up
the Sixers and get their general manager, Brad Greenberg on
the phone and say, look, I coach Kobe Bryant, the
smartest thing you could ever do would be to take
him with the number one overall pick. It'll be a
mistake if you don't. And it turns out the coach
was right, yeah, which is kind of whild because I

(48:42):
certainly thought that they should take Alan Iverson. It worked
out grade he was one of Philadelphia's all time favorite athletes,
and yet measuring career against career, it's still Kobe in
that scenario. But at least he didn't go to Villanova,
so that's all that matters. That's all that matters. And
you know, Lisa didn't get Kobe, but Lisa got the
two of us, so call it a push. You can
read him in the Philadelphia Inquire go get his excellent

(49:04):
new book, Rise Kobe Bryant in the Pursuit of Immortality.
Mike Selski, thank you for doing this. Thanks enjoyed it.
Sports Illustrator Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated and
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

(49:24):
you get your podcasts. And for more of Sports Illustrated
It's best stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This
episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Alex Kappelman
and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our
senior producer is Dan Bloom. Our executive producers are Scott
Brody and me John Gonzalez. Our theme song is by

(49:45):
Nolan Schneider. Thanks for listening, and if you've stuck around
this long, we leave you with this from high schooler
Kobe Bryant. Jamaine Griffin, the number whose news back to back.
Tampis what do you say? We want to stay Jammy
a kid. Don't you ever forget it? Thank you very much,
it's been a pleasure. You see when when is it?

(50:06):
Nineteen ninety six, ninety six, see you in a little bit.
Thank you very much. You're an ACES world up.