In “The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality, ”Mike Sielski offers readers a detailed and nuanced backstory of the late basketball star’s life.
Behind every sports legend is the story of what it took to achieve that greatness. For the late Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA’s most renowned players, that story took place largely in a high school outside of Philadelphia. Sports columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer Mike Sielski chronicles Bryant’s thrilling evolution from a young prodigy to a basketball star in his book, “The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality.”
Sielski looks back at the dedication that Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26, 2020, exhibited even as a young person. He seemed destined to be an elite player. He was related to two basketball aces: His maternal uncle John Arthur “Chubby” Cox briefly played in the NBA, as did his father, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, who bounced between teams in the 1970s and ’80s before ultimately taking his talents to Europe.
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The Bryant family lived in Italy for eight years, moving there when Kobe was only 6 years old, and already he showed promise within his father’s sport. “Word was that God or genetics or a combination of those two powerful forces had bestowed a precious gift upon Joe Bryant’s only son” Sielski writes, and early on, that talent was recognized and nurtured.
The family moved back to the United States in the early ’90s when their son was in eighth grade, which proved to be a culture shock for him. Although he hadn’t forgotten how to speak English, he didn’t possess the all-too-important vocabulary of pop culture, having missed out on the American childhood of his peers. To them, he seemed foreign and his intensity about basketball was intimidating. Fortunately he didn’t face much racial discrimination at the largely white Lower Merion; his status as an athlete – and a remarkably good one – worked in his favor. Still, he simply wasn’t like everyone else.
That difference initially brought loneliness, but Bryant used the alone time to envision the future he wanted: first becoming a McDonald’s All-American player, a game reserved for the best high school basketball players, and then getting good enough to head straight to the NBA after high school. With these goals in mind, he used every free moment to practice. He studied videotapes of his basketball idols playing the game. He grabbed at any nugget of wisdom anyone was willing to offer in case it could teach him how to sharpen his skills. Everything revolved around basketball, and his laser focus quickly began to pay dividends as he improved at a staggering rate.
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Having a player of his caliber was a benefit to Lower Merion. Bryant's star factor reinvigorated the sleepy sports culture at the high school and upped the bar for every other player on the team. With his prowess and leadership, Lower Merion won its first state championship in over 50 years in 1996. “He taught us how to win, ” says coach Gregg Downer, who worked with Bryant from 1992-96. The school was good for Bryant, too, dedicating resources to his progress and providing much-needed structure, which helped him to succeed academically, athletically, and socially.
Bryant’s early story, respectfully and honestly told in “The Rise, ” will be fascinating for fans of the late star, but it also proves to be an extraordinary case study in what’s possible for young people when they have the right blend of talent, opportunity, direction, and focus. Over the years, many have commented on Bryant’s privileged upbringing, referring mainly to his family’s wealth. In reality, as Sielski’s book demonstrates, the whole support system around him as a young man, including his tight-knit family and the attentive faculty and staff at Lower Merion, allowed him to flourish.
“The Rise” is a kind of time machine, permitting readers to see a teenaged Bryant play basketball when it wasn’t yet certain who he would become or what impact he would have. Sielski uses previously untouched tapes and transcripts from interviews with Bryant in the late ’90s and numerous new interviews with people who knew him, to tell a tale that is by turns a gripping sports story and a touching portrait of Bryant’s early life. Sielski has written a fitting tribute to a legend who was lost too soon.
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Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
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We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
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Your subscription to The Christian Science Monitor has expired. You can renew your subscription or continue to use the site without a subscription.Editor’s Note: This article was published shortly after the death of Kobe Bryant. We’ve decided to re-run it since today marks the anniversary of his death.
Global Sign, Shared Meaning? Kobe Bryant's Life And Its Representation From The Usa To France
The sudden loss of NBA legend Kobe Bryant is impossible to grasp. When the news came rolling out on Sunday, it left many of us here in disbelief. We all thought, or at least prayed, it wasn’t true— because how could it be true? Not, long after, it became apparent that the Greatest Laker had indeed died.
If there’s one thing many of our writers here at Goomba Stomp love more than discussing movies, playing video games, or binge-watching TV shows, it’s basketball— so much so, we’ve flirted with the idea of launching a sister site dedicated to the game and the culture surrounding it. And for many of us, Kobe Bean Bryant was, is, and forever will be, a hero.
Kobe Bryant isn’t just a legend—he seemed larger than life, and an entire generation of players grew up idolizing Kobe and mimicking both his style on the court and his Mamba Mentality. It’s impossible to watch an NBA game today and not see Bryant’s influence on today’s superstars. From Kyrie Irving to DeMar DeRozan and everyone in between, a bit of Kobe lives on.
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Kobe’s story is the stuff of legends: The man won five NBA championships; was named most valuable player during a regular season; earned two Finals MVPs; appeared in 18 All-Star games and is tied for first in career All-NBA selections, with 15. When combining his regular and postseason totals, Bryant scored 39, 283 points, ranking fourth in history and one can only wonder what that total would be had it not been for the two NBA Lockout years and the injuries that plagued him throughout his career. The man scored 40-plus points in a game 122 times, 50-plus points in a game 25 times, and Bryant scored 60-plus points in a game six times, including his iconic 81-point game, notching the second-highest single-game total ever! He’s the only player in NBA history with two different jersey numbers retired by the same team— playing 20 seasons for the Lakers, the second-longest tenure in NBA history for a one-team player. Amidst his high-flying drives to the net and his spectacular 360-degree dunks or his crunch-time three-point daggers, Kobe could also play defense— tied for second in career All-Defensive selections, with 12, and tied for first with nine first-team All-Defensive nods. On the court, the man could do it all.
Despite not one of us ever meeting Kobe in real life, the news of his tragic death has touched us deeply and it’s easy to understand why. You see,
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