Kobe Bryant calibrated his life’s compass toward a hard-working and excuseless mentality — a legacy that will always remain.
News didn’t travel very fast in 2006. My family had dial-up internet and no cable TV. We sure as heck didn’t have League Pass. So I found out about Kobe Bryant’s legendary 81-point performance a day after the fact from my recreational league basketball coach, Jerry.
He gathered us around and told us that Kobe Bryant scored over 80 points in a single game. It had sounded like he said “eighteen,” and maybe my mind defaulted to that because it felt far more realistic. Someone else must have thought the same, because they questioned it.
“Eighteen?”
“No, over eighty,” Jerry responded.
Jerry went on to talk about the aggression Kobe played with, how he did what was needed to win in each and every game, and tried to inspire a group of young kids to play with that same fire. Jerry didn’t give it a cutesy name at the time, but he was talking about Mamba Mentality.
I had always been a bit timid in my playstyle as a junior basketball player, so having the willpower to score 18 points, let alone over 80, seemed otherworldly. When you hear a player came so close to breaking the long-standing 100-point game that Wilt Chamberlain put up, with no access to YouTube and highlights of the game and only hearing about it by word of mouth, it felt mystical and mythological.
But it felt so Kobe.
My fan view of him was a complicated one. I first fell in love with basketball when Shaquille O’Neal ended up with Dwyane Wade on the Miami Heat, so in some ways, I defaulted to picking the Shaq-Wade pairing over the Shaq-Kobe pairing. There was some strange resentment over Kobe because I felt as if his broken teammate relationship with Shaq impacted me personally.
Feeling angst towards him and not totally knowing why — again, so Kobe.
Over time, however, the resentment started blossoming into respect for the level at which he played the game. Kobe’s Lakers played plenty of games on ABC’s Sunday Showcase — the only NBA I could get my hands on with basic antenna TV — and it roped me in.
The critiques — Kobe’s a ball hog or he’s a bit too cocky — were a little misplaced. The reality was, he was just too dang good, elevating to the pantheon of the NBA at an almost unfair rate. He was so good that it made you mad trying to rationalize all of it.
As you dig deeper, though, you find out that Bryant earned his keep.
You hear stories of Kobe’s More Human Than Human work ethic and how it made him. How he was the first to show up, last to leave.
It feels impossible. It feels as if this mentality is reserved for a select few. Worldly thinking suggests that not everyone can achieve greatness, that’s what makes it unique and sought-after.
I think that’s the opposite of what Bryant felt. The Mamba Mentality wasn’t just for Kobe, it was a mindset that anyone could tap into. He unlocked a key to success and wanted to share that with as many people as possible, elevating those around him and those that watched him.
Unexpectedly, so Kobe.
Sunday, January 26, 2020. News travels fast. All of us heard about Kobe’s tragic death almost as soon as TMZ reported the news and spiraled through a whirlwind of emotions for several hours.
NBA games were already about to get going, but watching basketball, the game that Kobe has so much of an influence on and will have for years to come, just didn’t feel appropriate.
I immediately wondered if I had appreciated Kobe enough. Had those cliche critiques colored my view? How many years did we all collectively wish someone would knock his Lakers out of the playoffs, instead of appreciating the strive for perfection that he brought to the game?
Then I thought of the Mamba Challenges Kobe has sent to players over the last few seasons publicly on Twitter. One of your favorite players has probably received a Mamba Challenge.
Some of them may have achieved it, like Giannis Antetokounmpo winning MVP in 2019.
Appreciating that greatness is appreciating Kobe and the mentality he brought. He wanted us to hate him, because his message was bigger than basketball. Animosity fades, what Kobe was doing lasts forever.
We can carry Mamba Mentality on by appreciating players like Elena Delle Donne, Damian Lillard, Kawhi Leonard, LeBron James, and any player that displays it on and off the court.
Perhaps most crucially, we can carry on the legacy of Kobe by appreciating greatness in the little things of life. Greatness is all around us in and out of sports.
Greatness is stopping to help your neighbor:
Greatness is surrounding yourself with other great people and feeding into them financially and emotionally.
We can all carry on Bryant’s Mamba Mentality in whatever we do in our own life. Showing up ready to work is not reserved for the few. It is the few that grasp that mentality that ascend to the superior levels.
Kobe is gone from this world, but he leaves a legacy behind that is only just beginning to grow. To simply believe the greatness he showed us while he was here is transient is missing the point.
Mamba Mentality is forever.