In this Feb. 2, 2009 file photo Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant (24) reacts after a slam dunk shot in the first half of an NBA basketball game at Madison Square Garden in New York. Bryant had 61 points in the game. Bryant, the 18-time NBA All-Star who won five championships and became one of the greatest basketball players of his generation during a 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, died in a helicopter crash Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) APAP
Kobe Bryant’s legendary career helps shatter the belief that black excellence must emerge from black misery. For basketball in particular – a sport that has long been dominated by black men – there’s been a prevailing myth that the best players had rough childhoods. We are told that their years of deprivation made them hungrier and that their familiarity with rough streets made them tougher.
Except that’s not the typical NBA player’s story. A pair of researchers who looked into the background of every NBA player from 1994 to 2004 found that “most NBA players come from relatively advantaged social origins.” What’s more, “African Americans from disadvantaged social origins have lower odds of being in the NBA than African American and white players from relatively advantaged origins.”
“Oh,” you might say. “Well, that’s just the average NBA player.” But growing up in tough circumstances isn’t even the typical NBA legend’s story. It wasn’t, for example, Michael Jordan’s experience, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s or Magic Johnson’s. Granted, none of them grew up wealthy. Their parents held jobs like plant supervisor and bank teller, transit police officer and department store worker, plant worker and custodian. But nor did any of them have a childhood that could be called hardscrabble.
That said, nobody else in the NBA pantheon entered the world with the advantages Bryant had. He was born to an NBA player, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant. While not every NBA player was rolling in it in the late 70s, the life of the professional athlete was more comfortable than the lives of people tuning in to watch the games. When Joe Bryant’s days in the NBA were over, he played professionally in Europe. Thus, his son spent his formative years in Italy.
He didn’t need basketball to live a comfortable life. He’d already lived it. Basketball wasn’t his ticket to see the world. He’d already seen it. If he had an external motivation, it was to prove that a person ensconced in such comfort could play the game like his life depended on it.
Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, were two of nine people who died in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles County Sunday morning. He was 41.
I grew up rooting for the Showtime-era Lakers with my dad. I was so put out by Michael Jordan embarrassing my team in the ‘91 NBA Finals – not to mention him needlessly switching the ball from one hand to another during that unforgettable lay-up – that I could never join the Jordan fan club. But in 1996, when the Lakers got the rookie Kobe from Charlotte and veteran Shaquille O’Neal from Orlando, it was like “Return of the Jedi.” Or, given the Lakers’ history of dominance, maybe it was more like “The Empire Strikes Back.” Either way, they were destined to vanquish the league.
It helped that Kobe was playing for my favorite team, but that doesn’t fully explain why he was my favorite player. I identified with him because his social awkwardness and seeming loneliness in a crowd seemed similar to my own. And because he was consistently criticized as lacking “street cred,” something I’ve never had, never wanted and have always rejected as a measure of black authenticity.
A 2003 story at ESPN.com noted that Kobe, who’d won three championships in the country’s second-largest television market, had signed an endorsement deal with Nike that was $5 million smaller than the $90-million deal than LeBron James signed before playing a single professional game. “The biggest problem with Kobe’s street credibility is that he doesn’t come from the streets,” the head of a sports marketing firm said. “His father played in the NBA, he lived in Europe in an upper middle class home. Not too many athletes had that type of upbringing. So it’s hard for these kids to relate to him.”
That ESPN article was published less than a week after Bryant was arrested on the suspicion that he’d sexually assault an employee of a Vail, Colorado, hotel. Despicably, the article wonders whether street cred would finally settle upon Bryant with his arrest. As if assaulting a woman – or merely being suspected of it – is a way to move more shoes off the shelves.
I was with a good friend when news of Kobe’s arrest was announced, and whereas I struggled to believe he could be guilty, she said his squeaky clean image didn’t prove his innocence. And then she told me that she’d been sexually assaulted by a clean-cut-all-American-boy-next-door. That conversation changed the way I respond to allegations of sexual assault. I no longer say that the accused couldn’t have done it – even if I’m a fan. The charges against him were dismissed, but I won’t say that Kobe couldn’t have done it – even as I continued to root for the team I’d cheered since I was a child.
Better to be conflicted than naïve.
But long before his arrest forced me to question my reflexive responses to news of sexual assault, he had already forced me to question the myth that hardship is beneficial for black athletes (or anybody else) striving to be the best.
One needn’t have been hungry to be hungry.
