He used the biggest defeat of his career for motivation and to remind himself how defeat feels. He didn’t fear failure. He immersed himself in it.
Kurt Bardella| Opinion columnist
I'm like many people who grew up in Southern California, in that no athlete has had more of an impact on my life than Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant. It’s unfathomable that someone who was seemingly indestructiblecould be taken from us in such a tragic and abrupt way.
We all know the accolades that have made Kobe the closest thing to Michael Jordan that we have ever seen: Five NBA championships, two NBA Finals MVP, 18 consecutive All-Star game appearances, two-time NBA scoring champion, two-time Olympic gold medal winner, an 81-point gameand his 60-point career finale.
But as we begin to memorialize the greatness of the “Black Mamba,” who was poised to be a part of the NBA Hall of Fame'sClass of 2020, the things I remember most about Kobe were the ways he responded to adversity and failure. Kobe hated to lose more than he loved to win. Every triumph was born from a kernel of defeat.
He turned nightmares into a dreams
In 1997, 18-year-old Kobe Bryant had the ball in his hands in the final moments of a must-win playoff game against the Utah Jazz. He shot with the confidence we have all come to know, but on this night, instead of game-winning glory, we got four air balls andthe Lakers lost in overtime 98-93.
It was a“turning point” for Kobe, whowould spend the entire offseason working on his shot “until the sun came up.”
A moment like this is something every kid visualizes while playing basketball in thedriveway. The fantasy never culminates with a lossbut with buzzer-beating victory. Yetfor Kobe, that dream scenario turned into the ultimate nightmare.
We’ve seen many athletes miss their moment of glory, never to get back to the big stage again. Kobe would go on to have 36 game-winning shots in his 20-year career, the last, fittingly enough, coming in his career finale against the Utah Jazz.
The storybook year of Kobe’s post-Shaq era was supposed to be 2008. He wonhis first and only regular-season MVP award and guided the Lakers to their first NBA Finals appearance post-Shaq. Fittingly, it was against their archrival, the Boston Celtics. In the pivotal game of the series, the Lakers blew a 24-point lead, eventually falling to the Celtics 97-91. The Lakers would lose the series in six games.
Following the excruciating loss, a chorus of questions began to wash over Kobe. Could he win a championship without Shaq? Would he fall short of his pursuit of MJ’s sixNBA championships? Was he too selfish of a player to elevate his team to championship success?
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Kobe’s legacy was being written in the wake of this agonizing defeat. Instead of trying to forge and move on,Kobe tortured himself. As the Celtics won the series-clincher, by 39 points, the arena started playing Journey’s anthem “Don’t Stop Believing” to celebrate the ending of a four-decade NBA championship drought.
“I hated that song for two years. I listened to that song every day just to remind me of that feeling,” Kobe revealed in 2015.
For every triumph, a price
He used the biggest defeat of his career as fuel to motivate him and to remind him of what defeat feels like. He didn’t fear failure. He immersed himself in it. Kobe would lead the Lakers to back-to-back NBA championships, his fourth and fifthtitles, the latter coming in an epic seven-game series against the Celtics.
Few athletes have ever generated the amount of emotion, conflictand debate that has surrounded Kobe Bryant’s every move as an NBA player. To many, they are distractions or noise. Kobe, however, incorporated the controversy and criticisms into his on-court Black Mambapersona. “Always Love the Hate” was even the theme of Kobe’s final Nike ad campaign.
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The weight of expectations can be an inescapable burden to carry. Kobe taught us that for every triumph, there comes a price. He is the fourth highestscorer in NBA historyandalso holds the record for the most missed shots. But it was in those misses that Kobe learned the lessons he would need to make the next shot he took.
That’s what I think about when I remember what Kobe Bryant meant to the world. To approach life with fearlessness. To embrace adversity. To never let the noise deter you and to use it as fuel for the journey. To never be afraid to seize the moment and take the big shot.
Kurt Bardella is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and a "Morning Joe" contributor. Follow him on Twitter: @kurtbardella
