We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audience is coming from. To find out more or to opt-out, please read our. In addition, please read our , which has also been updated and became effective May 23rd, 2018. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Kobe turns the spotlight on himself in the first episode. He plays a jab-step jumper he missed over in the 2009 Western Conference Finals, while was open for three at the wing. He chastises himself but offers a method to the madness: on that particular play, he had an opportunity to demoralize — and by proxy, the — by going for the jugular. An enlightening moment in a fairly enlightening show. Kobe, after all, understands the game better than almost anyone on the planet. Bryant projects too much Machiavelli to imagine him enjoying anything for its own sake. Everything must be a means to an end. By signing up, you agree to our and European users agree to the data transfer policy. If Kobe has beef with this rendering, well, he should take it up with himself. He wrote his own story to the public, better than any politician could have. Kobe, the ruthless individualist with an all-consuming, almost murderous desire to win, wove a great tale. It was enough to make his fans overlook the alleged events of June 30, 2003, in Eagle, Colo. In the months and years to come, Bryant embraced the negativity greeting him around the NBA and reframed himself as the anti-hero of his own story. With LeBron James coming off a historic playoff performance that centered him alongside Michael Jordan in the greatest player of all time debate — a debate Kobe thought belonged to him — Kobe is spinning yarn again, on Twitter and in interviews. It was stagecraft that was too obvious to be effective. The interviews were conducted separately and condensed together, but I like to imagine a real roundtable, with Bryant cutting in with a triage on championships and his will to win like all day. They have simple minds. The show is not for simple-minded people, the people that do that sort of stuff. Social media no longer allows celebrities to weave their stories alone. The only tenable response is to play along, poke fun at the whole enterprise, or ignore it. Nowadays, a sense of humor can buy a mile in exchange for an inch. His is a self-serious style that worked better with his fingertips on a basketball, not resting on a keyboard. For a player who turned every perceived slight into an edge, levity might be impossible. Haters are his everything. Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports But why are there so many of them? And why the fervor? The goal, in some instances, is deeper: a treatise on the value of score-first players. Is Kobe Bryant, some snickering kid will tweet today, just with two jersey numbers? He is a symbol, a touchstone, a moral signifier. His value answers a question that in our changing times not only applies to basketball but to life. Do the Kobes of the world still win? And if so, is today their reckoning day?
