Kobe Bryant and the Culture of Accomplishment
I would like to start by saying that, as a lifelong basketball fan, the recent passing of Kobe Bryant deeply saddened me.
I had just sat down in my living room to do some work when my teammate shouted the news from the kitchen. I didn’t believe it, I wanted to believe it was just a fake article circulated in bad-taste, but it wasn’t so. I sat in shock for the next couple of minutes before turning on the news coverage of his passing.
The news had just broken on ESPN, so there weren’t many facts to report on yet. Given the lack of information, the first thing I noticed was that there was a lot of focus on what Kobe had done on the basketball court. In a sense, rightly so. Kobe Bryant was by far one of the most accomplished basketball players ever. But the timing of it all seemed odd.
As soon as the news of his death broke, there was all this focus on what he had done. It seemed to put his value on his accolades. Almost as if the sadness of his passing rested in how great of an athlete he was. It seemed to really bypass Kobe the man. It almost ignored the fact that simply because Kobe was a unique, unrepeatable human person that his passing was tragic.
Then ESPN began to bring on the people who followed Kobe intimately throughout his long career. One after another, each person shared about the type of man Kobe was. About how he inspired an entire generation, how he took others under his wing, and how he loved.
One particularly poignant moment was when reporter Rachel Nichols discussed how Kobe personally cared for her. As a female reporter in the 90’s, she was used to most athletes not giving her the time of day. However, she told the story of how she asked Kobe a question in the locker room and he sat down with her and gave her a solid 15 minutes of his time.
The mood shifted most notably when reporter Jay Williams said, “Everyone goes to talking about his accolades, his accomplishments, his Mamba Mentality; but this was a human being. He was a great father, husband, and person.”
At the beginning of the newscast, the narrative was much like what our culture promotes. The more you do the better you are. Our culture, for better or worse, has an unspoken rule that your worth is based on what you make of yourself. It’s a mindset that has especially creeped into sports and how we assess athletes.
Then, when the person was incorporated and all these reporters were interviewed, the narrative changed. Naturally, these people couldn’t help but reflect on Kobe the man, not Kobe the basketball player. Deep down, in the face of this tragedy, these people knew that the worth of this man went beyond what he did – it was in who he was.
These days after Kobe’s passing has led to a lot of reflection for me. It’s still hard for me to really believe all of this is real. I continue to process the immense hole the absence of this man has left in so many lives.
One thing I’ve particularly noticed in these reflections is the value of each human person. The life of each and every human person on this earth is a gift and precious. Not because of what you do, what you have done, or what you one day might do. We are all valuable because we are a unique, unrepeatable child of God, made in his image and likeness.
Just like there will never be another Kobe Bryant, never before and never again will there be another you.
The culture may say otherwise. It may focus on how much somebody produces, somebody’s track record, or how somebody stacks up to somebody else. It may look at somebody and say they have worth because of what they did. But we have the power to create a culture that doesn’t just look at “somebody” but sees some one. That sees each and every human person as someone who is valuable and worthy of love – regardless of circumstance.
As an avid basketball fan, I want to thank Kobe for the joy and dedication that he poured into the game. But in these days that have passed, hearing story after story about his character, I’ve also learned to be thankful for the kind of man he was.
More than just a basketball legend, he was a loving father. More than that even, he was a unique human person and his presence will be deeply missed because of that.
“The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being.” – Pope John Paul II
