Speaker 1: Diversion podcasts. I know that the media I probably nobody.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna make my own because I want to
Speaker 1: go to the sound board in the sound I want
Speaker 1: to go to hine. What I was on was no
Speaker 1: question that I'm making my own. To sty know, it
Speaker 1: a right good job to print something. It's just good job.
Speaker 1: Probo believe that they print, happy to do what they
Speaker 1: happen to do. On a hot Monday afternoon last August,
Speaker 1: I went back to a place that is very special
Speaker 1: to me. In fact act, it's the place where I
Speaker 1: first heard the name Kobe Bryant. So I've just parked
Speaker 1: here at my alma mater, LSU University, and I'm heading
Speaker 1: to the Connelly Library so I can find the very
Speaker 1: first article I ever wrote about Kobe Bryant. I graduated
Speaker 1: from Lasal. It's a private Catholic university in Philadelphia, a
Speaker 1: mid size university with about four thousand undergraduates. And I
Speaker 1: was kind of meant to go there anything. After all,
Speaker 1: my father went to Lasal and his brother went to Lasal,
Speaker 1: and my mom's brother went to Lasal, and my younger
Speaker 1: sister went to Lasal. And while I was there, I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of my time in a tiny, cramped
Speaker 1: office in the basement of the student union building, the
Speaker 1: headquarters of the university student newspaper, The Collegiate. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many times I've come through this door left
Speaker 1: the store late at night, back when I was writing
Speaker 1: for and editing the student paper. Just feel so weird,
Speaker 1: like all this happened yesterday, or it all happened a
Speaker 1: quarter century ago, A kind of violing back and forth
Speaker 1: between those two feelings. Plus, it's always a little strange
Speaker 1: to come back here. In some ways, it feels like
Speaker 1: I haven't graduated. Everything kind of comes rushing back. The
Speaker 1: campus doesn't look that different from when I was here
Speaker 1: in the early to mid nineties, and some of the
Speaker 1: buildings and rooms even smell the same. My freshman year
Speaker 1: at LaSalle began in the fall of another person's tenure
Speaker 1: at the school began that year too, Joe Bryant's Kobe's dad,
Speaker 1: Speedy Morris, La Salle's men's basketball coach, had hired Joe
Speaker 1: as an assistant, and one of the intended by products
Speaker 1: of that move was the belief that Kobe would decide
Speaker 1: to play college ball there. Actually, for those of us
Speaker 1: who were connected to Lasal. It wasn't really belief. It
Speaker 1: was hope. Who was this kid playing at Lower Marian?
Speaker 1: Was he that good? Was he as good as his
Speaker 1: dad had been when Joe played for LaSalle? Was even better?
Speaker 1: So yes, I remember the first time I wrote about Kobe.
Speaker 1: I just don't remember what I wrote. I'm not really
Speaker 1: looking forward to seeing this article. If there's one thing
Speaker 1: that I think all writers hate, it's going back and
Speaker 1: looking at their pieces or stories or whatever they wrote
Speaker 1: when they were young. I know for me, I was
Speaker 1: trying so hard to find my voice that what I
Speaker 1: wrote was really stilted and kind of old fashioned in
Speaker 1: a way. So I'm not looking forward at all to
Speaker 1: seeing what I actually wrote about him. I didn't know
Speaker 1: much about Kobe then, his background, his personality. I just
Speaker 1: knew he was this tremendous high school basketball player who
Speaker 1: might end up being a tremendous college basketball player at
Speaker 1: my college. To find the article, I got in touch
Speaker 1: with Carol Brigham, whose official title at LaSalle is Associate
Speaker 1: Dean of Operations and Collections Management, which means he's in
Speaker 1: charge of a lot of the archival material at the
Speaker 1: Connelly Library, which means she's in charge of all the
Speaker 1: back copies of the Collegiate. She was waiting for me
Speaker 1: when I got to the library and went through the
Speaker 1: front turnstyle. I'm sorry you, Mike, I am, and then
Speaker 1: I'll say hi, I'm caring car with the you can't
Speaker 1: tell Vernice to see you. Thanks for doing this problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm here to check out the Collegian. You know
Speaker 1: what it is to your hair is very much Were
Speaker 1: you here when I was a student here? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: okay back in the nice yes, yes, yes, I should
Speaker 1: have warned you. That's okay. Am. I allowed to ask him?
Speaker 1: Why sure? Um? So an in January? That vie um
Speaker 1: and that also, which is why A here today right
Speaker 1: come out later this year, and as part of it,
Speaker 1: one of the episodes delving into the possibility to Coobe
Speaker 1: would have come here and the fact that I was
Speaker 1: a student in right third with Collegian at the time,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to take up I know this is
Speaker 1: the first article. Yeah, so in front of me, I
Speaker 1: have about eighteen issues of the Collegian from my junior year,
Speaker 1: and I've got to find the article that I wrote
Speaker 1: about Toby. So let's see the saying it and here
Speaker 1: it is. I found it Wednesday, December and guess what
Speaker 1: it is? Every bit as bad as I feared it
Speaker 1: would be. I'm Mike Sealskip and from Diversion Podcasts, this
Speaker 1: is I am cooked the White wat Stein, Create myself,
Speaker 1: exact signs, Create yourself, say nice, go on, create yourself.
Speaker 1: You gotta learn of friendly great minds that we gained
Speaker 1: line selling that's getting signed. Episode five. We need a hero.
Speaker 1: Growing up just outside Philadelphia, I got turned onto Big
Speaker 1: Five Basketball at an early age. The Big Five is
Speaker 1: an informal association of college teams from Philly, some of
Speaker 1: the oldest and most successful men's basketball programs in the country.
Speaker 1: Villanova won the national championship just before I turned ten.
Speaker 1: I can remember watching that incredible upset of Patrick Ewing
Speaker 1: and the Georgetown Hoyas at home with my mom while
Speaker 1: my dad was out of town for work. Penn was
Speaker 1: the Ivy League school that held its own and then some. St.
Speaker 1: Joe's always had this kind of underdog status, fit for
Speaker 1: its motto the Hawks Will Never Die. Temple had its
Speaker 1: wild eyed genius coach John Cheney. He had his team's
Speaker 1: played this weird matchup zone defense that nobody could figure out.
Speaker 1: But of course my team was LaSalle. My family had
Speaker 1: all those connections to the school, and I'd watched the
Speaker 1: Explorers games with my dad, including a few with the Pialester,
Speaker 1: which we talked about previously in this series. Plus LaSalle
Speaker 1: I thought was the best team in the Big Five
Speaker 1: to watch. The school had won a national championship in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four and had been great in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties when my dad was a student there. It
Speaker 1: would traditionally recruit and get one or more of the
Speaker 1: best players in the city, if not the best, and
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen eighties, the Explorers coach Speedy Morris
Speaker 1: continued that tradition. Speedy is still around, but he's experienced
Speaker 1: some health problems in the last few years, including Parkinson's disease.
Speaker 1: So I spoke to his oldest son, Keith, who played
Speaker 1: for him at LaSalle and became a high school coach himself.
Speaker 1: When you think of the Big Five, what comes to
Speaker 1: mind tremendous history, worse didn't matter if you were University
Speaker 1: of Penn having a tough season. We'll say having a
Speaker 1: tough season, anybody could beat anybody. Any given night, sadness
Speaker 1: a little bit, and then it's not what it was.
Speaker 1: TV money, conference money obviously ended those palestrial doubleheaders, and
Speaker 1: you know, you get it. There's nothing like it in
Speaker 1: the country. We all know that. And some great teams,
Speaker 1: great players, great coaches, and just it's silly Philly. I
Speaker 1: missed the old days with it, to be honest. Speedy
Speaker 1: is a Philadelphia institution himself. Grew up in the city,
Speaker 1: got his first coaching job in a C Y O league,
Speaker 1: was a great high school coach here for years. One
Speaker 1: writer in town said that Speedy was as much a
Speaker 1: part of the fabric of Philadelphia as Chiefe steaks, dripping
Speaker 1: adjecta and soft pretzels flavored with bus exhaust. What a
Speaker 1: great line. During games and practices, he had a volcanic temper.
Speaker 1: He'd scream at his players, ball up his sport code
Speaker 1: and chucking in the stands, roll up a game program
Speaker 1: into a baton and smack a kid in the back
Speaker 1: of the head room. He could be tough to play for.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an idea of what I mean. Andrew
Speaker 1: Trella grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and was a year
Speaker 1: behind me. At LA South. His dad went there too,
Speaker 1: just like mine. Andrew was six ft four, a really
Speaker 1: good basketball player, used to destroy me and my team
Speaker 1: and intermurals. These days, he lives and works just outside
Speaker 1: Philly and coaches bass the ball at his local high school.
Speaker 1: His sophomore year at LASAL, he tried to make the
Speaker 1: team as a non scholarship player, a walk on, which
Speaker 1: meant he got an up close look at Speedy's approach.
Speaker 1: Here's Andrew. The one thing that really stuck out to me,
Speaker 1: and it actually has affected me a little bit. I
Speaker 1: think in the way I coach my kids at high school.
Speaker 1: At the high school level, is he I don't want
Speaker 1: a bad mouthing, but boy, he would curse up a storm.
Speaker 1: He would just dress kids down and just you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe his mouth. I was like, wow, he's
Speaker 1: really ripping guys a new one here. So he didn't
Speaker 1: take any nonsense, and I respect that, but I certainly
Speaker 1: have a more kind of gentler approach and maybe less
Speaker 1: profane approach to coaching than he did. But it was
Speaker 1: like a mile a minute he was he was slaying
Speaker 1: into people and it wasn't you know, PG rated for
Speaker 1: him It was just kind of a constant riding and ride,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is kind of uncomfortable. Not
Speaker 1: everybody loved the way Speedy went about things, but man
Speaker 1: could he coach offense. When he took over Asal's men's
Speaker 1: program in the n c a A had just added
Speaker 1: the three point shot to college basketball. It didn't take
Speaker 1: him long to fall in love with it, and he
Speaker 1: got guys who could shoot. Tim Legler dug over to
Speaker 1: Randy Woods and the best of the bunch, the l Train.
Speaker 1: Lionel Simmons, during the sideline report from Philly broadcaster Mark
Speaker 1: zoom Off, explains exactly how LaSalle's offense could easily score
Speaker 1: inside or kick it out to a three point sniper
Speaker 1: like Tim Legler and destroy you from left marks. Team
Speaker 1: failed to win a single Big Five game last year,
Speaker 1: as Big Five Player of the Year had posted decided
Speaker 1: that weight hy dramatic dial Lionel let Let's dottle a
Speaker 1: perfect record so far. Clearly the Explorers are back if
Speaker 1: that's the state. But those days were fading away when
Speaker 1: Kobe was making his rise through the high school ranks.
Speaker 1: It would have been a miracle for LaSalle to win
Speaker 1: a national championship or even sniff one. The school didn't
Speaker 1: spend much money on its basketball program, didn't even have
Speaker 1: an on campus arena. The team played all its home
Speaker 1: games at the Palestra or the Philadelphia Civic Center, twenty
Speaker 1: minutes away from campus. But somehow the Explorers were contender
Speaker 1: to win their conference every year, make the n c
Speaker 1: A tournament, and earned some city bragging rights. Here's Keith
Speaker 1: Morris again explaining how his dad tried to keep Lasale competitive.
Speaker 1: Get those solid Philly players one or two a year
Speaker 1: if you can, and build around it. Was his philosophy,
Speaker 1: get them here, and I think one of his greatest
Speaker 1: attributes was making it known and making guys feel like
Speaker 1: I'm here for you off the court as well as
Speaker 1: on the court. There was a family atmosphere for sure.
Speaker 1: My mother, Mom Morris, as many of them call her,
Speaker 1: cook many a spaghetti, lasagna, meatball dinner for a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys. So the family atmosphere, and that I
Speaker 1: think enabled him to coach them hard. The kids knew
Speaker 1: he had their back off of the court, that he
Speaker 1: was more than just their coach, he was a father figure. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is Mike Sealsky, host and writer of I Am Kobe.
Speaker 1: This podcast project came out of my work on a
Speaker 1: related book called The Rise Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit
Speaker 1: of Immortality. If you want to explore other parts of
Speaker 1: Kobe's story, check out The Rise. It's not just a
Speaker 1: book version of the podcast. I dive deeper into some
Speaker 1: of the topics covered in this series, and even some
Speaker 1: that we don't cover at all. Kobe's upbringing, his family,
Speaker 1: his identity, his effect on his friends and teammates, his
Speaker 1: journey into the NBA, and his earliest days with the Lakers.
Speaker 1: The Rise Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality is
Speaker 1: out now. Just head over to the Rise of Kobe
Speaker 1: book dot com and you can buy it from any
Speaker 1: of your favorite retailers. That's The Rise of Kobe Book
Speaker 1: dot Com. Thanks. The first look that Speedy and Keith
Speaker 1: Morris got at Kobe was during a Summer League game,
Speaker 1: right around the same time that Speedy hired Joe Bryant
Speaker 1: as an assistant coach. Keith was impressed with the kid.
Speaker 1: Kobe was raw in that game as a freshman, but
Speaker 1: you could tell very very talented, and what nobody realized
Speaker 1: was that kids. Work ethic was just off the charts,
Speaker 1: and each and every year after he's getting better and better,
Speaker 1: to the point where my dad's LaSalle can't in the summer.
Speaker 1: You know, there are ages eight through seventeen, so you know,
Speaker 1: when I attended that camp, there were actually juniors heading
Speaker 1: into their senior year in high school that attended it.
Speaker 1: There were some decent players that came. Kobe I think
Speaker 1: stopped coming after maybe tenth grade, because he just started
Speaker 1: he culminated the camp. He was just he became that good.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for people, especially people around LaSalle,
Speaker 1: to start to think that maybe, just maybe Kobe would
Speaker 1: turn out to be good enough to play for his
Speaker 1: dad in college someday. Kobe played a ton of pickup
Speaker 1: games in Lasal's little sweat box of a practice gym.
Speaker 1: Andrew Trella got to go up against him a few times,
Speaker 1: and he could see how much better Kobe was than
Speaker 1: anybody else in that gym. He had moves. I would
Speaker 1: go back to the dorm after plane and see that.
Speaker 1: My body's like, I don't know how he gets around
Speaker 1: the court so quickly. I don't know if he's traveling,
Speaker 1: but he kind of had a game that I was like,
Speaker 1: it seemed like it was already NBA ready, and maybe
Speaker 1: he was traveling. Maybe he just had that good footwork
Speaker 1: that I didn't know how to get in front of him.
Speaker 1: But he was really adept at getting around the floor,
Speaker 1: maximizing the two steps that you get college basketball. I guess,
Speaker 1: super competitive kid. The way he got around the floor,
Speaker 1: that's what I really remember. It's kind of it was
Speaker 1: very effortless, how he could get around the floor. You
Speaker 1: think he might come to a sale if if Oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I definitely did so. And this was a running in
Speaker 1: conversation I had with my buddies who I lived with,
Speaker 1: was his dad's here he could be this second coming
Speaker 1: of line one really turned the program around. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of talk at that time. I
Speaker 1: believe it was Duke was mentioned pretty heavily. I remember
Speaker 1: getting a lot about Duke um and then obviously he
Speaker 1: heard the whispers about the NBA. But I guess I
Speaker 1: just had never been around with someone who made that
Speaker 1: kind of jump to the n B A And you know,
Speaker 1: he was still what at six six six seven, he
Speaker 1: wasn't physically he hadn't failed out completely, So it seemed
Speaker 1: to me, like, you know, he would be an awesome
Speaker 1: college player for a couple of years, and the fact
Speaker 1: that his dad was on campus and helping out with coach,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, this seems like a great fit.
Speaker 1: I certainly hoped and thought that, you know, he would
Speaker 1: be kind of the next guy to turn the program around.
Speaker 1: So because he could have walked in and the ball
Speaker 1: was his, Andrew was onto something back then. Early in
Speaker 1: his high school career, Kobe was actually open to the
Speaker 1: idea of going to a sound He was genuinely considering
Speaker 1: it because he knew he would be a superstar if
Speaker 1: he went there. But I thought that was fund probably
Speaker 1: be a nice right, not a couple of years, and
Speaker 1: right sounded great to us. Kobe could come to Lassal,
Speaker 1: stay for a year or two and dominate. We'd have
Speaker 1: been cool with that. Heck, we needed him to do that.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the programs athletic director Bob Mullen, LaSalle had
Speaker 1: just changed conferences, moving to the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, which
Speaker 1: included schools like Detroit Mercy and Illinois Chicago. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be an upgrade, better competition, more money, but
Speaker 1: it was a ridiculous decision. No one from the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: area wanted to watch basketball games against those schools, And
Speaker 1: you could be darn sure no Philly area players wanted
Speaker 1: to go to Lasal to play against those schools. I
Speaker 1: mean it, I was there. Nobody showed up sitting courtside
Speaker 1: at the Civic Center for a Lasau game. It was
Speaker 1: like being at the bottom of the Grand Can. One night,
Speaker 1: I was sitting courtside on press row and the Civic
Speaker 1: Center was practically empty, and a sportswriter leaned over to
Speaker 1: me and said, you know, if you put everybody in
Speaker 1: this building on the court, no one would get called
Speaker 1: for three seconds. It was a great line. It's stung,
Speaker 1: but he was right. Competitive ball game, turning it inside
Speaker 1: out as always be winning. That clip of a loss
Speaker 1: from a matchup between LaSalle and Temple was just one
Speaker 1: of many examples of the Explorers getting trounced in that era.
Speaker 1: If Lasal basketball was going to have any kind of renaissance,
Speaker 1: it needed Kobe bad and everyone knew it. So Bob Mallen,
Speaker 1: the a D pulled out all the stops. He gave
Speaker 1: Joe a raise, and he arranged for Kobe's older sister, Shia,
Speaker 1: who played volleyball at Lower Merion to get a full
Speaker 1: athletic scholarship to less out, even though the women's volleyball
Speaker 1: coach never even met her, let alone recruited her. Through
Speaker 1: all that, though, Kobe was pretty ambivalent about the idea
Speaker 1: of becoming an explorer. For example, one of his pickup
Speaker 1: partners at LaSalle was Larry Kentner, a six ft ten
Speaker 1: stud at Roman Catholic High School, a Philly basketball powerhouse.
Speaker 1: Kenner was a year ahead of Kobe in school, and
Speaker 1: he was thinking about going to Losal himself. Kobe told
Speaker 1: his friend Jeremy Treatment that Kentner basically gave him an ultimatum,
Speaker 1: if you go Ala each other. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Kobe,
Speaker 1: I'll commit to that. I have no clue what I'm doing. U. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was fun about goal there to play there. I
Speaker 1: thought I could play there. I never really were out
Speaker 1: there like it didn't man, that's all. Larry said, I'm
Speaker 1: there tomorrow. And Larry Kenner wasn't the only big time
Speaker 1: recruit who was considering the Sound just because of Kobe.
Speaker 1: I got another one for you, Corey Benjamin. Corey Benjamin
Speaker 1: was a six ft six shooting guard from Compton, California.
Speaker 1: Kobe met him on the AUTH circuit. He'd go on
Speaker 1: to be a first round draft pick and play three
Speaker 1: plus seasons in the NBA. He said, going to I'm
Speaker 1: going to because you know, you can't cout happen a
Speaker 1: good time of hanging out. It started that he played
Speaker 1: in comin with each other very well, going to the South.
Speaker 1: I'm going all the way out there and I'm going
Speaker 1: that's for you. I mean, what players standpoint. Then they're
Speaker 1: saying if you college, If you do go to college,
Speaker 1: I'm coming rich girl, I'm saying, but they know. I mean,
Speaker 1: if they were my things, she may be taking man
Speaker 1: and it would be a nice plot. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you might want to go to college and
Speaker 1: having become a good time. So you never know what
Speaker 1: to happen. So even in retrospect, it sounds too good
Speaker 1: to be true. Kobe Bryant, Larry Kentner, Corey Benjamin All
Speaker 1: a little old lassal well, guess what it was too
Speaker 1: good to be true? Kentner picked you Mass. Benjamin ended
Speaker 1: up going to Oregon State. As for Kobe, he was
Speaker 1: keeping most of these plans to himself and even though
Speaker 1: his dad was in a tough spot being an assistant
Speaker 1: coach and everything. He and Kobe were kind of stringing
Speaker 1: Speedy Morris along. Here's the other thing. Jeremy Treatment was
Speaker 1: the radio play by play guy for the Explorers at
Speaker 1: the time, and he was tight with Joe Bryant. I mean,
Speaker 1: I saw your dads being Marson's jumping out the sound. Well.
Speaker 1: I think at good time, I thought I'd be going
Speaker 1: to the South. IM be a nice back my father.
Speaker 1: Those of us who weren't really in the know, thought
Speaker 1: that bond between Joe and Kobe might be enough to
Speaker 1: pull the kid to the South. Our school might have
Speaker 1: a chance to get him. Our school might be the
Speaker 1: one that Dick Vitale was screaming and shouting about on ESPN.
Speaker 1: Our school would be in the spotlight for a change
Speaker 1: that chance. However, Slim made a certain high school basketball
Speaker 1: game in December of a huge event in Philadelphia, and
Speaker 1: particularly to everyone who followed was sal Who's The game
Speaker 1: was between Lower Marian and Roman Catholic. Larry Kentner had graduated,
Speaker 1: so Romans best player was a guard named Donnie Carr.
Speaker 1: He and Kobe were friends. They played summer ball against
Speaker 1: each other for years, and Donnie was Speedy Morris's top
Speaker 1: recruiting target. He was just six ft three but strong,
Speaker 1: could shoot from the outside and had a great handle,
Speaker 1: the perfect Lasal player. The game was at Drexel University,
Speaker 1: and Donnie and Kobe went toe to toe. That was
Speaker 1: the game that inspired me to write my first article
Speaker 1: about Cope. There had been so much build up to
Speaker 1: it and so much reaction after it, and Kobe and
Speaker 1: Donnie had played so well that I felt I had
Speaker 1: to weigh in. I had a regular column for The
Speaker 1: Collegian back then, and here's a snippet of the one
Speaker 1: I wrote after the lower Marian versus Roman Catholic game.
Speaker 1: Prepare yourself for some awful probes. Last Monday night, the
Speaker 1: prospective saviors of the LaSalle basketball program stood out in
Speaker 1: the center of Drexel's Physical Education Center, drew their cult
Speaker 1: forty five, and blasted away at one another. Neither blinked.
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant, Lower Marian's sleek and supple guard, scored thirty points,
Speaker 1: flying and floating through the heavy gymnasium air. Roman Catholics
Speaker 1: Donny Carr scored thirty four points. The game was a
Speaker 1: victory for Roman, the gunfighting duel a draw the future
Speaker 1: for Explorer basketball should these young snipers choose to come
Speaker 1: here blinding Yikes, that's some overwrought college paper garbage. But
Speaker 1: I was just one of several writers who read way
Speaker 1: too much into that game, who didn't really know what
Speaker 1: Kobe was thinking. And as I would learn much later,
Speaker 1: what he was thinking was I don't want to play
Speaker 1: for La Salle, and I especially don't want to play
Speaker 1: for a coach who screamed so much. Right as the
Speaker 1: season when I really I really begin to dislike me
Speaker 1: more because the way he's coaching. A couple of things
Speaker 1: you did, I mean didn't like. I said, Man, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not you. I really just don't like
Speaker 1: like I did. Decided to college, and I would not
Speaker 1: be side. I really want to thinking, you don't realer
Speaker 1: what you're doing. I remember, but I know my mother
Speaker 1: dart where Kobe was pretty emphatic there, and you have
Speaker 1: to put his thinking in the right context, the context
Speaker 1: of that time and the context of him Back then,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty natural thing for a great high
Speaker 1: school basketball player to go play for a coach like
Speaker 1: Bobby Knight or John Chaine or Speedy Morris, a coach
Speaker 1: who would scream and yell and push his players to
Speaker 1: the breaking point. But Kobe was at the vanguard of
Speaker 1: a new generation of players, young men who knew how
Speaker 1: much power they had and knew that they could wield him.
Speaker 1: Kobe could choose any path he wanted, college, the NBA, whatever,
Speaker 1: he could do what was best for him. He just
Speaker 1: had to be bold enough to follow through on it.
Speaker 1: Kobe's future wasn't dependent on Speedy Morris. If anything, it
Speaker 1: was the other way around, and Speedy Morris's future wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly a high priority for Kobe. It got to the
Speaker 1: point that he started mocking the idea that he choose
Speaker 1: lasal Remember the volleyball scholarship that Shaya got. Well, Kobe's
Speaker 1: other sister, Shariah, already was a Division one player at Temple,
Speaker 1: another Big five Phillies school, And as Kobe told Jeremy Treatment,
Speaker 1: he had a lot more fun watching Sharia's matches than
Speaker 1: he did. Shays, Oh yeah, yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: fund game the South, like Temple bar on the south
Speaker 1: of the really stinks. Saying those the teams stinks. You
Speaker 1: attended the day volley board teams stinks. So Jeremy asked
Speaker 1: Kobe the logical question, if you weren't going to Asal,
Speaker 1: where were you going? What are you going to check out? There?
Speaker 1: What I'm thinking about checking out? Mr? Game? You're gonna
Speaker 1: go to all these places? I definitely check out what's
Speaker 1: ks trying to percentage cheese? You might change the funds
Speaker 1: a little defender, but you never know what happened. I
Speaker 1: never never right right out there at the best time
Speaker 1: in your life. Enjoined the coach choo where you wait
Speaker 1: for you. There's a couple of schools that I like,
Speaker 1: like North Carolina, but I'm gonna pick them. You don't
Speaker 1: pick them because of affects. Michael Jordy not able to
Speaker 1: have your own identity right now? You do. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of really interesting insights into Kobe just from
Speaker 1: that clip. One, even though he admired Michael Jordan's and
Speaker 1: patterned his game after Michael Jordan's, he didn't want to
Speaker 1: go to North Carolina because that's where Michael Jordan's had
Speaker 1: gone to school. He wouldn't be his own man, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have his own identity there. Two, he would have
Speaker 1: gone to Duke. That admission confirms what a lot of
Speaker 1: people were saying at the time and have said in
Speaker 1: the years since, that if Kobe went to college, he
Speaker 1: was going to play for Mike Chaszewski. But here's what
Speaker 1: very few people knew at that time. All the lip
Speaker 1: service that Kobe was paying to the idea of going
Speaker 1: to college would turn out to be just that lip service.
Speaker 1: There was no chance he was going to Duke or
Speaker 1: North Carolina or Michigan or Arizona or LaSalle. Looking back,
Speaker 1: all of us who are around back then can see
Speaker 1: that possibility of Kobe going to LaSalle for what it was,
Speaker 1: a flight of fancy for a prodigy with bigger dreams,
Speaker 1: a one in a million shot at glory for a
Speaker 1: struggling college program, A notion that captured our imaginations. But
Speaker 1: that turned out to be a pipe dream. But man,
Speaker 1: it was fun to dream. Even Carol Brigham, tucked away
Speaker 1: in the Connelly Library about as far from the world
Speaker 1: of basketball as you could get, hoped Kobe would end
Speaker 1: up at the site. I remember it all. I remember
Speaker 1: being so disappointed when I decided, yeah, yeah he uh
Speaker 1: he thought about it, thought yeah, yeah, you met him, Yes,
Speaker 1: I met him a number of times, but once Kobe
Speaker 1: reached a certain point in his development as a player,
Speaker 1: he was never ever going to do it. He had
Speaker 1: made himself stronger and smarter. He was adding muscle to
Speaker 1: his skinny frame. He had more experience. He knew better
Speaker 1: how to CounterPunch against just about any defense, how to
Speaker 1: up and safe for any deficiencies in his game. On
Speaker 1: a particular night, if his jumper wasn't falling, he'd drive.
Speaker 1: If an opponent played his own, he'd bomb away from
Speaker 1: the outside. Heading into the summer between his junior and
Speaker 1: senior years of high school, the Summer of Kobe had
Speaker 1: a plan, and it did not involve saving the basketball
Speaker 1: program at my alma mater. It didn't involve college basketball
Speaker 1: at all. The plan was so wild and so forward thinking,
Speaker 1: in fact, that even Jeremy Treatment couldn't see its full
Speaker 1: scope at the time. The summer of nine was going
Speaker 1: to be Kobe's springboard to the NBA. In the next episode,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the story of that summer, The summer
Speaker 1: when Kobe Bryant truly became a superstar. At one point,
Speaker 1: Stack House started found him high. They almost got into it,
Speaker 1: and you know, stack house grabbing him and we had
Speaker 1: to kind of break them from those two up. He
Speaker 1: was relentless because, like I said, for a guy in
Speaker 1: high school, it was not even its going out the
Speaker 1: number one over pay. What's kind of crazy? That's next
Speaker 1: week on I Am Kobe. I Am Kobe is a
Speaker 1: production of the Version podcasts in association with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This season is written and hosted by me Mike Sealsky.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Jacob Bronstein and directed by Mark Francis.
Speaker 1: Story editing by Jacob Bronstein with editorial direction from Scott Waxman, Editing,
Speaker 1: mixing and sound design by Mark Francis. Stephen Tompkins is
Speaker 1: our production assistant. Our theme music is Create Yourself by
Speaker 1: Grover Brown featuring Justin Starling. Find Create Yourself wherever you
Speaker 1: stream music. Music supervisor is Scott Velaska's for Free Sons Sinking.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Mark Francis and Scott Waxman. Join the
Speaker 1: conversation about I Am Kobe on social media on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram. It's at Diversion Pods thanks to Rain Rosenbaum,
Speaker 1: Susan Cannavan and Jeremy Treatment The Eyebries before the Sun.
Speaker 1: They don't understand when I said the grind is fun.
Speaker 1: Never clock you out. Even when my work is done.
Speaker 1: If they're trying to block me, I might hurt someone
Speaker 1: through the blood sweat and says, we perseveit, stay tending in,
Speaker 1: let it, keep the hurses and then if they don't
Speaker 1: believe in themselves, gave a vert, defend that at Tampa says,
Speaker 1: So I'm telling no, pass my a. This the reason
Speaker 1: why I'm gonna work so damn different. So the negatives.
Speaker 1: I can't listen to see me at the time. You
Speaker 1: can't listen where I'm a mute to play like cashes
Speaker 1: see I pay my dudes because Texas gotta work. I
Speaker 1: thinking grind ahead of his time. It's someone saying that
Speaker 1: they made you. Don't tell them you create yourself the
Speaker 1: best you ben or watch us, but by that time
Speaker 1: you gotta snake clock, then break clock, break we create yourself.
Speaker 1: Watch creet question, watch to create myself, sat climb, signs
Speaker 1: up and create yourself. They nice, ain't so hard to
Speaker 1: create yourself. You gotta learn from the great minds. No,
Speaker 1: we ain't lying to tell them that this is any time.
Speaker 1: This talent wasn't given. It was made the future. Any
Speaker 1: time I could change better, tell them that I've made
Speaker 1: it back home. As I walked through the hearts of
Speaker 1: the fame, I came from the Valley of the Shadow
Speaker 1: with death waiting for us. Spoon, don't hold your breath,
Speaker 1: same town, sat train. But I did it with less.
Speaker 1: I know one that to be so there's nothing to guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing. Yes, it's our times. Tell them we up next.
Speaker 1: We don't got any regrets. I did it with my
Speaker 1: soul hands and we never forget my an. This the
Speaker 1: reason why my work so damn different to the negatives.
Speaker 1: I can listen see me at the time. You can't
Speaker 1: listen for where rebuild, reach shape, give me your eye.
Speaker 1: You got to risk take do it now. When I'm
Speaker 1: saying while braves, I was saying that they made you,
Speaker 1: tell them you create yourself the best you finn l
Speaker 1: watch us by. It's by that time. You gotta sneak
Speaker 1: clock then break clock break we create yourself, watch me,
Speaker 1: watch watch the create myself. Exac clia signs up and
Speaker 1: create yourself. They're nice and ain't go on create yourself.
Speaker 1: You gotta learn from the great minds. But we ain't
Speaker 1: lying telling them that ain't time diversion podcasts,