Damn, he was one lonely boy. Ambition will do that to you.
I was speaking to a group of high school kids last year and trying to give them a little bit of an idea about Kobe Bryant.
I asked how many of them had jobs. Several hands shot up. One kid was 17 and had just started working at a grocery store.
I asked him to imagine going into work that afternoon and announcing to your bosses and co-workers that you may be just 17 but you plan on being the greatest grocery store worker who ever lived.
Imagine telling them that you’re just 17 but you have plans on one day running not just the grocery store, but the entire chain of grocery stores.
Imagine telling them, “I just want to be the man.”
And to make that happen, you’re going to stay extra hours after work each day, practicing so that you can get faster at bagging the groceries and running the cash register. You’re going to walk through the aisles after work memorizing the thousands of products and studying late at night for ways to make them sell faster.
You are going to work insane hours to be the world’s greatest grocery guy.
Not only that, but you’re going to invite your older co-workers to stay overtime with you, to work for free to get better and better at what they do.
I asked the young student how he thought the co-workers would respond. He gave me a blank, sort of stunned look.
That, I explained, was how 17-year-old Kobe Bryant had approached the Los Angeles Lakers in 1996-97.
It didn’t take long, of course, before Bryant was alienated from his teammates. Some of them soon came to express a hatred for him. Raw ambition will do that for you.
The Kobe Bryant I got to know was this pretty miserable person. He told me he was determined to be the greatest. He knew he was going to be, but he just didn’t know how it was going to happen.
They laughed at him behind his back, derided him and despised him. As veteran teammate Rick Fox explained to me, the older players saw Kobe as the punk kid in the school cafeteria who was trying to jump ahead of them in the lunch line. They spent their time thinking of ways to teach him a lesson.
If nothing else, the rest of the team bonded together in their dislike for this arrogant young guy.
All of them except for one.
Derek Fisher was a rookie with Kobe Bryant, but Fisher was already 22, having put in four years of hard work at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock.
When I first met Fish, he was young, open-faced, and honest, with a maturity that extended far beyond his years.
“Really,” Fish told me, “we should all be the way Kobe is. We should all be working as hard as possible to be the best we can be, to make this team the best it can be.”
Still, he didn’t know quite what to make of Bryant. And Bryant, who had quickly learned not to trust anyone, was wary of him too.
Bryant, though, had a pretty simple way of looking at the world. He gauged those around him based on how hard they were willing to work.
It didn’t take Bryant long to notice that Derek Fisher, while not the most talented guy in the world, worked really, really, really hard. And that became the basis for their trust, and eventually, their friendship.
Fisher’s main talent was his ability to work really, really, really hard.
Suddenly the world wasn’t quite so lonely for Kobe Bryant. He and Fish began working out together.
In 1999, Phil Jackson and Tex Winter were hired as coaches of the Lakers. Bryant had long dreamed that Winter would one day become his coach, and he had asked me to introduce him to my friend Tex, who was then an assistant coach in Chicago.
As he was preparing to come to Los Angeles, Winter asked me about the Lakers roster. Fisher leapt out from the page. Jackson liked length and athleticism in his guards. Fish was short and earth bound.
“He reminds me of Joe Dumars,” I told Tex and quickly added, “Not as a player. Not skill-wise. As a person. This guy has really got character. And he’s very bright.”
Tex didn’t say much once he got to L.A., except to grumble, “Fisher’s just not a good finisher.”
Which led me to worry for his future.
Somehow, though, Fish stuck around, mostly because of his work ethic and smarts. He embraced the triangle offense and made himself a fine shooter. It’s an offense for smart guys who can shoot.
And, of course, Phil Jackson soon came to discover that Fish had plenty of “length.” It was all in his heart.
I’ve often wondered over the years where Kobe Bryant would have been without Fish. They became deep friends. It’s sort of sweet to call him Bryant’s sidekick.
But Fish was the guy who embraced Bryant’s approach. They shared a vision, a work ethic and an understanding.
It stands to reason that the lowest times for Kobe with the Lakers were the years that Fisher played in Golden State and then Utah. They remained close with many phone conversations.
Bryant really didn’t get on the right track, the Lakers really didn’t get on the right track, until Fisher returned in 2007. It’s not surprising that they’ve made it to the Finals in both years since.
He was just the guy to make the triangle work. Except when he had trouble finishing. Except when his shots weren’t falling. Except when he had trouble defending the screen and roll. Except when he watched younger guards drive right by him.
Fortunately for Fish, fortunately for all of them, Jackson has always trusted old heads and character.
Then came Game 4 the other night. Bryant has done a fine job shouldering the Lakers, the only problem being Bryant’s not as young as he used to be. Like Michael Jordan later in his career, Bryant has reached that point in life where he needs more help from his friends.
Thank goodness, Bryant has friends these days. The greatest grocery guy of them all has learned to fit his ambition in with the team.
That, of course, happened only when the team was lifted to match his ambition.
There, doing the heavy lifting, was his oldest friend. As you’ve heard many times now, Fish had missed all five of his three-pointers prior to hitting those two late huge threes to defeat the Orlando Magic in Game 4.
Both shots came after Bryant gave up the ball and trusted in critical moments of the game. That, in itself, is no small thing.
Both shots went a long way toward guaranteeing that Bryant, that most ambitious of men, will win his fourth NBA title.
Once again I wondered, where would lonely old Kobe Bryant be in this world if not for Derek Fisher?
I’m pretty sure that Bryant, when he lies awake at night overwhelmed by the mystery of it all, wonders the same thing.
Roland Lazenby is the author of Mad Game, The NBA Education of Kobe Bryant. His next book, Jerry West, The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon, is scheduled for release by Random House/ESPN in January.
