Growing and Going Up

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

--1 Corinthians, 13:11

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Ah, but what a childhood it has been. . . .

When Kobe Bryant was a high school kid growing up in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, he told his friends he was going directly to the NBA, where he expected to become an all-star in, oh, two years.

What did the friends say?

“They believed,” Bryant says, wondering, as usual, why anyone would ask. “They know how I am.”

Of course, that was just what happened.

In his second season, at 19, Bryant not only became the youngest player ever to be an all-star but was hyped into a duel with Michael Jordan, complete with full-page newspaper ads that showed them, advancing toward each other, superimposed over the World Trade Center.

This, of course, was after Kobe took over the all-star rookie game and won the dunk contest at 18.

Try going back to the Main Line now and asking his friends what there is in the world that Kobe Bryant can’t do.

And now that he’s going into his third season, bulked up to 215 pounds, signed to a $70-million contract, all grown up. . . .

Grown up?

Bryant is 20 and however poised he may look on the court, however graciously he handles himself off it, no one is grown up at that age.

At 20, Jordan was a junior at North Carolina, where Dean Smith taught him to play within, and revere, a system. (Jordan never averaged 20 points for Smith and always wore Carolina shorts under his NBA uniform.)

At 20, Jerry West was pure hayseed. The boy who would be Mr. Clutch but was first known as Zeke From Cabin Creek, was 22 when he got to the NBA, after four years of college at West Virginia. If he’d had to carry Bryant’s expectations, West says, it would have crushed him like a pea in a drill press.

At 20, Bryant, coming off four years of high school and two years as a Laker reserve, has been anointed as the NBA’s savior-designate, its “next Jordan,” as if someone actually thinks there will be such a thing.

League officials’ hearts flutter, just thinking of him. After that All-Star game turned into a farce, with Kobe shooting the ball 11 of the first 13 times he touched it, and a veterans’ backlash beginning to surface, an NBA official turned up at a Laker game. One might have thought he’d have been embarrassed at having hyped a teenager to such absurd levels but, no, all he could talk about was how well Bryant handled himself, his smile, etc.

So it continues.

Already a veteran of this stuff, Bryant wrinkles his nose at it these days, advising his public, “Sit back and let me develop as a basketball player. I’m gonna learn what I need to learn. I think everybody is a little too anxious right now. Everybody needs to just try and relax.”

He has no intention of being the “next Mike,” but the “first Kobe,” though it’s all the same thing.

Kobe has heard the siren’s song, and it started long ago, when he discovered there was nothing he couldn’t do on a basketball court, nothing he couldn’t learn, no one he couldn’t handle with enough time and work.

It was true at Lower Merion High, where he found himself at 17, weighing, he says, laughing, “a buck sixty,” holding his own with the powerful Jerry Stackhouse at the Spectrum, where the 76ers were working out the player they would take with the third pick in the 1995 draft.

It was true, two levels up and a continent away, where Bryant became everyone’s darling--Laker management, players and fans, NBA officials, kids everywhere--until, two years later, the story is hanging subtly and taking on subplots.

The world tires of darlings and skewers them when they slump, as Bryant did after the All-Star game.

Teammates tire of darlings and mutter when they take loopy shots, as Kobe will.

Shaquille O’Neal, who first took Kobe under his wing and named him “Hollywood,” has been cool about the whole thing, never even changing expression when Bryant does something impetuous, but insiders wonder how long that can last.

They even fought at a recent practice. It was over quickly with no damage and people say Kobe actually went back at Shaq, winning the respect of onlookers. (On top of everything else, Kobe is actually a tough guy too?)

But it’s becoming abundantly clear, this is a new day and, for Bryant, a new challenge.

What isn’t clear is, how it’s going to go, or when.

What’s a Surrogate Father to Do?

West takes such pride in having traded Vlade Divac for the draft rights to Bryant, thus clearing enough cap space to sign O’Neal, they’re practically members of the family. They dote on him. He dotes on them. It’s love.

Of course, it’s a trip too. When Bryant came out to interview, West got a lesson in generations, watching Kobe hang out with Jerry’s teenage son, Ryan.

“I’ll never forget,” West says. “I think the quote that was attributed to George Shinn [owner of the Hornets, who traded Bryant] in the paper in Charlotte, N.C., I think his quote was, ‘We made the greatest trade in the history of basketball.’

“I called somebody down there in their office a year later and I said, ‘Well, we do think it was the greatest trade in the history of basketball, but for the Lakers.’ ”

Parental pride is one thing, but what’s a dad to do if the whole world starts cooing in his surrogate son’s ear?

In a word: worry.

“I think in every sport, when somebody sets the bar so high, people are trying to create and/or anoint someone to take over that position,” West says.

“Maybe from a perspective of, ‘Here’s another player the NBA can bank on, that’s saying the right things, doing the right things with the writers.’

“And obviously, his play on the court has to match that, and I think in Kobe’s case, just the fact he was an 18-year-old kid, maybe coming to the Lakers, maybe that enhanced that a little bit. He has a flair to his game, and any time you have young . . . flair . . . marketing . . . you’re gonna get an expectation level.

“I think the NBA has seen that just because you market someone, doesn’t mean they’re gonna get to a level that they’re gonna be household names. It’s like a product. People may buy products because someone convinced them early on that they’re good--until they use it.

“The NBA has done that with a lot of players and suddenly they disappeared. The No. 1 pick in the [1995] draft, Joe Smith, he just signed for an NBA exception. . . .

“In Kobe’s case, we’ve seen a tremendous improvement, year by year by year. Obviously, the thing that you want to see is him playing basketball and not trying to excite the crowd.

“Last year, he had some games, he was truly remarkable for a young player. Then he hit the wall. With all the hype at the All-Star game, with a couple things he did in the game that were--I don’t consider them basketball because I don’t think the All-Star game is truly an indication of what a basketball player really is--I think those things even made it worse.

“And when he came back, he looked not only whipped physically but really emotionally. I thought he went through a period there where he was really struggling, not only with himself but with his confidence. . . .

“I thought it was a real turning point for him, because he started to see how people can react to you. Everything was so positive and then, all of a sudden, some critical things were said about him. . . .

“But in looking at him this year, it’s hard to imagine he’s 20 years old. I mean, the guy’s a man now. He’s got a great basketball body. He’s worked very hard, very diligently.

“He’s made so many more plays [i.e., passed the ball], which we know he’s capable of. Offensively, it’s very, very difficult to play him, I don’t care who you are.”

Still Lovable After Both These Years

From the moment he showed up, all smiles and manners, the Lakers wondered when Bryant would change--because everyone does and the bigger they get, the sooner it happens, doesn’t it?

Especially after this long, weird off-season, when Bryant was never around, when O’Neal tried to get everyone to work out together and only Eddie Jones and Derek Fisher showed up.

Where was Kobe, who works religiously in the off-season? Bulking up his hat size?

The public relations staff is wondering how he’ll be, now that the drumroll is really on for him, and so it pays particular attention to the first request for a one-on-one interview.

No problem, Kobe says.

He’s supposed to be in the lobby of Fess Parker’s Doubletree Inn in Santa Barbara at 2:30 and arrives on the dot, which is something that happens in the NBA, or the greater world of celebrity interviewing, as often as the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. He still has that trademark grace. Rich and famous at 20, he remains Pam and Jellybean’s sweet-tempered, well-mannered son.

Not that he ever concedes much or apologizes for anything, such as shooting a lot (“Continue to be aggressive. That’s it. You’re gonna win some, you’re gonna lose some. The more responsibility they give me, I’ll take it. You make the shots, everybody loves you. You miss, nobody loves you. I really don’t care.”)

He says he didn’t wear out or lose confidence in the second half of last season when his average dropped from 17.8 to 12.6 and his shooting from 45% to 39.6%. Defenses took away his pet moves and he didn’t adjust, and his playing time went down, etc.

This is the core of the thing, because the most important thing Bryant has to learn is restraint. Everyone else has to work on ballhandling or shooting or seeing the court. Bryant, one of the great prospects the game has ever seen, perhaps even more advanced than Jordan was at 20, already does that stuff.

Of course, what made Jordan was everything he learned about restraint and playing with others after he was 20, not to mention 30.

That’s what Bryant grapples with now, as his coaches give him that age-old advice about letting the game to come to him--and Kobe wonders what they’re talking about.

“They were saying, ‘Let the game come to you,’ ” he says. “I knew what they were talking about. . . . I figure, ‘OK, if I pass up the first couple shots, maybe I’ll let the game come to me that way.’

“I didn’t understand what the hell they were talking about. You know? I just didn’t know!

“This summer, I had a chance to think about it and watch the tape and study other players, and how they got into the flow of the game, how they got into their rhythm--I think I have a pretty firm understanding of how to get myself into the flow.”

We’ll see about his understanding of taking himself out of the flow when his stuff isn’t going.

After last season, the Laker brass decided the best way to smooth out Bryant’s game was to start him and load him up with responsibility. They even envisioned playing him at the point. But when the smoke cleared, and the moves they intended to make didn’t happen, Bryant was left to back up at small forward and shooting guard again.

OK, where was he over the summer?

“I did this tour for Adidas,” he says, laughing. “We were in Australia, Korea, Tokyo, went to Manila and Paris. . . . [When he was in Los Angeles] I wanted to just concentrate on my fundamentals. I wanted to work on certain footwork that I needed to get down. I think if I would have gone up there [UCLA, where area pros played pickup games] and played with them, ran five-on-five, I would have been doing the same things I was doing the year before. . . .

“Even when I first came into the league, summertime came around, everyone pretty much did their own thing. Everyone does their thing in summertime. That’s my thing.”

There’s even a buzz going around: Kobe didn’t come around in summer because Jordan never used to come around.

Bryant shakes his head when he hears this. “People are taking it a step too far,” he says, grinning. “That’s searching for stuff. That’s unbelievable.”

He keeps shaking his head. He really can’t believe some of this stuff.

This thing is only beginning. He says he can’t go to malls without being mobbed, though in this hotel lobby in Santa Barbara, he gets only a few autograph requests (which he handles easily), but how long will he have even this much space?

People speculating about everything he does--scrutinizing his game, his shot selection, his relationship with his teammates--it’s superstardom and welcome to it.

It’s the life he has chosen, even if he’s only 20 and just beginning to find out about it.

* RODMAN SNAG: Money seems to be only thing holding up Laker deal. Page 8

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