Ralph Wiley back in 02

huevonkiller · Oct 20, 2009

This was before the playoffs finished that year, we had just repeated as champs.

Either they get the three titles this year, or next. Even if they win this year, Kobe won't embark on the next most dangerous voyage (Malaise) yet. Others -- Jordan and the Bulls -- won three straight. It would be unprecedented in this era to win four titles in a row. Or four in five years. Or five in six years. That would clean up Dodge City.

If (when) this task is done, by acclamation Kobe Bryant joins the Pantheon of the greatest athletes who have ever lived. And since most of the great athletes of today, if they could choose, would choose to be great at basketball, Kobe Bryant, if the Lakes won three straight titles, is the No. 1 baller on the planet (except for Tiger Woods, who has a special sponsor's exemption on the All-Time No. 1 tour).

Kobe already is the No. 1 baller -- but that's another point. It makes a better story anyway, for him not to come to it too fast. That which you do not earn, you will not keep.

Fifth Voyage: The Grotto of Malaise
Kobe Bryant
With every title, Kobe's greatest enemy is complacency.
Doldrums will come. Sirens will sing. Madness will descend. Can Kobe fight if off, survive the Fifth Voyage?

Say it works out like this. Say the Kings give them a game in these 2002 playoffs. That would be progress against Shaq and Kobe. Somebody giving 'em a game, taking two or three games off them, is progress at this point. Damn!

Say the Kings get real robust all of a sudden and take the Lakers to seven games. Say, for instance, Kobe makes the end-game move, finishes, destroys and the Lakes win at Arco, making a few more believers up there. Making believers -- real true believers -- is no overnight deal.

Then say they take out the Nets, or Celtics, conceivably, anyway, in six games. Say next year, somebody else gets close, but the Lakers win again, spurred on as a group by the idea of four NBA titles in a row, in this life, this world, in this era. That would make Kobe Top of the Line.

And it might be the end of the line for Phil Jackson right there. He seems like the sort who would call it a day, move up to icon status. Although he might stay because neither Shaq (spoken) nor Kobe (unspoken) seems to be bulls---ing when they say they won't play for anybody but Phil.

Shaq says it outright, almost emotionally. Shaq is very emotional. Kobe is much more cold-blooded. More like an assassin. Jordanesque. Kobe has talked about the finality of Phil's (and his associates') game plans and counter-moves in the May-June playoff days, saying how combining those tight game plans with his ability, and combining his ability with Shaq's, makes the outcome moot. Simple physics.

With all that in mind, Jerry Buss might talk Phil back for a run at five. But say Phil "retires"-- his poor replacement is doomed to be a vic of circumstances. Say Cuban buys Ben Wallace and Baron Davis to replace Shawn Bradley and Nick Van Exel. Say Kobe misses the last shot by accident, and goes through a summer of doldrums and discontent. In the bigger picture, so what, as long as he comes out of it? Remember, after he'd spoiled them so by winning a high school state championship, an NCAA championship and an NBA championships in four years, people later called Magic, "Tragic" Johnson the first time he didn't hit a shot and smile. Say the Kobe Lakes come back and win a fifth the next year. Say they win five in six years. Then what?

At that point, Kobe, grizzled vet, Top of the Line, all the high hoop the youngest generation then knows, will be 27.

27!

Sixth Voyage: The Storm of Exile
Jerry West
Jerry West's special connection with Kobe might alter the direction of his career.
That gives him three more years just to get to age 30, let alone to add more titles to the four or five rings he and Shaq will have. Jordan played baseball after three NBA titles and six scoring titles, after it took him six years to get the first NBA title. Kobe's life (and game -- Kobe is on his way to having more game than Jordan, if he doesn't now -- what Kobe doesn't have, and can never have, perhaps, is mature Jordan's ball control -- the open secret of Jordan's game was his huge hands, his ball control. Kobe can't do world-class one-hand ball fakes. It's physically impossible for him. But then again, Kobe is much longer, 6-foot-8, which is super-long for a man with the skills of a point guard.

When Dr. Jerry Buss speaks of Kobe, he doesn't speak of Kobe being at one with him, not like Magic was once. Then again, he doesn't speak of letting Kobe get away, either.

Magic learned business willingly at the foot of Dr. Jerry. Magic has done well in business. Very well, indeed. They also hit the Playboy mansion together, brought up the sun a few more times, shooting racks of 8- and 9-ball. Downed a few. Hell, more than a few. And in more ways than one. Of course, Dr. Buss was younger, too, in Magic's era. Now his ticker couldn't take it anymore. Kobe's Times are different. Kobe cares about different things (just what, is a question; he talks about designing clothes -- but that can't be all of him). His relationship with Buss is bound to be different.

Buss says so himself.

The tell here might be Kobe's relationship was not as strong with Dr. Buss as it was with Jerry West. It was West Kobe dug on -- they could talk on the level of having played. It was West who brought Kobe in, West who believed in him when he was a preppy snot-nose everybody was trying to resent, West who could've left him in Charlotte, but didn't, West who told Kobe he'd have to come down off his high individuality, said just because he could bust everybody in practice didn't win him championships, and West knew, that's what they respect -- rings people remember. How Many Rings ends the conversation. It's like saying "755." Bottom line? Kobe Bryant heard Jerry West.

So when the Sixth Voyage of Malaise comes, what will Kobe do? Play minor-league baseball? No. All he knows, in a competitive sense, is basketball. And don't say that he could never leave the Lakers, although Dr. Buss takes great pains to say it. He says he could never envision a scenario where Kobe leaves the Lakers. But Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls now plays for the Washington Wizards.

Kobe is signed through the 2003-04 season, at which time the Lakers will have won those four or five NBA titles.

Much scurrying around will accompany Kobe's malaise. Buss will try to sign him. Maybe he will. But do you really think, when the time comes, Jerry West won't give Kobe Bryant a call? Oh, you can't imagine Kobe in Memphis?

Maybe it takes more imagination than we've got on hand.

The way to break out of the doldrums of the voyage of malaise is via the next great challenge. Buss or West will have to sell Kobe, not so much on big money, but on what he might be able to accomplish in the game. A great new challenge tends to take your mind off the lack of other things.

Maybe it will be better for the league by then. Somebody might steal one from Shaq & Kobe here or there. But only one. Maybe it will come down to seeing if Kobe can start from scratch and do it. Maybe not, maybe it's all pure speculation, even paranoia, but that's part of the Grotto of Malaise, thinking of the way things might have been.

Seventh Voyage: The Ocean of Illuminati
Kobe Bryant
By 2015, you'll probably be looking back in amazement at this early stage of Bryant's career.
By 2010, all the Michael Jordan talk will have abated around Kobe Bryant, just as all the Julius Erving-Larry Bird-Magic Johnson talk abated around Michael Jordan.

All Jordan's people can do now is quote scoring averages of Jordan and Kobe at the same age. Otherwise, Kobe is ahead. Maybe even Miles Ahead. We haven't seen what Kobe Bryant might become. We can't imagine. We have seen only glimpses of what he is now. He might like to see for himself, one day, not if he could win a scoring title, but by how much. No question Kobe could average 40. The question is, could he hold up physically and mentally well enough to average 50? Taking it out of the context of winning the NBA title, and just saying for instance. Once you've won six, it takes the edge off that aspect of the competition, the NBA titles part of it.

After Malaise, the average man, you might never hear from him again. He'd live off his clippings, his hoardings, his past glory, his own pathologies. I'd give you O.J. Simpson, but, knowing you, you'd probably just try to give him back.

Kobe Bryant, just off me talking with him briefly, seeing how he handled himself then, carries himself in general, watching him go through two of seven voyages already, sensing him sublimating his skills for the benefit of a team concept, hearing him accepting advice, yet living his own way, finally watching him become the most unstoppable baller on the planet, he doesn't strike me as your average man. He is extraordinary upstairs, too, I mean. Mentally unique. Perfectly suited to a new millennium. New Man.

By the year 2013, when he is 35, and has made unflinching, unregenerate, unapologetic and dedicated followers out of people who haven't yet been born, the people who will be driving the culture by then, Kobe will be of the Illuminati.

"That guy?" Better to say "Got-To Guy." Better to hope he's "good guy." Good in the real, not the PR sense.

As Kobe goes, so goes the arc of legend. They might have gotten lucky, the 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds, the ones who haven't been born. Even luckier than we got with Jordan.

Never known the game to go backward. Never.

Ralph Wiley spent nine years at Sports Illustrated and wrote 28 cover stories on celebrity athletes. He is the author of several books, including "Best Seat in the House," with Spike Lee, "Born to Play: The Eric Davis Story," and "Serenity, A Boxing Memoir."
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