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Why Does Kobe Bryant Make Me Emotional?
I hosted a book club last night (for Lessons in Chemistry, obviously) because I am esoteric and oh-so-smart. Before people started showing up, I was on YouTube and watched some of the Kobe Bryant statue dedication outside the Staples Center, which I think is now called Crypto.com Arena, and which many consider to be “the house that Kobe built.” As I watched Phil Jackson and Vanessa Bryant speak, I cried several times. I am generally a very emotional person, at least more emotional than most men I know, so crying jags are not uncommon for me. However, I wanted to look at this a little bit more.
Because, in fact, I thought about this: when Kobe died, one of my friend’s wives posted on Facebook something like “good riddance, rapist!” and while there is a very strong possibility that Kobe did some bad things with females in his life, that shit triggered me at the time. Maybe it was because the body wasn’t cold yet and we were going to the lowest bar for Mr. Bryant; maybe it was because the woman that posted that is an “avowed feminist” who would also probably quit her job in 1.7 seconds and be a “trad-wife” if her husband had more earning potential in this broken world. I don’t know.
But I did want to investigate what emotionally resonates about Kobe. Here is what I came to.
He tracks with the Internet
Kobe was drafted into the league on June 26, 1996. He got good about 2–3 seasons later. Google was founded (I believe) on September 4, 1998. By the time Kobe and Shaq had their first title over the Pacers, Google had been a thing for two years and we had the true building block of the Internet. Within another 2–3 years, as Kobe’s first dynasty was set up and then demolished, we’d have social networking too. We were off to the races.
The Shaq dynamic
Everyone has friends from youth that they dominated with — in school, on the playground, in life in general — and then, over time, those relationships frayed and changed. I think Shaq and Kobe are the pop culture equivalent of that for many men. When you look at them and what they were at their peak, and then how it dissolved in that run-up to the…
