Purple—represents all your bruises, injuries accumulated over 20
years of basketball. The quixotic approach to a game that made it as if
it's life and death regardless of what’s on the line. The mark of a true
warrior.
Gold—symbolizes your triumph as one of the greatest. Career
that's nothing short of greatness and competitiveness. The color of a true
winner.
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| Photo credit to the owner |
Today, the world of basketball will be painted Purple and Gold
for the last time by the one and only Kobe Bryant. The legend that defined the
true meaning of competitiveness and no quit. He is the basketball demigod
that ruled the league for the better part of the 21st Century. On his announced
coup de grace on the hard court, Bryant will take with him all of what he has
meant to the game of basketball. For all the fans of the opposing teams he left
heartbroken through the years with his conquests, now they will be enjoined by
all Lakers fans around the world that he pampered and walked in absolute pride
through his winning ways.
You finally gave in, huh!
Of course!
You finally embraced these all! With you leaving, you've finally
let go of the ultra-competitiveness that a lot of the weaker minds and guts
getting rubbed the wrong way. The refreshing tone devoid of the scowl and
seriousness of a game-faced Kobe reflected his genuine acceptance that this is
finally it.
For us fans, Kobe was our generational kid. After the glorious
Michael Jordan era, kids my age during the 90's found the continuity of
basketball idolatry in Bryant's soul. It persisted when everyone seemed lost at
the game's purity amid the shift to the distractive commercialized nature of
the NBA.
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| Photo credit to the owner |
Unlike Jordan, Kobe will always be perceived as the brash kid
that took his lanky 6'6 frame to the big league. Jordan will forever be the
standard. The yardstick to any run for greatness that there is to transpire.
But Kobe showed how it is done! Anything short of it does not deserve to be
mentioned on the same breath as those two. Kobe, in that respect, validated how
difficult the status to be named king of the basketball world. Because
self-proclamation and aggrandizement would never win the respect of the world even
if one's equipped with such amiability and magnanimity. Those two? They
destroyed every living fighting spirit of their oppositions and kicked it at
that. That's how their legends had grown.
Kobe's career wasn't predicated to build a legacy outside winning.
In turn, it made him unsociable and disconnected in variety of ways.
Media only made matters worse for Kobe—they vilified, demonized
and made him look as self-absorbed and self-obsessed. When all what he wanted
to be is to be the best of them all. How can one fault him for being obsessed
about winning? Wasn't this the purpose of the sport, and any other competition
for that matter, to begin with?
Kobe elevated the league's competitiveness when all other stars
are far more concern about their ghetto life at the underground hip-hop scene.
While he himself did get a share of this excessiveness, Kobe knew his purpose
is more on the basketball side of things and not on the illusory spot light as
the result of NBA popularity. He had those—the marketing, the endorsements, the
shenanigans of being popular, the controversies—but it sure as hell he made
basketball as the number one priority.
The league and the world have honored your greatness all year
long with your farewell tour and looking back, it was easy to presume how
much the league was itching to get rid of you. But you were right all along.
Your drive, your maniacal approach to even games you're not supposed to be
hardcore with had all paid off. This is how much the sentiments tilted in your
favor—by winning, by giving the best out of yourself—the absolution of the
world only reminded all of us that only through winning can we only become
legendary.
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| Photo credit to the owner |
So finally, Kobe's leaving! And at the center of it all is his and
ours refusal to let go. This is his basketball that made to become our brand of
basketball which is competitive, relentless, and pure. The type that questions
lack of integrity, and calls out mediocrity from people that existed to give
basketball a bad name. He played through the pain to remind us what basketball
meant to a lot of people that there's no room for disgracing it by not giving
it all.
Kobe is forever. His basketball is eternal.
Lights out. Mamba out.
