It was a repackaging that not even Madison Avenue's biggest image spinners could have created. An athlete, once lauded for talent and marketability, is cast down among the wicked, wretched and New York Knicks after legal troubles and poor team play.
Castigated at every turn for selfishness and arrogance, a collision with destiny pulls the former castoff from the mire of loathing and onto the shoulders of the righteous where he bathes in the golden light of redemption.
Had he been filmed weeping over his mother, or had given up his dreams to raise the children of his long lost sister who had died while feeding the hungry in El Salvador, he’d be a sure fire subject for a Lifetime original movie. As it is, Kobe Bryant has discarded the condemnation of his scarlet letter and in its place has added two others that brought admiration where once was shame.
In a matter of two weeks, Bryant went from selfish NBA star to a hard-working patriot who even his teammates could not help gushing over. And it wasn’t just mouth service by compliant underlings worried about ball distribution. Kobe outplayed, outworked and out-inspired every other member of team USA while completing a trickier road to redemption than the one facing the world’s greatest basketball powerhouse.
Even Celtics fans had to be impressed seeing the game’s best player reduced to a wide-eyed spectator on the medal stand whose joyful smile reflected not the me-first attitude of the NBA, but the accomplishment of something truly meaningful.
For many, the first real evidence that we were seeing a different Kobe came during an interview with former Chris Collinsworth of NBC, who asked Kobe about his first moments with his Olympic jersey. Totally out of character from the Bryant we thought we knew, the Laker guard said, “I had goosebumps. I actually just looked at it for a while. I just held it there and I laid it across my bed and I just stared at it for a few minutes just because as a kid growing up, this is the ultimate, ultimate in basketball.”
Such comments could be easy enough to disregard as proper PC positioning if it weren’t for the effort and attitude he showed throughout the games and even in practice. If Bryant was acting, it was an Academy Award-worthy performance.
Asked about the source of his patriotism, Kobe spoke of having “… a sense of pride that you have that you say our country is the best.”
Of course, the good folks at Fox & Friends used Collinsworth’s question about whether it was cool to be patriotic in this day and age to blast the interviewer and to reference the concern of certain bloggers worries over what “liberal NBC” airs before lauding Kobe. Co-host Gretchen Carlson yelled out, “What a stupid question!” and said Kobe “took him (Collinsworth) to task,” even though there was no hint of confrontation or correction in Bryant’s response.
One has to wonder if Carlson and her cohorts were as supportive when Bryant was facing sexual assault charges or if they would have been so kind had he campaigned for Hillary Clinton. Maybe they would. After all they are Fair and Balanced, but not very successful at quarter bounce or playful banter as their Aug. 27 “After the Show” Show showed.
Another interesting look at the Last Transformation of Kobe can be found in the Nike sponsored documentary, Road to Redemption. Not only can Bryant be seen simply abusing a teammate by repeatedly picking his pocket, but that he was as able to take orders as give them out. The ease with which he interacts with teammates makes his criticism of Lakers’ teammates seem strangely out of character.
Whether the purity of the new Bryant will last into the upcoming NBA season remains to be seen. But for the time being, Bryant has remade his image — not through carefully orchestrated interviews but with action and responsibility. Love him or loathe him, you have to be impressed.
smurray@midweek.com
While neither NBA commissioner David Stern nor his NCAA counterpart Myles Brandt will speak of it publicly by name, the idea of adding a second year to the NBA’s holding period is something both want and need.
Speaking only of a “wide-ranging initiative” for youth basketball at the NCAA finals a week ago, the heads of the world’s two biggest basketball corporations danced around the subject that would save the NBA from its own wasteful economic practices and the NCAA from forsaking any remaining academic credibility.
Neither revelation is likely to occur anytime soon, since the NBA must get the OK from the players union, which has a deal through 2011, and because the NCAA has traditionally cowered to the pressure of the big-time institutions that generate most of the organization’s income.
Since the NBA changed its eligibility rule, college basketball has become nothing more than a weigh station for high school hot shots with no interest in the academic pursuits the NCAA supposedly mandates from its so-called student athletes. It is the height of hypocrisy to suggest that an athlete can make progress toward a degree when the entire intended commitment lasts no longer than six months, and in which only the least possible academic effort is made for half that time. Yet that’s exactly what the NCAA has allowed to happen.
No sooner had the season finished when the great annual exodus of players resumed its flood away from college campuses with declarations of entering the NBA draft. The departure of O.J. Mayo — who was an obvious one-and-done NCAA rent-a-player while still a senior at Huntington High School — will surely not help USC’s graduation numbers that boasted a 29 percent success rate, according to the most recent NCAA study that tracked graduation rates over a four-year period ending in 2000. Neither shall Texas A&M’s DeAndre Jordan (40 percent), LSU’s Anthony Randolph (38 percent) or Arizona’s Jerryd Bayless, whose institute of higher learning has managed to graduate only 25 percent of its male basketball players even after its head coach, Lute Olsen, years ago publicly denounced such players as not worth the resources spent on recruiting. The numbers for African-American athletes at the tops schools are even more disturbing.
Richard E. Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, reported in Street & Smiths SportsBusiness Journal that “61 percent of the men’s tournament teams graduated 70 percent or more of their white basketball student-athletes, while only 30 percent graduated 70 percent or more of their African-American basketball student athletes.”
Not that any of this had to happen.
While many coaches and athletic directors cowardly claim that participating in such academically irresponsible practices are necessary evils of athletic success, or that these decisions are made on a case-by-case basis and that they recruit these players with the idea that they will stick around for a couple of years, the truth is that bowing to ever-demanding boosters and prima dona 18-year-olds lowers the academic credibility of the institution while having little effect on the schools’ ability to win.
Final Four contender North Carolina managed to get 86 percent of its players into caps and gowns. Indiana graduated 78 percent. Mid-major standout and No. 8 Xavier hit 90 percent, Davidson 91, while 2006 and 2007 champion Florida scored a perfect 100.
Recent academic initiatives — which include the Academic Progress Rate program that punishes schools by taking away scholarships — have raised athletic graduation rates as a whole to a number greater than those of the regular student body. But with mens basketball at an NCAA low 61 percent and some schools such as Florida A&M graduating a pathetic 17 percent of its players, significant work remains.
Unlike the NBA, the NCAA is free to act unilaterally without the approval of other organizations. By requiring a minimum of a two-year commitment, it would be able to better fake academic concern while keeping star players on board for bigger TV ratings and alumni support. Some concessions by the universities would have to be made. Where currently scholarships are renewed on a yearly basis, schools also would have to commit at least two years to the athlete.
Opponents of such a deal may argue that requiring greater commitments from the athletes would allow the bigger programs to stockpile players while lessening the chances of the mid-majors. But the number of freshman-to-the-NBA types is small and the four-year deep programs at smaller schools would still allow for tournament success.
There comes a time when every general must dismount and call it a career. For some it comes with music, bunting and speeches while others just fade away or are taken out by the enemy. After 902 wins and three national titles, the most outspoken field boss since Patton has stepped away from his protected outpost in Texas to the cheers and jeers of nearly everyone who has seen a college basketball game in the last four decades.
Bob Knight could have continued. He won 64 percent of his games at Texas Tech and enjoyed steadfast support from the athletic department and within the administration even if the seats at the United Spirit Arena weren't always full. Even his detractors seemed harder to come by as if they had finally decided the ornery old coach had won and that they had better things to protest. But continuing his tenure was just not going to happen. He had contemplated it a year ago but was talked out of it. This time it was for good.
In opposition to his fans, players, coaches probably even himself, the man who never walked away from a fight while starting most of them, got old. After 67 years of bull headed behavior, he has had enough. His son, Pat, now the Red Raiders' head coach, said he became concerned about his father's health after seeing what happened to former Wake Forest head coach Skip Prosser who last year died of a heart attack in his office at the age of 56. Upon entering his father's office after their win over then No. 10 Texas A&M, Pat did not see the toughest man to ever roam the sidelines, but a tired and beaten man too exhausted to enjoy the victory.
No matter which side of the fence you sit on, the Generals' 42 year reign is not one to be forgotten easily. In every year at every stop he has inspired, frightened, humored, disparaged, cussed out and embraced everyone who came near. Even the writers, who Knight once famously said were “one or two steps above prostitution” hung on his every word and returned for more abuse and laughs. And while Knight will continue to be eulogized by his friends and admirers for his uncompromising standards to education and playing within the rules, others will chose to focus on the temper, the language and the hypocrisy of the man who demanded respect but far too often refused to give it. Unfortunately, this is the legacy that will follow him for some time.
Had Knight just exhibited an ounce of the control that he demanded from players and employees, he wouldn't have been forced to leave the game from the basketball wastelands of the NCAA. With all his talent and dedication, he should have left with all the trappings of royalty. Wrapped in Indiana red with a parade in his honor attended by the masses of the basketball crazy state, the coach who led Army to a 102-50 record and the Hoosiers with a .733 winning percentage should have, could have, left the game with the universal adoration reserved for the likes of John Wooden and Dean Smith. But he just wouldn't allow it.
The man who taught selfless commitment on the court was a bully and a hypocrite who became inflamed at the short comings of others while refusing to see any fault within. In a world of constant change, he stubbornly held on to a style of coaching that had long ago vanished. It is for this reason, among others, why Knight has not been a coach of consequence in a dozen years.
Oh, sure he could always teach the game. He still can. Even though his neolithic style of coaching has ensured a complete lack of top talent at Tech or in the closing years of his tenure at Indiana, Knight still won.
Brilliantly talented and flawed, to supporters he is an example of all that is right with coaching. To his detractors he is evil incarnate. Neither is a correct depiction of the complicated man who's history could have been written by Sophocles and not John Feinstein. In time, Knight will be remembered for his accomplishments rather than his shortcomings. Memory has the tendency to recall the special and ignore the unpleasant with Ty Cobb being the exception as the only coach or athlete whose reputation has grown worse with time.
The best thing that may be said about Knight's retirement is that it didn't come in a fit of uncontrolled rage such as the one that took down former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes.
Not that he wasn't given ample opportunities to do so.
