Kobe has reached the legacy stage of his career: By J.A. Adonde

If you want to know how Kobe Bryant and the Lakers got here -- not to the 2008 NBA Finals, but here, to this harmonious place after all the turmoil -- think back to biology class, or those old nature shows.
Remember symbiosis, two different organisms that come together for a mutually beneficial partnership? Like the clown fish and the sea anemone. The clown fish protects the anemone from other fish that would eat it, while the anemone's stinging tentacles keep the clown fish's predators away. It's similar to that. Only Kobe is so complex that he's really created his own ecosystem, a web of interdependency.
A franchise has paid him maximum dollars and then held on to him, a coach has returned to him, and a fan base has kept cheering for him because they know the alternative is losing games and losing money. He has stayed because he ultimately realized it was in the best interests of his legacy and his bank account to remain a Laker. Sorry if this lacks sentiment. Nature is cold. So is the NBA.
It seems a little unfair, like there should be a punishment for calling out your teammates instead of trophies as a reward. Maybe we're guilty of thinking this is something more than it really is. Does karma factor in when a shark snatches up a fish? Or is it just a matter of the food chain?
This whole order is a testament to Bryant, of course. It's not just his talent. At this point, you could probably find a player on every roster with more raw athletic ability than his. It's his drive and determination that have made him indispensable, that have enabled him to overcome whatever adversity -- some of it self-inflicted -- that has come his way.
He has rebounded from the sexual assault charges of 2003, his role in the departures of Shaquille O'Neal and Phil Jackson in 2004 (it's doubtful he actually issued a them-or-me ultimatum, but he never did campaign for their return), the Lakers' absence from the 2005 playoffs, his second-half shutdown in Game 7 of the 2006 playoffs, and then his blasting of his bosses and teammates on the radio and Internet in the summer of 2007.
Any one of those events had the potential to be permanent career ballast. They could have defined him, or even broken him. Instead Bryant keeps floating away.
It takes perseverance just to make it to the NBA, Lakers guard Derek Fisher said, "And to play at the level that he's played at his career, perseverance is like waking up every day. When he wakes up every day, he's persevered, carrying the expectations, the fanfare, and the good and the bad that comes with Kobe Bryant."
Bryant always maintained a fast path to redemption: Keep getting better at what he does best. It started in 2005-06, when he kept topping himself, with once-in-a-generation feats like outscoring Dallas 62-61 through three quarters and dropping 81 on the Toronto Raptors. In the 2006-07 season, he got on a run of four consecutive 50-point games.
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AP Photo/Mark J. TerrillT
Kobe has finally learned to trust -- and love -- his teammates.
This past season, his teammates did their best to keep pace with him, then Pau Gasol was gifted to him. The Lakers won the most competitive Western Conference race we've seen. Bryant was rewarded with the MVP. The Lakers are back in the Finals.
See, that's all it takes to get back in the fans' good graces. Score, then win. Better than a bouquet of roses. Cheaper than a $4 million ring.
And here's the thing we've learned about Bryant: It really is that easy for him. He is close to mastering the game. In the fourth quarter of the first and fifth games against San Antonio, he did whatever he wanted against the defending champions.
The beauty of his game now isn't in the flights to the hoop, it's in the little things. Watch the way he can create space without so much as a dribble. All it takes is a jab step or a wriggle of the shoulders and his defender backs off enough for Bryant to fire up a jump shot. Or look at the way he gets to his chosen spots. In Game 5 it was the right corner of the lane by the free-throw line. Dribble-dribble-dribble, hit the spot, pull up, gotcha. Dribble, spin, fall away, swish.
Bryant was a hit with Lakers fans long before he reached this skill level, back when he was just a dazzling rookie. It didn't hurt that he had a flashy game and that he arrived in Los Angeles as a teenager in a particularly youth-obsessed time that coincided with the rise of the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. But it was his industriousness that resonated with fans the longest and helped him win the battle with Shaquille O'Neal for the public's hearts.
The most overlooked aspect of L.A. is its hardworking nature. The movie business isn't all red carpets, it's also 18-hour days on the set. And all those lawns and swimming pools don't mow and clean themselves.
Hard workers on the local teams have always been appreciated. That's how Kurt Rambis became a cult hero among the more glamorous players in the 1980s. And it's why Bryant became so beloved in his day.
Winning always helps. L.A. is a town that adopted the Raiders, which is like picking up a hitchhiker a mile from a prison. But they were only a year removed from winning the Super Bowl when they got to L.A., and they won a Super Bowl their second year there. So there are still people who miss them more than a decade after they returned to Oakland.
Bryant was even more embedded. He had three championships worth of equity (added points for wearing the jersey of Lakers icon Jerry West to the first parade).
Even though he was willing to abandon his fans, to take his act elsewhere after all their years of support, they didn't abandon him. Some booing on opening night was the only punishment, dropped as soon as the Lakers got back into the win column, quickly replaced by chants of "M-V-P!"
They'd already sent in their season-ticket deposits by the time Bryant came out with his trade request. They didn't pay the highest average price in the NBA to watch Sasha Vujacic. For every fan who was outraged by Bryant (most of the e-mails they sent me began, "I've been a Lakers fan since they had Elgin Baylor and Jerry West and played in the Sports Arena"), two more took his side and blamed an incompetent front office for driving him to this point.
Management felt betrayed. Hadn't the Lakers stood by him during the sexual assault allegation, to the point of paying for his flights to Colorado? Didn't it give him as many dollars as it could, 136.4 million of them, even while his legal status was still uncertain?
But management didn't let its emotions overrule it business sense. Owner Jerry Buss absorbed the pain of a player he once likened to a son, turning around and calling him an "idiot." He and the Lakers had learned their lesson from trading Shaq in haste, realizing that even under calm circumstances NBA teams never get better by trading superstars.
"I probably thought like everybody else, they were going to have to trade him," said Nico Harrison, a Nike director of sports marketing who works closely with Bryant. "To Mitch's credit, they didn't. I also thought it would be tough trading Kobe, to make it work, the basketball business side. How do you get value? Even though they might have to, I thought it would be difficult. How many players add up to Kobe? How do you pack the stadium in Los Angeles without Kobe?"
In NBA circles, the further you got away from the epicenter of the Kobe story, the less people believed he would be traded. It just didn't make sense for the Lakers, not with Bryant's opt-out clause still two seasons away.
Likewise, for Bryant, skipping out on the season or even training camp wasn't a viable option. If he did that, he would lose his greatest asset in the minds of the public. As Harrison said, "Whether you didn't like him or you did like him, after a while, he kind of wins you over because you see his dedication every time he laces them up."
You can't win anything if you don't play. You also won't make a good salesman for the shoe company that stood by you through everything. So Bryant would have to find a way to make it with the Lakers, just as they had to find a way to make it work with him.
As a phenomenon, this was no more remarkable than bringing back Phil Jackson a year after they separated and Jackson put out a book spilling the organization's backstage conflicts (including his "psychological war" with Bryant and his desire to trade him). No longer at the top of the league, the Lakers needed the buzz of a big-name hire, and there was none bigger than Jackson. Jackson knew the Lakers would never be hopeless as long as they had Bryant.
Bryant had to realize that Jackson and his triangle offense (which gives him more space and freedom from double-teams) were the best fit for him, and is adhering to the offense more than ever.
"He's always embraced it from the standpoint of liking it," said Tex Winter, the offense's creator. "But oftentimes he's been impulsive and hasn't stayed with the principles of the offense. He has a lot more faith in his teammates now."
Bryant has said he has more trust in Jackson now, values his advice more, and has gone so far as to say he plays to please him. Jackson said he and Bryant have a "syncing of the minds."
In retrospect, none of this should come as a surprise. Look at the natural order of things and go with the path that fits. Dollars over egos, winning over personal pride.
Lakers fans need Bryant to make their emotional and financial investment worthwhile. Bryant needs a successful team to achieve his goals, and it would make the story better if he stays in the same uniform. The Lakers need Bryant to make them viable and valuable. The league needs the Lakers to drive TV ratings.
There are still targets for everyone involved. The Lakers are three championships away from overtaking Boston's league mark of 16. Jackson needs another coaching championship to break free from his tie with Celtics legend Red Auerbach (each has nine). Bryant is four rings away from topping Michael Jordan's total.
Inevitably there will be more drama along the way. Always is when Bryant's involved. But now we're all up to speed on why the past went like it did. All that's left is how the future story will be told.
"I told him the other day, when he got the MVP, that was the saga," Lakers assistant Craig Hodges said. "And now we're in the legacy."

Fiendin' for a ring: By Scoop Jackson

There's a term used in the community called "thirsty."
It means what you think it means, but it's now being used in different contexts. Only to make a point of the extremes to which some people will go to get what they want. More severely, what they need.
Kobe Bryant, for lack of more sophisticated terminology, is thirsty.
His thirst for another NBA title is that of an amplitude we may not have ever seen before. Not in sports, business, crime, corruption or politics. Keeping it community: He's thirsty like a fiend.


AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
Kobe Bryant needs to win a title without Shaq.Now I understand how Bill Maher it is to use a dependency as an analogy to describe Kobe's mental range, scope and capacity and how wrong it probably is to compare "the greatest player of his generation" (as TNT labeled him to promote the Western Conference finals) to Ashy Larry or Bubbles, but it fits. Like disloyalty and Scott McClellan. In technical terms, Kobe is an obligate anti-carnivore.
This thirst -- whether he admits or denies or realizes it -- comes from a needing to do this without Shaquille O'Neal. It's a needing to come as close to Jordan and Jordan's legacy as any other basketball player alive right now … and maybe in the future. It's a needing to prove to himself what he's known and told himself ever since he challenged Brian Shaw to play one-on-one at age 11.
Redemption, chip on his shoulder, edge, anger. None apply. There's a fiend-like component inside Kobe that exceeds all of the above labels that no athlete in any other sport possesses, and the closer he gets to attaining another championship ring, the more impossible it is going to be for anyone -- or any one team -- to deny him. His want has gone into an almost dependence stage of validation, of recognition, of being the last man standing. There is no player or collection of players on Boston's squad -- no player(s) on any team that the Lakers have faced throughout the playoffs, no entire 12-man roster in the league, to be honest -- that can match his need to win this championship.
A compulsion to prove to himself -- and us -- that he's been right all along is what's at the center of this. Right that he's not a bad guy, a prima donna, arrogant, aloof or antisocial. Right that he is engaging and personable. Right that he might be the best basketball player your kids will ever see. Just as he was right about publicly forcing the Lakers to make some roster moves, in every fabric of his being he has to be right about how he sees himself and what he sees himself as. Even though he said in the ESPN Sunday Conversation that he was comfortable being the No. 2 guy while winning rings with Shaq, and in so many words to please stop the Jordan comparisons because there will never be another ("He's a different person … the greatest ever … let me do me …. Thank you!"), those who have watched his evolution -- his ascendance -- know better. He tries to cover it up in interviews and private conversations, but once he gets in "black" Jack Bauer mode it becomes clear as Claritin. He's on something extra. Something that once he calls it quits about five years and three more rings from now, he's going to need some serious form of detox to get out of his system.
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AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
Does this look like the face of a man who will let anything get between him and the championship?To everyone else, this is about basketball. To him … this is about survival. His.
It's the life of a fiend. Trapped inside the shell of a basketball player who almost had the game taken from him. The fact that he could have been responsible for not being able to show the world this stage of his life probably still eats at his mind. It might be what ultimately drives him. Maybe it's something deeper, something that revealed itself at birth. Who knows? And the beauty, he'll never -- not even in Spike Lee's documentary about him -- be the one to tell.
The Celtics are thirsty for that ring, too, but they aren't dying of thirst. Which essentially is the difference between Kobe and them -- maybe Kobe and maybe all other human beings. And until KG, Truth and Jesus (anyone: Tiger, Roger, Peyton, LeBron, Kimbo, etc.) can equate death with what it will mean to not win a championship on these terms, until they can make themselves believe -- as Kobe has -- that their survival depends on getting this ring, then their collective and collaborative effort may not be enough.
Winning is the difference between a mission and an addiction. The Celtics are on a season-long mission against a dude that for the last five years has forced an addiction on himself to win. Winning substantiates this dude. It eliminates every doubt that may have somehow crept into his überconfident mind about his ability to carry and lead a team at the highest level of this sport. He has tasted something his competition (outside of Sam Cassell and James Posey) has never tasted, is hooked on something they've yet to sample. Addiction does not come by osmosis, whether it's meth, crack, coke, chocolate, caffeine, nicotine, sex, gambling, drinking or body art. To feel what it feels like to want to experience that same feeling again, you would have had to have it in your system before. The power of that feeling always makes those who reach that level of necessity more powerful than those who wish they knew what it felt like.
Kobe has that feeling. The others don't. And he is still thirsty.
As those who are close to the game and those who still hate him despite what he's done since the playoffs started will testify, you can't beat a fiend at his own game when his game is basketball and basketball is all he has.
Which leaves only one thing left that Kobe Bryant can do: Obey his thirst.

With the past behind him, Kobe has peace in the present: By Stephen A. Smith

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- Just 11 hours after capturing the first Western Conference championship of his own -- not the ones he shared while playing Robin to Shaquille O'Neal's Batman from 2000 to 2002 -- Kobe Bryant sauntered into the posh Island Hotel wearing a sleeveless gym shirt, a champion's swagger and a smile that had "I told ya'll" written all over it.
Bryant stood just four wins away from capturing his fourth world title, from emphatically cementing his legacy as one of the greatest hoopsters ever. But of equal significance: his knowledge that regardless of how his Los Angeles Lakers fare against the Boston Celtics, the criticisms and questions have officially come to an end.
Shaq's sidekick? Over.
Too selfish to lead? Please.
The game's best player? Without a doubt!
A champion once again? That's the plan.
"It's been a long, hard road," Bryant said, a day after his 39-point performance helped close out the San Antonio Spurs in five games and nearly a year to the day after demanding to be traded.
"The Spurs are tough, man. They definitely didn't make it any easier. But I guess for me, it's supposed to be that way. I guess I wouldn't have appreciated where I'm at right now as much as I do if I didn't have to endure all the things I endured.
"We've still got work to do, unfinished business to handle. But I'm not going to lie. This feels sweet right now. Real sweet."
It should.
It's one thing to win. It's another thing entirely to do it after overcoming an offseason of discontent in which you asked to leave Los Angeles, a request fueled by your concerns about getting older, your teammates' talent and your fractured relationship with the Lakers, who -- in your eyes -- lied to you about rebuilding this franchise and left you hanging as the scapegoat in the aftermath of Shaq's departure.
Bryant is quick to say, "That's the past now. I don't even talk or think about that stuff anymore."
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Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images
Gary Payton and Karl Malone didn't work out in LA, but Mitch Kupchak has since delivered Pau Gasol.
The fact is, far too many of us still do.
It's time for us all to move on, too.
Last May, when Bryant said the Lakers weren't doing a thing to help him, he was right. Prior to this season, the only thing GM Mitch Kupchak had to show for all his team-building efforts was a pair of former superstars, Karl Malone and Gary Payton, whose declining skills were just enough to help the Lakers make an appearance in the Finals in 2004. Presently retired, they now await their inductions into the Hall of Fame.
Once Shaq split for South Beach, the L.A. story centered on Kobe Bryant's pounding the hardwood as a virtual solo act, being vilified and accused of everything from sexual assault to selfishness.
The hits kept coming: Shaq raised questions about Bryant's involvement in his departure … and the Lakers lost games. A book authored by Phil Jackson labeled Bryant "uncoachable" … and the Lakers lost more games. Shaq won a championship in Miami, but Bryant, despite all of his greatness as a player, became a modern-day pariah on and off the court, stigmatized as someone who surrendered the wealth of future championships for the glory of individual scoring titles (two).
And then this season arrived. As did Pau Gasol.
"Like I said, that's all in the past now," Bryant said. "The fact is, regardless of anything, I didn't like the direction we were going in. But it's also a fact that Mitch Kupchak did a great job getting Pau Gasol here.
"My teammates have done a great job of elevating their games. I shouldn't even call them teammates. We're like brothers because we're all that close. So nothing else matters right now. The past is the past."
Can't blame Bryant for focusing on the present one bit. After years of being maligned -- even being booed at the Lakers' home opener this season -- he averaged 28.3 points, locked up the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference playoffs, captured league MVP honors, catapulted the Lakers to the NBA Finals, shut up the naysayers and resurrected a once-pristine image.
"He's the leader on this team," Bryant's backcourt mate, Derek Fisher said recently. "To see the growth, the maturation, that's taken place over the last few years is something special to witness. He's come a long way."
Call it redemption. But redemption isn't a word you'll ever hear come out of Bryant's mouth.
To admit such a thing would be to acknowledge that he fell from grace. That he manufactured the disintegration of a dynasty, leading to those three miserable seasons in which the Lakers, second to only the Celtics in championship trophies, were reduced to mere spectators.
As far as Bryant is concerned, none of us knows the whole truth, and we're not about to. At least not from him.
"It's called moving forward, bro," Bryant declares. "That's what I'm doing. Life is so beautiful right now."
Perhaps Bryant won't look back because he doesn't have to. His plan is to let his game make the only historical statement that matters.
"He should," said Shaquille O'Neal, reaching out to offer a few words about Bryant this past weekend. "He's been great all year. He was great in the playoffs and he's showing everyone what he's made of. He's on the verge of being the latest great one with four rings.
"He's come a long way. All I can say is, I'm happy for him. And I'm proud of him."
Stephen A. Smith is a columnist for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine.