In players and fans alike, nobody inspired more passion than Kobe Bryant

Passion.

If there’s one word I would use to describe Kobe Bryant, that’s it.

And I don’t necessarily mean his own passion, although that’s certainly a big part of it.

But the most amazing part about Kobe wasn’t his own zest for the game, but the almost messianic passion he inspired in others. His acolytes ran the gamut across all ages, colors and creeds – and whether it was dealing with players and coaches as an executive, or dealing with fans and commenters from the media side, I’ve never encountered a more passionate population of believers.

Michael Jordan inspired awe. LeBron James, admiration. But what made Kobe so unique was the raw, heated storms of passion that emanated from his admirers. I don’t think any player in history can match it.

Anyone with a Twitter account can see the evidence pouring in, both from the actions of players on the court Sunday and their testimonials. By now you’ve already seen the tributes rolling in from players around the NBA, many of whom never even shared the court with Bryant, such as this one from Joel Embiid:

Man I don’t even know where to start?? I started playing ball because of KOBE after watching the 2010 finals. I had never watched ball before that and that finals was the turning point of my life. I WANTED TO BE LIKE KOBE. I’m so FREAKING SAD right now!!!!

RIP LEGEND

— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) January 26, 2020

From my experience in the front office, it’s amazing how typical these feelings were — even in young players.

Let me give you a prominent example. For seven years as an executive with the Grizzlies, I took part in draft interviews with aspiring players during the NBA Combine. These interviews are a bit like speed dating – you get 30 minutes with a draft candidate, and repeat this process roughly 20 times in a span of three days.

One of the questions we always asked was some variant of “who do you model your game after?” or “what players do you admire?” We’d get a few different answers – some would say Kevin Durant to Steph Curry, and a few other players who were ascendant at that particular time would also draw mentions.

But by orders of magnitude, the number one answer was “Kobe Bryant.” Point guards, centers, defensive specialists, overseas guys speaking broken English, whatever … it didn’t matter. They all gravitated to Kobe.

Keep in mind, my first interview wasn’t until 2013 – when Kobe was already 34 and three years removed from his last title. Yet that answer stayed constant through his final three seasons on overmatched Laker teams, and into retirement.

One such player interviewed with us in 2017, a year after Kobe had retired, and told us Kobe was the player he admired most. He wore No. 24 in college at the University of Oregon, and wears No. 24 to this day in the pros: Dillon Brooks, who grew up 2,500 miles from Los Angeles in another country.

Keep in mind, we were never talking to 20-year-old kids and hearing self-comparisons to, say, Tim Duncan or Paul Pierce – champion-winning contemporaries of Bryant who will soon waltz into the Hall of Fame themselves. Only Kobe’s prime resonated enough for young players to retain it so prominently years later.

From the media side, I was fortunate enough to cover Bryant’s prime seasons. The one thing that stood out, again, was the passion. Kobe’s fans were passionate in a way that dwarfed that of any other player I’ve ever covered, and it’s not a close competition. Nothing would burn a comments section to the ground more quickly than the insinuation that Kobe had done something wrong, or had a flaw, or compared unfavorably to some other player in some way.

It’s hard to explain if you weren’t there – there were Kobe fans who weren’t necessarily Lakers fans, and Lakers fans who weren’t necessarily Kobe fans (at least in the overwhelming way that Kobe fans were Kobe fans). For the former group, their sheer zeal was breathtaking to behold. Fans of other players and teams wanted to argue with you, but only Kobe fans wanted to fight you to the death. Again … the passion.

It wasn’t just the young, by the way. Coaches, execs, scouts, whatever…you could find over-the-top Kobe fans in any gathering of basketball people. We had an assistant in Memphis who would argue so fervently any time the topic of Kobe came up that it became a running joke. I’m pretty sure every other team did too.

Some of this, assuredly, was because he played for the Lakers. Yet I suspect much of the story would have played out the same even if he played in Siberia. Kids in Belgrade and Beijing weren’t copying his moves and mannerisms just because he happened to play in a larger conurbation than other players.

Even in retirement, nobody generated more passion. One can argue that the most competitive situation in the NBA this summer wasn’t the one to represent the U.S. at the FIBA World Cup … it was the one from players trying to get into Kobe’s invite-only workout camp in L.A. (I’m told at least one active NBA player showed up uninvited hoping to get in the door.) He was 41 and had never served as a coach, but it didn’t matter. Everybody wanted in.

All that, obviously, is just a mirror. All this passion he inspired in others wasn’t some random accident, but a reflection of Bryant’s own passion, something that never wavered even after twenty years and Achilles and knee injuries, right down the final minutes of his last game.

It was palpable even in retirement – the camp was a perfect example. Again, you’re seeing all the testimonials pour out now from the many younger players that Bryant had taken under his wing. I didn’t have as much day-to-day interaction with him as the beat writers, but I had enough to see what a basketball junkie he was — Bryant was comfortable holding forth on draft prospects or other players or the women’s game or who knows what else, especially later in his career as he grew more comfortable with the press.

Unfortunately, we’re seeing the depths of that passion one last time. It’s hard to imagine a passing in sports that could provoke such a widespread, overwhelming reaction. Translated into sadness, that passion will be on display for the world in the coming days.