The Same Language

IT'S A STORY that's been told and retold a thousand times: Kobe was the black kid who grew up in Italy and then the Italian kid who moved to Wynnewood -- an affluent suburb of Philly. He was a loner who struggled to belong to any community or to have friends. He didn't know how to be black or white.

It's a clean storyline. Way too clean.

"I had all this anger inside of me that I hadn't really let out," he says about it in Muse. "I'm just going to delay the eruption, and then use it to my benefit and do what I loved to do, which is play the game. Once I discovered that, everything about the game changed. No matter what, I understood that I could lose myself in the game."

Kobe has friends. He just always chooses basketball over them.

In January, Kobe Inc. trademarked the phrase "Friends Hang Sometimes, Banners Hang Forever."

He worked on that phrase for a long time. It's his life, his legend, shouldn't he be the one profiting off of it?

"If somebody's not obsessed with what they do," he says. "We don't speak the same language."

His friends are more like kindred spirits, hence the #differentanimalsamebeast he tweets to people he thinks share his ruthless dedication to greatness. Last fall when I was covering Ronda Rousey in Australia, he asked me to get a note of encouragement to her after she lost. They've met once or twice but don't know each other well. His message?

Four Takes On Kobe

"Get your ass up. Her getting her ass knocked down is going to do more for the culture, more for the human spirit, than her going her entire career undefeated. People need to see how she handles that, how she deals with that."

It's not easy to get past his slogans. "I've studied advertising for years," he says. If he'd gone to college, that's what he would have majored in. Instead, he says, "I wrote 90 percent of my own commercials."

When real life doesn't fit into pithy tag lines or 90-second commercials, Kobe shuts it out. He doesn't believe in cognitive dissonance. It's not productive.

For instance, Kobe hasn't spoken to his parents in nearly three years. Not since 2013, when they tried to auction off his high school memorabilia without his consent.

"Our relationship is shit," he says. "I say [to them], 'I'm going to buy you a very nice home, and the response is 'That's not good enough'?" he says. "Then you're selling my shit?"

His parents issued a statement after lawyers worked out a settlement allowing them to auction six items of memorabilia totaling $500,000, "We regret our actions and statements related to the Kobe Bryant auction memorabilia," the statement from Joe and Pamela Bryant read. "We apologize for any misunderstanding and unintended pain we may have caused our son and appreciate the financial support that he has provided to us over the years."

Kobe says his sisters, Sharia and Shaya, have learned to accept that Kobe has removed money from his relationships with them. "They're very smart, college-educated [women]," Kobe says. "I'm really proud of them. They were able to get their own jobs, get their own lives, take care of themselves. Now they have a better sense of self, of who they are as people, instead of being resentful because they were relying on me.

"It was tough for me to do," he says. There's pain in his voice, not anger. "But it's something you have to do, something you have to be very strong about."

Growing up, Kobe followed his father, Joe "Jellybean" Bryant, everywhere. He'd sleep with his basketball clothes on so Joe couldn't say no when he'd ask to go to practice with him. But as Kobe grew older, and learned of the disappointments of his father's NBA career, it was harder to relate. Joe was a 6-foot-9 forward with the skill set of a guard. That would be en vogue in today's NBA, but in the Eastern Conference of the late 1970s, he was miscast as a defensive specialist. According to Joe, his whole career would've been different if he'd been in a different system and able to play on the perimeter like Magic Johnson.

"When I hear those things," Kobe says. "I don't really understand them."

Why should the whims of fate -- which system he played in -- determine the success of a man's career? How could his father accept that? There is always a way to bend things the way you want them.

For the first few years of his NBA career, Kobe empowered his parents to make decisions and guide his career. Joe wanted his son to play in Los Angeles because of all the marketing opportunities. Then they moved out to L.A. to live with him. Byron Scott remembers Pam picking Kobe up at the airport after road trips.

In hindsight, the breakup seems inevitable. In Kobe's mind, he would never accept disappointment on the court like his father did. He couldn't. Not if he wanted to be a legend.

Remember those four air balls Kobe shot in a playoff game against the Utah Jazz at the end of his rookie season in 1997?

As soon as the Lakers' plane landed back in Los Angeles, Kobe went to the gym at a high school near his house in Pacific Palisades and shot jump shots through the night and into the next day. He wasn't beating himself up for missing those shots. He was working on getting stronger. He'd missed those shots because his legs were too scrawny, not because he lacked nerve. "I was like, 'Who do you think you're talking about here?'" said Del Harris, who coached the Lakers that season. "Confidence was never a problem for him."

That summer, director Spike Lee offered Kobe the role of Jesus Shuttlesworth in the movie "He Got Game." The role was perfect -- top high school basketball player must choose between getting his estranged father's prison sentence reduced by playing college ball at the governor's alma mater or going to the school of his choice. Just like Shuttlesworth, Kobe made his own decision. He passed on the role so he could spend his summer in the gym. Lee cast Ray Allen instead.

"We were kids," said his high school friend, Kevin Sanchez. "We still listened to our parents back then."

In 2000, Kobe released a corny rap song -- "K.O.B.E.," featuring Tyra Banks -- that absolutely bombed. He was dropped from his record label soon after. Only embarrassing YouTube videos of Kobe performing at All-Star Weekend in a leopard print hat and leather suit remain of his rap career. Kobe rarely speaks of this time in his life anymore. In Muse, he laughed about the awful song. The only reason it was included in the film is because he met his future wife, then 17-year-old Vanessa Laine, on the set of a neighboring music video shoot.

There's an entire mythological universe I've created. - Kobe Bryant

"I was like super shocked when he came out with that K.O.B.E song," Sanchez said. "That really wasn't him."

Sanchez was one of the best rappers in Philadelphia back in the 1990s. He'd hang with Kobe at lunch, after school, working with him on his rhymes. They'd find battles on South Street, in the Gallery (an underground mall), at Temple University or in this barbershop on N. 54th and Wynnefield Avenue. Kobe's rap name was "The Eighth Man."

"I was a battle MC. I hunted every top MC in the city and battled them," Sanchez said. "He'd come with me and watch me just destroy everyone."

After high school, they started a rap group called Cheizaw, signed a record deal with Sony and spoke on the phone almost every day. "We'd freestyle for hours. He could beatbox," Sanchez said. "I remember when he blocked [Michael] Jordan's shot. He was going crazy. He called up and was like, 'I need to be charged up. I need to freestyle for like 45 minutes."

Sanchez never made it to Los Angeles with the rest of Cheizaw, though. He was arrested and convicted of armed robbery. The conviction was later overturned, but then that decision was reversed by a higher court. Sanchez served five years.

Sanchez said he's thankful Kobe supported him by paying for his lawyer and paying for another friend to travel to Philadelphia to testify in court as a character witness. And that he doesn't hold it against him, that Kobe did not testify on Sanchez's behalf.

One, the people managing his career didn't want him besmirching his appeal. This was 1998. Back when athletes didn't make political statements or say anything that might offend the silent majority. They didn't talk about things like race or class or violence or crime. If you wanted to be a crossover star, you needed to leave Philly behind.

And two, the NBA and its corporate sponsors were growing increasingly uncomfortable with anything resembling the inner city, including players. They cringed at Allen Iverson's cornrows and rap sheet. By 2005, the league would enact a dress code that banned clothes associated with hip-hop culture.

So no, it was not a good look for the league's youngest superstar, the heir apparent to Michael Jordan as a player and as a corporate shill, to be showing up in a Philadelphia courthouse to vouch for his high school rapper friend who'd been accused of armed robbery.

A few years ago, Sanchez saw Kobe when Lower Merion renamed its high school gym after him. Sanchez didn't have tickets, so he waited outside. When Kobe walked out of the gym, he caught Sanchez's eye and called out to him, "Hey, Sand."

"I talked to him for a brief second," Sanchez said. "He had his security guard there. Then a bunch of fans came over. ...I didn't get mad. I know how busy he is. Another one of our friends saw him for like 20 minutes at 4 in the morning. That's the only opening he had."

"I think basketball just took over him," Sanchez said. "I don't even think he can be close with people when he's so into basketball."

The more attachments Kobe shed, the more powerful he became. The Lakers won three straight titles from 2000 to 2002. Kobe became their closer -- O'Neal never could shoot free throws -- and together they became one of the greatest one-two punches in the history of the NBA. The championships ahead of them seemed endless -- if they stayed together.

The Bottom of the Ocean

THEN CAME COLORADO.

The case was so atomic that most people who know anything about Kobe Bryant instantly recognize the reference to the 2003 sexual assault allegation made against him by a woman who worked at a hotel in Edwards, Colorado. Bryant was arrested. The case never went to trial as the woman declined to testify, and the charges were later dropped. For many people, Colorado remains a troubling section of his life story that never digests.

Kobe settled a civil suit for an undisclosed sum in which he apologized but did not admit guilt. Neither party may discuss details of the case.

The world shunned him. All but one of Kobe's sponsors dropped him. He'd alienated his teammates when it was revealed that he had told police details of O'Neal's extramarital affairs.

He kept playing basketball, though. The Lakers helped pay for planes for him to fly back and forth from Los Angeles to Colorado for legal proceedings. He'd spend a day in court, fly back to L.A., ride in a van with a recumbent bike in the back of it so he could warm up on the drive to the game, then average 24 points a night on a team that was favored to win another NBA title.

The waitress at the Majestic Grille asks whether he would like more coffee. It's an opening for him to change the subject or get up from the table. Kobe takes the coffee. And begins to talk about Vanessa.

Kobe had already apologized. He cried and begged her to stay with him a thousand times over. But no amount of money, tears or words is enough to erase the pain of publicly humiliating your wife and the mother of your 6-month old child.

He had hurt her, badly, and she was angry. One day before a game against the Orlando Magic in March, they got into another huge fight.

"She'd taken all my clothes and thrown them into the street," Kobe says. He only had a motorcycle at the time, so he just had to leave his stuff in the street.

"I show up to the arena, and I don't really feel like playing," he says. "I'm just fucking out of it."

The Magic were awful that year, but Tracy McGrady was on that team, and every time he and Kobe played, people liked to debate who was better. In another life, that would've got Kobe going. He'd be raging over the chance to assert his superiority. But his marriage was in shambles. And in the first half, he played like it.

Kobe scores one point in the first half. McGrady has 21. The Magic are beating the Lakers. He's finally at the bottom of the ocean.

"I remember sitting in the locker room at halftime and saying to myself, 'You know what, you may lose everything in life because of the situation that you put yourself in,'" Kobe recalls.

"'You may lose your family, your freedom, but I'll be damned if I lose basketball. Because this shit I can control.'

"Sitting in that locker room, that's where I made the decision, fuck it. I can't control any of that other stuff. But I'm going to take these motherfuckers out."

He scored 24 points in the fourth quarter and locked down McGrady, and the Lakers won in overtime.

"After the game, I go back to the house and pick all my shit up," he says. "I take my motorcycle and go to a motel."

He says he was different after that night. In Muse, he describes the transformation as his personality splitting in two: Kobe -- a flawed human with problems who still had to deal with them. And the Black Mamba -- a serpent, conjured at the bottom of the ocean, who channeled his fear and anger into destruction on the basketball court.

Besides basketball, Vanessa and his daughter [he had only one at the time] were all he had left to hold on to. "Life was no different than basketball," he says. "Once I made that connection, I'll fight for my family all the way to the end."

In his book "The Last Season," Phil Jackson wrote of that game against Orlando, "The first game home after a road trip is always an adjustment, with players torn between their personal and professional responsibilities. They must meet the needs of a wife or a child, who have been waiting anxiously for their return."

Read that again.

Now think of what Kobe's family was doing. His wife wasn't waiting anxiously for his return. She was kicking him out and throwing his stuff in the street.

McGrady had been close to Kobe since they first came into the league. He'd even lived with Kobe and his parents for a week before his rookie season.

Did he notice anything different about Kobe that night?

"He wasn't as aggressive in the first half," McGrady says. "That I remember."

I tell him the story of what really happened before the game. McGrady is stunned.

"It was that game?" McGrady says. "Oh, man.

"Listen, I knew this cat was insane. He fucking went through that trial and was coming back and forth and was still fucking going nuts. That right there, I knew he was obsessed with basketball, like this was his fucking life."

The Joker is Laughing

AFTER THE SEASON ENDED, Jackson wrote that Kobe was "un-coachable" and revealed that he'd urged Lakers management to trade him.

But not only did Jackson coach Kobe again but they won two more championships together.

I ask how he got over being called "un-coachable."

"I didn't," Kobe says.

"Wait, you didn't get over it, or you never had a conversation?"

"Why should I have dealt with him?" he says, as if he can't believe I still don't get it.

"I think that's the part that really drove him crazy. I just said, 'Phil, listen. You don't have to play that shit with me. I understand what you're doing. But I don't need that,'" Kobe says.

"He kept pushing buttons. He kept getting frustrated. More and more frustrated."

There's no smirk as he says this. "Do you think he was trying to control you?"

"Yeah," Kobe says. "Because that's his job as a coach. To try and manage a team."

He's left an opening. "So what you're saying is that nobody can control you."

"Well, no," he says. "Thinking about it now. Yes, I am un-coachable, because you don't have to manage me."

He says he has a "beautiful" relationship with Jackson now. He has learned from the Zen Master's emphasis on staying in the moment. This year, he says, he took Jackson's advice in how to approach his farewell tour. Break it up into sections, Jackson told him. Appreciate each emotion for what it is, without making it bigger than the current moment.

He still doesn't think Jackson ever needed to push his buttons like he did, though.

"I don't play for the fame," Kobe says. "I don't play for the approvals. There is nothing you need to say to me. Just tell me what you need me to do. My love is already here for the game."

He searches for a metaphor to explain it further. There's a scene in "The Dark Knight" when Batman is threatening the Joker, he says. This is the role that Heath Ledger posthumously won an Academy Award for but that many point to as the beginning of his personal descent. A documentary later revealed that the troubled actor spent a month in a hotel room preparing for the role of the madman by staring at the walls and laughing. Ledger was so Method, he created a diary filled with stills from "A Clockwork Orange" and photos of cackling hyenas. He wrote "CHAOS" in capital letters and highlighted in green. Anytime he needed to get into character, he'd flip through the diary.

"The Joker is laughing," Kobe says, "because there's nothing you can threaten him with."

Rick Fox tried to reach Kobe once. It was 2004 still. Once again, Kobe was wantonly playing outside the team's triangle offense and it was affecting the rest of the team.

"I was like, 'How about we just try it a different way? Just try.'" Fox said. Kobe looked at him and asked why he should do anything differently when his way had gotten him to where he was.

"Then I started running his résumé through my head," Fox said. "This was after we'd won a few championships and he'd elevated himself to the top player in the league. And I'm like, 'Who am I to say your way isn't the better way?'

"At a certain point, we just needed to get out of the way."

Fox eventually did. After O'Neal was traded to Miami and Jackson's contract wasn't extended, Fox wasn't sure he could deal with the Black Mamba unchained. He already had a bad foot injury and a neck problem. So he told the Lakers he was going to retire with one year left on his contract. The team tried to change his mind. He wouldn't, and so they traded him to Boston. He never played another game.

"I knew [he] was going to be hard-core all the time," Fox said. "I thought I would reinjure myself and be walking with a cane the rest of my life. ... I just couldn't do it."

The Moonlight Sonata

AT 2:58 A.M. on Jan. 22, 2013, Kobe Bryant tweeted a photo of himself playing piano at the Lakers' team hotel in Chicago. He wore a scarf, a hat and a thick winter coat. The caption reads "Beethovens Moonlight Sonata calms me down when I reach my breaking point #relaxandfocus

The Lakers had just lost to the Bulls and fallen to 17-24 in a season when they'd expected to contend for a championship after trades for Dwight Howard and Steve Nash.

At 5:27 a.m., he tweeted a photo of himself in a weight room with the caption, "see me in a fight with a bear. Pray for the bear" from The piano to the weight room #determined #psycho

It was a very conscious choice. Someone else had to take those photos of him. Then he had to post them. Then he checked his mentions and responded to them.

And when did he learn to play the piano?

"I wanted to play something nice for Vanessa," he says. They'd been fighting again. Vanessa filed divorce papers in 2011. Kobe was desperate to hold on to her. He wanted a grand gesture.

"Sitting down and taking lessons would be too easy," he says. "So I taught myself by ear."

It was harder than he thought. His fingers have been broken and jammed so many times over the years that they don't really bend anymore.

If somebody's not obsessed with what they do, we don't speak the same language. - Kobe Bryant

But he had to show her. He had to hold on to her. They had a family together, and he would fight for it as hard as he did the last time.

Taking lessons wasn't enough. Anybody can do that. Kobe had to be exceptional. So he'd put headphones on, listen to "Moonlight Sonata" on loop, and try to figure out the music on the keyboard in front of him.

"If you just sit down and say, 'I'm going to learn this thing until I do,'" he says, "there's not really much out there that you can't figure out eventually."

Stories about Kobe's supernatural work ethic and pain tolerance are told like legends. Clippers forward Blake Griffin heard Kobe went on a 40-mile bike ride through the desert on the night before Team USA camp began in 2012. About a year later, Griffin asked if I could find out whether it was true.

Kobe wrote back plainly, "Yea." I ask where they went and he says mysteriously, "the canyons." Why such a long bike ride? Why at night? The story gets better the less he says. "That's why I can run all day."

Griffin eats the story up. He wants to go with him next time. He loves the process, the passion, the mystery.

There are hundreds of these stories, and they are better than any tweet.

Lakers president and co-owner Jeanie Buss tells people how she would show up for work at 8 a.m. and see one car in the parking lot. "It's like, 'Who is here? Oh. I know who is here," she said. Shaw would show up at Staples Center around 3 p.m. on a game day and find Bryant on the court, already in full lather practicing the impossible shots he'd later be hailed for making or criticized for forcing up. He didn't just close his eyes and count on the fates to make him a hero. He practiced exceptional feats. "People don't realize," Shaw said. "He actually practiced those crazy shots."

Taking lessons would be easier, yes. They'd also be a way of learning to read sheet music so he could play other songs besides "Moonlight Sonata." But Kobe had to teach himself how to play to prove his love to Vanessa and reinforce his own sense of exceptionalism.

"That's the song I wanted to learn," he says. "There's so much beauty and agony. If you watch Muse, we use the chords from 'Moonlight Sonata.'"

After about a year's separation, Vanessa took him back again.

"Same chords."