Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a five-part serialization of “Three-Ring Circus,” Jeff Pearlman’s book about the Lakers era that featured Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and Phil Jackson. The book, which was written before Bryant’s death in January, will be released Tuesday.
In the summer leading up to his senior year at Lower Merion High in suburban Philadelphia, Kobe Bryant returned to the prestigious ABCD camp for another summer. This was perhaps the greatest collection of talent in ABCD history – not merely Bryant but also Tim Thomas of Patterson Catholic High (New Jersey), Jermaine O’Neal of Eau Claire High (South Carolina) and Lester Earl of Glen Oaks (Louisiana). In a moment that, two decades later, Sonny Vaccaro, the famed shoe company executive who founded and ran the camp, still found uproarious, in one game Kobe soared toward the basket and slammed powerfully over an overwhelmed opponent. As the ball rattled through the rim, Bryant fell to his feet, smiled, and yelled at Vaccaro, “Was that better than Stephon’s?”
“No,” Vaccaro replied, referring to an earlier dunk from future NBA star Stephon Marbury, “but it was damn good.” If Bryant’s confidence was high off of his ABCD showing (he was named the camp MVP), a couple of closer-to-home experiences took it to another level. Even though he was but a high schooler, Bryant spent plenty of time running pickup inside Temple University’s Pearson Hall gymnasium. These weren’t run-of-the-mill battles against Joe Frat Boy. No, his opponents included many of the Owls stars, including future NBA players Rick Brunson, Aaron McKie and Eddie Jones. “God, he was so polished for a high school kid,” recalled Jones. “Flat-out talented. Most impressive, he wasn’t scared. We were All-Americans, big names in college basketball. And Kobe just brought it right at us. You knew this kid was NBA-bound. There was zero question.”
Around this time, the Philadelphia 76ers were holding off-season workouts on the campus of Saint Joseph’s. Because he was a big local name and bodies were needed, Bryant was allowed to play. What transpired is the stuff of myth. In large part because much of it is myth. According to the eternally repeated story of 10 million witnesses (there were no more than 30 people in the gym), Bryant lit up Jerry Stackhouse, Philadelphia’s fantastic young shooting guard. He took Stackhouse left, he took Stackhouse right, he dunked over Stackhouse while eating a ham sandwich and humming Peter Cetera’s entire musical catalog.
Truth be told, Bryant played extremely well against Stackhouse, as well as solid NBAers like Vernon Maxwell, Richard Dumas and Sharone Wright. He wasn’t the most polished player on the court, or even the 10th most polished on the court. He was undisciplined, sloppy, erratic. He took shots one shouldn’t take and committed turnovers that, were this a regular game, would land him on the bench. But he was absolutely fearless – and that stuck.
John Nash, general manager of the Washington Bullets, caught up with John Lucas, the 76ers coach. “How’s Stack doing in your workouts?” Nash asked.“Fine,” Lucas said, “but he’s the second-best two-guard in the gym.” Nash made a mental list of the Sixers’ shooting guards. It wasn’t a particularly impressive collection. “John,” he finally said, “who’s the best two-guard?”
“Kobe,” Lucas replied.
Whoa.
Shaun Powell, a Newsday reporter who covered a lot of NBA, was walking through the New Jersey Nets’ locker room one day when he was stopped by Rick Mahorn, journeyman power forward. “You know who you need to write about?” Mahorn said. “Jellybean’s kid.”
“Jellybean’s kid?” Powell replied, asking about former NBA player Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, who had played in Italy for several years.
“Yeah,” said Mahorn. “His name is Kobe. And in the summer when we all played pickup ball, he ran with us. And he wasn’t the last one picked.
Around this time, Bryant began working daily with Joe Carbone, a personal trainer and retired professional weightlifter hired by the family to transform the kid from sapling to oak. The goal was to build someone described as “wiry” into a machine capable of enduring an 82-game season against large men. Before long, Bryant was a weight room regular, benching, squatting, curling. “We put about 20 pounds on him,” Carbone said. “He’s not a heavy gainer, so the weight came on as he got stronger.”
By the time he returned to Lower Merion for his senior year of high school, Bryant – bolstered by the ABCD experience, by the games at Temple, by his play with the Sixers, by the fitness regimen – knew he would not be attending college. “He told me that summer,” a teammate recalled. “Bluntly – ‘I’m going to the NBA next year.’”
If Bryant knew, it was something of a secret to those around him. The college recruiting letters arrived by the boatload. This was the fall of 1995, and at the time Joe Bryant was in his second year as an assistant at nearby La Salle University, his alma mater. He had been hired in 1993 by Speedy Morris, the head coach, and while the official reasoning was that the program needed a replacement for the recently departed Randy Monroe, the reality was different. “Did I think it’d help us get Kobe?” Morris said decades later. “Yes. Of course. Joe was not a good assistant coach. He didn’t work hard, he didn’t actually know that much. Nice guy. But he was there so we’d get his son.”
Bryant basked in the attention, took a handful of campus visits, pretended he was genuinely torn over what to do next. He liked to show off all the recruiting letters he received and proudly stiffed Kentucky coach Rick Pitino, failing to show up for a scheduled visit to campus. He acted as if college were a legitimate option. Only it really wasn’t. Because he had never signed with an agent or accepted so much as a dime from a sneaker company, he remained eligible should he change his mind. But he wasn’t changing his mind. The recruiting letters ultimately found themselves at rest alongside half-eaten burgers and empty yogurt containers in the Bryant family trash bins. That June he had competed in the War in the Woods, an outdoor tournament held in Penns Grove, New Jersey. As Kobe lit up the court, his father watched alongside Gary Charles, veteran AAU coach and Sonny Vaccaro’s confidant. With each Kobe three-pointer, Joe turned to Charles to say, “See that?” With each dunk, “Amazing, right?” When the game ended, Joe went serious. “Gary,” he said, “I think my kid wants to come right out from high school. But we, as a family, would be worried because there are no guarantees.”
Charles grinned. “What if I can help you get a guarantee?” he said. Joe Bryant was confused.“What,” Charles said, “if I can help Kobe get a shoe deal?”
“Wait, you can do that?” Bryant replied.
“You know,” Charles said, “I believe I can.”
That evening, Charles placed a call to Vaccaro.“Sonny,” he said, “Kobe Bryant can be the kid.” By the kid, he meant the One. Ever since joining Adidas in the early 1990s, Vaccaro had been seeking out the next Michael Jordan, jock marketing goliath. At the time, the shoe company was known for being dull and unimaginative and a pimple on Nike’s back. Bryant’s ABCD showings had opened Vaccaro’s eyes, and there was a lot to like. Bryant was mature, Bryant was savvy, Bryant was handsome, Bryant could flat-out play, Bryant had NBA blood. “And the name – ’Kobe Bryant,’” Vaccaro said. “There’s something about it. ‘Kobe Bryant from Italy’ – it’s intriguing, it’s a little mysterious.”
Vaccaro loved what he was hearing. He reached out to Joe Bryant to make sure there was legitimate interest. Then he kicked back and watched Kobe piece together one of the best seasons in local high school basketball history, leading Lower Merion to its first state championship since 1943. He concluded his high school career as southeastern Pennsylvania’s all-time leading scorer, with 2,883 points, and was named the Naismith High School Player of the Year, Gatorade Men’s National Basketball Player of the Year, and a McDonald’s All-American. “The most amazing thing was he never lost a drill,” said Jeremy Treatman, an assistant coach with the Aces. “Four years and Kobe never lost a game of one-on-one, a scrimmage, a sprint. He just didn’t allow losing.”
By early in the season, word had gotten out that Bryant was thinking NBA, and the league’s scouts (the ones who took him seriously – many did not) began to dot the Lower Merion bleachers during home games. Pete Babcock, general manager of the Atlanta Hawks, flew in and saw a kid, “Do whatever he wanted to without anyone knowing how to stop him.” Larry Harris, a Milwaukee Bucks scout, came three times, often wondering if what he was witnessing was, in fact, real. “He wore number 33, and that immediately made me think of Scottie Pippen,” Harris said. “He had this Pippen-like length, and also this comfort with his own athleticism. Once the game started, there was no messing around, no settling for jumpers. It was business. That jumped out to me.”
Vaccaro was now more determined than ever to make Bryant the face of Adidas. Midway through the high school season, he convinced the company to spend $75,000 to move him from Southern California to New York City in order to be closer to the high school supernova. He never attended Lower Merion games, for fear that Nike or another rival apparel company would learn of his plans, but had Charles show up as his go-between. The two sides talked about fame and glory and talent. But mostly they talked about sneakers. The Bryant family wanted a financial guarantee, and Vaccaro and Adidas were willing to offer one. They would pay Kobe Bryant $48 million, provide another $150,000 to Joe Bryant and make Kobe the face of Adidas. The sell, in a sense, was Michael Jordan. Bryant was told he would be the new Jordan – beginning with a signature shoe and a glitzy marketing campaign based around the concept “Feet You Wear.”
It played to both his ego and his love of basketball history.
College? Who needed college?
Kobe Bryant had decided to take his talents to the NBA.
Coming Tuesday: Part 2 – How the Lakers’ Jerry West land the best talent in the draft?
Excerpt from THREE-RING CIRCUS: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty by JeffPearlman. Copyright © 2020 by Jeff Pearlman. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin HarcourtPublishing Company. All rights reserved.
