If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain

Tony Courseault, my friend who lives in Jacksonville, Florida, is not just a basketball fan, he’s an astute student of the game. He knows history and he knows that this history is racist. He knows that the present is racist too. His observations on the way certain coaches are given a pass when their teams fail and others are vilified can in fact be extrapolated to how racist the United States of America is.  

Tony and I were students together way back in 1994-95 in South Central, Los Angeles, which is the time I became a fan of the LA Lakers. Tony had been a Laker fan for much longer, but this doesn’t mean he will not go easy on the team, the players including the stars, the coach and the management. In fact he is extra-hard on what he calls ‘My Lakers,’ who, by the way, have caused many fans much grief over the last decade or so.  

Tony and I watched and enjoyed the Lakers of the Shaq-Kobe years at the turn of the millennium. We lost touch at the time of the Kobe-led championship runs  from 2008-2010, and when we reconnected it was mostly grief, apart from Covid-truncated 2020 when the Lakers of LeBron James beat the Miami Heat.  

So we’ve talked about hoops or rather Tony has said much and I’ve done a lot of listening. He taught, I tried to learn, to put it another way. We have celebrated the victories, entertained hopes and watched them being scrambled beyond recognition, ranted and raved about players, coaches and management, and consoled ourselves by discussing hoops in general, the exploits of teams progressing towards the finals and compared the greats.

All such discussions were suspended for several weeks in January 2020. I still remember waking up to a text from Tony three years ago: ‘Kobe is dead, I can’t believe it.’ Kobe was just 42 when he, along with his daughter and a few others, died in a plane crash on that fateful day, the 26th of January, 2022. It plunged the basketball world into an unprecedented period of disbelief and sorrow.

Kobe Bryant has always figured in GOAT (Greatest of All Time) debates with regard to basketball. Right now, it’s all about LeBron James, who is having a stellar season at the ‘ripe old age’ of 38, averaging more than 30 points per game and on pace to break the all-time scoring record held for 40 years by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387) sometime in early February. The GOAT debate in any sport never reaches conclusion, that’s a given.

Kobe was great. There’s unanimous agreement on this and that should suffice. He’s among the greatest to have played the game, this too is acknowledged. And, like all greats, he had an exceptional work ethic. He pushed himself beyond belief. In his words, whenever he noticed something missing in his game, he not only worked on correcting the particular flaw, but he climbed ‘Goat mountain.’ He went to the greats, studied their games, sought and obtained their advice and applied them. He got better.

Not too long after Kobe died, I wrote about these Goat Mountain visits: “Kobe visited GOAT Mountain. Now that alone won’t do, obviously. You need focus. Discipline. Exercise. Fellow travelers on the path to greatness. Great teachers. The GOATS are there, but there are not hands-on teachers. They inspire and spending time with them or even being in their presence can fuel the determination to become better at what you do. However, for a variety of reasons it’s not everyone who pencils in ‘Visit GOAT Mountain’ in the must-do notebook.  Kobe did.  It must have helped.”

So this is not a basketball story. It’s more than that. Three years later, there will be some talk of Kobe, obviously less than before. When LeBron passes Kareem, there will be GOAT-talk and maybe Kobe will figure in some way. LeBron himself has at times spoken of Kobe as ‘The GOAT.’ LeBron has learned from Kobe. His work ethic has been no less spectacular. He visits GOAT Mountain frequently enough as almost all great people, in and out of sports, do from time to time.

Rapper Kendrick Lamar observed, Kobe had ‘an incessant drive to achieve self-actualization through constant improvement.’ Perhaps, then, this is the greatest tribute anyone can pay Kobe Bryant: work. Work hard. Just work hard to go from average to good, good to better and from better to way better. Tony would concur, I’m sure.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below] 

 

Other articles in this series:

The world is made for re-colouring

The gift and yoke of bastardy

The 'English Smile'

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5

Visual cartographers and cartography

Ithaca from a long ago and right now

Lessons written in invisible ink

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'

A tea-maker story seldom told

On academic activism

The interchangeability of light and darkness

Back to TRADITIONAL rice

Sisterhood: moments, just moments

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows

Sirith, like pirith, persist

Fragrances that will not be bottled 

Colours and textures of living heritage

Countries of the past, present and future

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains

The ways of the lotus

Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville

Live and tell the tale as you will

Between struggle and cooperation

Of love and other intangibles

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions

The universe of smallness

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills

Serendipitous amber rules the world

Continents of the heart The allegory of the slow road

 

 

 

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You can always go to GOAT Mountain

There are shortcuts to success but none that take you to greatness. Success is often taken to be a matter of being name-recognized or face-recognized, but that’s only for a while. A reasonable enough goal, certainly, and many are more than happy to get there. They are more likely than not to be ready to adopt the limited wisdom of the adage ‘by any means necessary’. Greatness is something else though. 

Bernadus Carnotensis, a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist philosopher, better known as Bernard of Chartres, once spoke of discovering truth by building on previous discoveries. Isaac Newton’s version is the most quoted, ‘if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ Greats. 

The late Kobe Bryant worked hard and relentlessly to get to where he got in basketball. If he hit airballs he tried to find out the reason. Weak legs, he figured. He worked hard to strengthen his legs. No airballs thereafter. Done. 

That was not all. There were times when he couldn’t get around something. Then he visited, in his words, GOAT Mountain. GOAT as in ‘Greatest of All Time.’  Obviously that implies just one individual, but there’s always a debate about the GOAT of any sport. Bryant covered all the bases. He went to all the available peaks in the mountain range: Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon, Jerry West, Oscar Robinson and Bill Russell.

Sure, he wanted to be better than MJ and was dismissed as an arrogant kid when he said so at the age of 17. And yet, there was utmost respect and that respect was returned by MJ and others. 

The greats are almost always generous with advice and like all true greats they recognize and nurture potential greats. Like Kobe Bryant. They would respond, of course, to the not-so-great or even the pedestrian, but there’s particular delight in offering tips to those who had it in them not just to be great but to surpass the advising great. 

Kobe visited GOAT Mountain. Now that alone won’t do, obviously. You need focus. Discipline. Exercise. Fellow travelers on the path to greatness. Great teachers. The GOATS are there, but there are not hands-on teachers. They inspire and spending time with them or even being in their presence can fuel the determination to become better at what you do. However, for a variety of reasons it’s not everyone who pencils in ‘Visit GOAT Mountain’ in the must-do notebook.  Kobe did.  It must have helped. 

It’s not a basketball story. It’s a soccer story. It’s a tennis story too. Name a sport and you’ll find there’s always a GOAT Mountain. There are GOATs. Name a field of science and you’ll find scientific GOATs. It’s the same in the social sciences. The arts. Literature. Politics. Even party politics. Specific fields of business. Manufacturing. Advertising. Services. Agriculture. 

GOATs are libraries. Archives. Repositories of secrets gathered through handwork, discipline, engagement and years. AND the GOATs who came before. 

Kobe always figures in discussions about the GOAT in basketball. Is it Jordan or LeBron, someone will ask and immediately the audience will divide into pro-MJ and pro-Bron. However, someone might chip in, ‘how about Kobe?’  The debate never ends and the true greats really don’t care about such things. 

MJ scored 32,292 points in his NBA career. When LeBron passed him in May 2019, he did it in a pair of Nikes with ‘Thank you M.J.’ written on the side. ‘MJ was like lightning in a bottle for me, because I wanted to be like him,’ Bron said. MJ congratulated him. 

On January 26, 2020, LeBron passed Kobe and moved to third place (behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone) and Kobe tweeted, ‘Continuing to move the game forward @KingJames. Much respect my brother.’

A few hours later Kobe Bryant was dead. And the basketball world wept. 

That’s another story. All that we need to understand is that there are mountains. GOAT mountains. The GOATS are down to earth folk, but you have to go to GOAT Mountain to meet them, climb on their shoulders and see further than they could see. They will not mind.

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [February 17, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

Let's learn the art of embracing damage

Kandy Lake is lined with poetry

There's never a 'right moment' for love

A love note to an unknown address in Los Angeles

A dusk song for Rasika Jayakody

How about creating some history?

How far away are the faraway places?

There ARE good people!

Re-placing people in the story of schooldays 

When we stop, we can begin to learn

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry

Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 

Sriyani and her serendipity shop

Forget constellations and the names of oceans

Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?

Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons

Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane

Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

The Eldest: a story written on face and in eyes

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A love note to an unknown address in Los Angeles

They will one day walk among flowers. Botanical gardens with exotic names will beckon. There will be butterflies and bouquets. They will encounter one day the industry of a cormorant, preening of a peacock, an eagle’s high-elevation majesty, a line of ants and the stealth of a cougar.  

They will see the same mountains again and again but in different colors at different times of the day and in different seasons. The world will renew itself for them, each time in different form, like a snowflake so much like another but yet distinct in configuration. There will be water in a bottle and a glass. It will come as ice and hail, drizzle and thunderstorm. 

Their friends will have names. Some names will remain and some will not. Friends will grow tall. The architectures of learning will acquire different names from junior high school, through high school to college. Favorite books will be displaced by even more enchanting stories. Tunes that run in the head will be nudged aside by the melodies that take up residence in the heart. 

Maps will speak of roads. Signposts will give direction. The rules of the world will lead and mislead, contain and agitate. They will change the rules with a smile, a side-step, a step-back, a fadeaway, a swish, a pump fake and a no-look pass. And with unmistakable love that seeks not love in return. 

In the perimeter of an orchard they will stand and breathe the fragrances of pomegranate and guava.  In the center court of life they will rise and rise and rise. They will reach out and touch unnamed ceilings and with caress bring roofs crashing down. They will then reach down. Using  broken shards and shingles they will manufacture exquisite pottery and upon it inscribe the names of all things felt that today have no words. 

In inevitable skies of innumerable color and cloud formation, all the words of all the prophets will be written for their eyes only. And they will learn that which those who came before learned and those who will come later will come to understand. Simple but evasive truths about vicissitudes, the commonality of solitude and loss, the specificities that will not be resolved by word and the grace which alone nurtures the best of the human condition.

Some nights are darker than others and darkness is not always bested by dawn. And the darkness, it revisits at the most unexpected moments and in the most unexpected ways. And then, giants will appear in even more gigantic dimensions, not as presence but absence.  And then there will be a breeze that comes with music, music wrapped in fragrance, and perfumes congealing into words and moments.  Everything will be fine then. This they know or will come to know one day. 

For now, there are no words for her who to him was mamacita per semipro ‘little mother forever’ or for them, angelic princesses of unsurpassed beauty. For now, there will be tears and let them be shed. But then again, untrammeled love is mercurial. Appears to come, gives impression of exit, stays like a shadow, a soft light and a beacon, and all the world's knowing never answers fully questions that begin with ‘why.’  

But answers there will be. Among flowers. Upon a butterfly wing. In fruit juice and soda fizz. Rolling down a mountain. Dropping off the glance of a stranger. Or a friend. In a stubborn snowflake upon an impossible windowpane. Encased in a drop of water, a drop of poetry, a bead of sweat and a tear. In everyday ornament. In the subtext of a story reserved for four, distinct, utterly loved readers: Vanessa Laine, Natalia Diamante, Bianka Bella and Capri Kobe. 

And these answers will arrive in the name of every man who truly loved his woman, every father who adored his daughters, every daughter for whom there could be no greater heroes than her parents and every sister who was best friend to her sisters. 

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [January 29, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com   

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...': 

[published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

A dusk song for Rasika Jayakody

How about creating some history?

How far away are the faraway places?

There ARE good people!

Re-placing people in the story of schooldays 

When we stop, we can begin to learn

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry

Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 

Sriyani and her serendipity shop

Forget constellations and the names of oceans

Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?

Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons

Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane

Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

The Eldest: a story written on face and in eyes

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Who should take the last shot?

It happens in close games. You make a shot just as time is running out and you can either tie, sending the game to overtime, or you can win the game for your team. Buzzer beaters, that’s what they are called in basketball. 

This is about buzzer beaters. The thinking is solely that of my friend and fellow hoops fan, Tony Courseault. He was commenting on a Toronto Raptors game a few weeks ago. The Raptors had made a fierce comeback with a minute and 10 seconds left, to shave an 11 point deficit to a deuce. AND they had the last possession. 

Here’s Tony’s commentary:

‘And what did they do? They give it to Kawhi Leonard and had everybody else clear out. The worst single effing basketball play in the history of all sports.  Kawhi had almost nothing to do with the comeback, and yet the team and the coaching strategy just gave him the keys for the last gratuitous, hero shot.  An unnecessary 3-point attempt.  No passing On that last possession. No movement with the other players. Nothing.  All of a sudden I don’t like the raptors anymore.’

For the record the Raptors are in second place in the Eastern Conference of the NBA, just 1.5 games behind the Milwaukee Bucks.

Tony started off his comment with a broadside: ‘Tonight’s rockets raptors game illustrates perfectly how Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant have destroyed basketball.’ He would explain, subsequently, but by way of counterpoint, consider this comment a day or two later:

‘Did you see the end of that Boston Golden State game last night? It was a two point game and the Celtics have a ball with five seconds left but The ball moved and found the open man… Marcus Morris. Had a great look but just missed. Happens. At that point I realized the Celtics were back and they will beat the Raptors.  They fired an excellent coach and got his back up. Toronto deserves what they get.’

Back to Kobe and Michael.

‘I went to a huge playoff game years ago with some friends. The Lakers were up 3 - 1 against Steve Nash in the Phoenix Suns. This was after Shaq or before Gasol, the Lakers were the seventh seed and the Suns were the second seed. TREMENDOUS upset in the making.  The Lakers had Kwame Brown and Andrew Bynum as their centers. Not all-stars. But the game plan was to go inside out. Phil Jackson emphasized this to his team by having them watch the movie, The Inside Man, by Denzel Washington

‘So this was game six and the series was at 3 to 2.  The inside out game was working to perfection… Until this game.  All of a sudden, Kobe completely abandons a game plan and just started shooting wildly. He scored 50 points. The Lakers lost in overtime. Kobe was not criticized. But the last possession illustrated just how egregious Kobe’s decision making was. 

‘With 18 seconds left, Kobe has the ball, languorously dribbling the ball and time away at near half court.  Just standing and dribbling. Again, the game is tied and any score wins the series in what would have surely not only been one of the nba’s biggest upsets, but Kobe and Phil’s sweetest victory.  7 seconds, 6...5...4...3...2...Kobe wants to shoot a 3 pointer over his defender but by now they’ve doubled and he’s forced to jack up a wild, fall away 3 that doesn’t even touch the rim.  Ideally, with 18 seconds left, I would’ve liked to have seen the ball move around naturally. But, let’s say that Kobe wanted to be the hero. He should have driven to the basket for a two pointer that he can make over anybody, or all the way to the basket and get the certain whistle and foul shots to ice the game and series. 

Nothing like seeing that in real life and just how bad he read the defense or ignored the best set of options. He did it the first five games, so he knew how to do it and was willing earlier. After that series, Kobe kind of lost me. Even after winning two more titles.’

And he had this to say about Jordan:

‘The difference with Jordan was, quite frankly, he made more of those shots and his teams won. But like the Golden state warriors and their prolific three point shooting, it’s the talent that transcends conventional playing. It’s not recommended for others. But everybody from California to China is playing this way now. So when you try to play like the Warriors, or Michael Jordan, without the same ability, It results in you being dominated over and over and over again like groundhogs day. If the bad boy Detroit Pistons try to do fast break like the streaking Los Angeles Lakers, they would not have had a chance. But they played graded out basketball and toppled Magic Johnson and the mighty Lakers.’

It’s easy to say stuff from the sideline and after the game, this we must remember. On the other hand, professional basketball players are supposed to be just that. Professional. God-like status on account of achievements allow players to get away with what could be called brain-fade. True, it’s a split-second decision at times, but in the instances referred to above, there was enough time to play with. 

Had Kawhi had made the shot, all this would have been forgotten by most, except the likes of Tony Courseault who is a true student of the game. Even a made shot doesn’t justify the kind of play that Kawhi, his coach and the Raptors had scripted. 

It’s a simple truth that’s often forgotten. Greatness is one thing, but even the greats have to play second fiddle in certain situations. There are periods, perhaps lasting a quarter or even just a few minutes, when other players come to the party, when the superstars take a back seat. If going with what works makes sense, Kawhi should not have had the ball in the dying seconds of that game. Neither should Kobe have indulged in grandstanding. It cost the Raptors a game and the Lakers a series, respectively. That’s a huge price to pay.  

OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES [THE INTERCEPTION] PUBLISHED IN 'THE SUNDAY MORNING'

The 'done thing' is rarely done

'Practice, lots of practice'

Special, always and forever

The shortcut to greatness

It's healthy to retire the braggadocio 

Money talks, gold rules: are we ok with that?

Sometimes if you don't stand up, you fall

Selections and the political economy of disappointment

So who is the GOAT?

Predecessors are great teachers

When things go wrong check the fundamentals

There's always only one more game left

Mind games are part of the sporting story

Those nervous ninetiesOut-think the opposition
School sports and parents

The importing mania in school cricket

Sportsmen and sportswomen beware: your accounts will be hacked soon!

Not all victories are recorded

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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You can be like Kobe Bryant and like Isaiah Thomas

Kobe Bryant is a basketball legend.  Having played for the Los Angeles Lakers throughout his 20-year career, Kobe led his team to five NBA championships from 2000-2002 and 2006-2007.  He has secured numerous scoring titles and MVP awards. He has had 1 eighty-point game, 6 sixty-point games (including his final game), 26 fifty-point games, and 134 forty-point games in his career. In his final game on April 13, 2016, he became the oldest player to score 60 in a single game (37).  Sure, he had his ups and downs, often caught flak for being selfish, had personal issues (who doesn’t?) but few would deny that he was one of the most fearsome competitors the league has ever known.  

Kobe Bryant. A legend, certainly.  Isaiah Thomas is a star.  Not a legend.  Not yet, anyway.  

Isaiah  is only in his 6th NBA season, hasn’t won any championship rings, doesn’t own any scoring titles and in a league dominated by the likes of LeBron James, Stephen Curry and James Hardin, is just one of several ‘second rung’ names.  True, he has led the Boston Celtics to the top of the Eastern Conference regular season standings and has inspired his team to make it to the conference final against defending champions Cleveland Cavaliers.  Not a legend though.  Not yet, anyway.

Kobe Bryant led the Lakers.  Isaiah Thomas currently leads the arch rivals of the Lakers, the Celtics.  So what’s the Bryant-Thomas story?  It began or it could be said to have begun when Bryant called him to offer condolences over the tragic death of Isaiah’s sister Chyna in a car accident the day before the playoffs began.

Later, Isaiah would recall that Bryant had told him that it is up to him, Isaiah, to decide whether or not to play in that first game, but had added 'The one bit of advice I would give you is, if you are going to play, then you gotta play; maybe you can find some peace in moments out there.’  Kobe had also said ‘if you ever need anything, just reach out; I’m here for you.’

And Isaiah did reach out.  This was when the Celtics fell behind to the Chicago Bulls 2-0.  He called Kobe and asked if he’d mind looking over some of the game film and help him figure out how to unshackle himself from the Chicago defenders.  So the two players had set up their laptops and done a video tour of the game action together.  The Celtics went on to beat the Bulls and then the Washington Wizards in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.  The Celtics were creamed by the Cavs in Boston no less, in the first two games, but bounced back in Cleveland to win Game 3 even though they played without the injured Isaiah.  The result of the series is not relevant here.  It's the lesson that counts.  A lesson of reaching out. 

Kobe said he was happy to help Isaiah: ‘He had the courage to ask. I did the same thing with Michael Jordan when I was a young player.’  And he had learned the importance of reaching out from another legend, another Michael but in a different field, music.  Apparently during a visit to Neverland Ranch in his rookie season, the pop star had told him to reach out to all the greats in his profession and learn from them.  Kobe had done just said.  Over the years, basketball greats such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West and Magic Johnson (all Lakers) as well as Bill Russell, Hakeem Olajuwon, Larry Bird and of course his childhood idol Jordan had been generous with advice whenever it was solicited.  Bryan had decided that one day he would do the same, mentoring any young player who came to him. 

Not everyone is a legend but there’s no harm in aspiring to be one or at least wanting to be the best that one can be.  This involves a lot of hard work.  Talent helps of course but it is the commitment, unforgiving hard work, the ability to overcome adversity, the will to win and the humility to acknowledge frailties that makes ordinary people great and great people legends.  

Two things are necessary.  First, the accessibility to the greats.  Secondly, the courage to ask.  Kobe was ready, Isaiah had the courage.  

In all of us, there’s a potential Kobe (the Mentor) and a potential Isaiah (needing guidance).  Isaiah Thomas may or may not end his career as a legend, may or may not make it to the Basketball Hall of Fame, but he certainly has the talent, the humility and the courage to learn from those who came before.  There are dozens of basketball legends and many of them have mentored younger players, in official as well as in unofficial capacities.  Some seemed to have been happy enough to let footage of their greatness do the work.  That’s all available in the public domain, true enough, but then again the right word at the right time and in the right tone can add that much more to such kinds of ‘learning material’.  In short, there are people like Kobe.  And there are people like Isaiah.    

You and I may not ever be like Kobe or like Isaiah, not in basketball or in any other field.  There’s nothing to stop us from trying though.

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