Kobe Bryant and Lessons from an Extraordinary Life

When someone dies unexpectedly, especially at a young age, we are often so overcome by understandable feelings of shock and grief about their death that we lose sight of what came before the tragedy- life. Last Sunday’s passing of Kobe Bryant and 8 others, including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, conjured immediate anguish and later thoughtful reflection about his life. Amid a constellation of world-famous personalities, Bryant had achieved the pinnacle of notoriety in the popular firmament; he was immediately and uniquely identified by a single name: Kobe. No need for a last name. When you say “Kobe” everyone knows who you are talking about. Michael (Jordan), LeBron (James), Madonna (Ciccone), Beyonce (Knowles-Carter), Jay-Z (Shawn Corey Carter) and Tiger (Eldrick Woods) have all achieved this one-word pinnacle of notoriety.

Most of what I observed about Bryant’s life has been recorded more eloquently and with greater sentiment than I can pour into a reflection about him and the impact he had on so many. His was an extraordinary life defined by purpose, passion and performance. Throughout his life Kobe thoughtfully defined and cultivated his purposes. He pursued each with extreme passion. And, those deeply-entrenched purposes he pursued with searing passion produced unbelievable performances.  

Bryant was human. He made mistakes, some of them serious and well-publicized. He had doubts. He once said, “I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I'm like, 'My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don't have it. I just want to chill.' We all have self-doubt. You don't deny it, but you also don't capitulate to it. You embrace it.”

 “You can’t.” “You won’t.” “You’ll never.” From the time we enter this world until we pass from it, we are exposed to negative phrases implemented to control us, beat us down or otherwise limit us. Many of us never had and never develop the inner strength to weather these destructive storms. Some call this inner strength “grit”. My grandfather used to call it “intestinal fortitude”. Whatever you call it, some of us are born with it and can develop it. Others of us do not have that capacity. When told “You can’t because [insert excuse here]”, we fold.  

Some of us never recover from this collapse of self-doubt. We let these negative thoughts and words hang on us like the chains of Jacob Marley’s Ghost. When Marley visited Scrooge in The Christmas Carol, he said “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” And so it is with us. We wear the chains we forge in life. 

If we hear “you can’t” or “you’ll never” enough times and we internalize that through repetition, we allow these negative thoughts to forge the links which form the chains that burden us. Warren Buffett observed, "Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken."  However, though the negative or even evil comments of others may give us the links to forge those chains, we choose to put them on and let them stay on.  We need not and should not wear chains of negativity.

While we should avoid getting sucked into a black hole of negativity created by others, it is even more critical for us not to create that negativity for others by our thoughts, actions and words. I’m not advocating being a Pollyanna or taking an “everyone gets a trophy” approach to life. That’s weak and certainly something Kobe never embraced. I am simply saying we have inherently strong minds and hearts with an incredible capacity to do great things when unencumbered by pessimism or limitations and we should not pile on to the negativity others are battling.

Bryant’s death brought back for me memories of another basketball superstar who, over three decades ago, passed away at age 40. “Pistol” Pete Maravich, considered one of the greatest college basketball players and an NBA Hall of Famer, died in January 1988 at age 40 while playing a pick-up basketball game in California.  An autopsy revealed he died from a rare congenital heart defect. He was born without a left coronary artery which caused his right coronary artery and his entire heart to become substantially enlarged. His right coronary artery, which compensated for the missing left, eventually gave out and he died.

Had doctors discovered this rare defect when Maravich was a youngster and told him he could not play basketball, would he have ever picked up a basketball? We’ll never know, but we know what he did without the weight of that dire diagnosis. He holds almost every major NCAA scoring record, including most career points, highest career scoring average (44.2 points per game) and most career 50 point games (28). Remember, when “Pistol Pete” played in college there was no three-point shot. A study which tracked every shot he took during his college career at LSU showed his career scoring average with a three-point shot would have been 58.3 points per game! Maravich was not only a prolific scorer; he could handle the ball better than anyone. The Pistol played the game with a sense of flair and showmanship not seen before and seldom since. Paul Westphal said Maravich was “an artist. His canvas was the basketball floor and his brush was the basketball.”

Maravich accomplished more on the basketball floor without a left coronary artery than most college and professional players with normal, healthy hearts ever did or ever will. He never limited himself because he did not know and no one told him his heart lacked an essential component. Unencumbered by chains of an unknown physical limitation, he made himself a great player because he had a purpose, passion and desire for greatness. He did not limit himself or let others limit him. As a result, he had a fabulous career and basketball fans were treated to a transformational, once-in-a-generation athletic artist. Later in life, he poured his passion into his Christian ministry and to teaching kids the beautiful game of basketball at camps across the country.

What the lives of Kobe, Pistol and others with purpose, passion and performance prove is that our limitations, our chains-- some real, some imagined and even some unknown -- need not limit our lives. We can refuse to wear the chains or shed the ones we carry.  As the great Dale Carnegie once said "It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about."  It’s time to think about lives without chains.