The life and legacy of Kobe Bryant has always been a fascinating story through al the eras of his career. On the Rejecting the Screen Podcast, hosts Adam Stanco and Noah Coslov spoke to Jeff Pearlman, author of the new book Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty, on Kobe Bryant’s persona and confidence.
Adam Stanco: It’s interesting that you talk about the idea of Kobe sort of emulating the stars of the era that had this chip on their shoulder. Obviously Noah and I are both from the Philly area, we both saw Kobe play in high school, we have connections to friends of his. And I'm curious, because it's almost like the narrative has been told that Kobe put on this villain outfit, sort of after everything happened with Colorado, and it's like, ‘Well, this is how they view me now, so now I'm going to take on that role,' and he sort of has talked about that publicly that he embraced it that way.
So, I just wanted to go back a moment, you said that it's almost like when he was coming up through the league, he already felt that way anyway, that there was this chip, is that just something that the general public didn't see?
Jeff Pearlman: So I just don't think Kobe really knew who he was. It's really weird to me, he came into the league at 17 or 18 years old. And it's really really weird to show up in the NBA and think you're the best player in the NBA. Like, that's weird. That's a weird thing. That you're just as good as Jordan and you want to challenge Jordan, to think you should be starting right now. The Lakers have Eddie Jones, but you know Eddie Jones was a really good player, but no, I, I don't why I'm not starting.
There was one point, Del Harris told me, where Kobe complained to him, I think in his rookie year, about why wasn't he calling post up plays for Kobe and Del Harris is like ‘because we have Shaquille O'Neal play center for us you idiot, what are you talking about?’
I don't think he knew who he was. And I don't really buy the ‘after Eagle Colorado I decided to get hard,’ it was a lot of auditioning personas and trying different things… I think speech patterns are generally a pretty fascinating gateway into who someone is, and Kobe was a ‘yes or no sir’ complete 100% proper English kid, he just was like a kid.
There's a line in one of my favorite movies which is Creed. Rocky says to Adonis Creed when he first meets him, he says, ‘you talk good. I can tell you've been to college.’ Kobe Bryant didn't have that edge to him that Iverson or Marbury did and he felt like he should. He just felt like he should kind of imitate it. So I don't think it was just after Eagle he got this persona. He tried doing this me against the world thing. I just think he was always auditioning personas at that age.
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