All alone out there

The first thing to understand about Kobe Bryant is that he doesn’t believe in professional happiness--at least not for himself, and not now. Maybe when he retires from his starring role with the Los Angeles Lakers in 10 or 15 years, if some teammate doesn’t strangle him first. But not now, in the midst of a fourth season after his jump from high school to the pros. He doesn’t want to feel content.

Bryant is that disciplined. Even as a boy of 8 or 9, he would organize his schedule in his brain, rather than on paper or a calendar, because he wanted to train his mind to be strong. Even then, he couldn’t believe anyone would dare suggest a backup plan for his career. His confidence in his destiny was supreme. Young Kobe would sit in class, sign a piece of paper, hand it to the doubter of the moment and tell him to hold on to it for 20 years. (He was wrong about only one thing--those early autograph recipients could have cashed in in 12 years.)

There was no doubt Bryant would find his own way in the National Basketball Assn., as if anyone could stop him--or convince him of the merits of diplomacy. Shaquille O’Neal, himself a newcomer to Los Angeles and just 24 years old when Bryant arrived in the summer of 1996, proudly declared that he would take Kobe under his wing. It was a nice thought, except that Kobe Bryant plays little brother to no man. O’Neal felt dismissed, but soon found alternative companionship: other Lakers who also felt dismissed.

“Maybe he’s moving toward the intimidation factor,” teammate Rick Fox said earlier this year. “Maybe he has a game plan in his mind he’s putting to work. I just think that it’s going to be a long 20 years in this league if he continues to isolate and not reach out or let people in.” Bryant is pretty set in his ways, a Laker official conceded around the same time. “And that’s where the conflicts come in. I don’t think the rest of the players feel he’s giving enough.”

Bryant wants to be part of the team--even his critics in the locker room don’t suggest he’s in it for personal glory, no matter how anxious he is to shoot--but he walls off teammates. He comfortably handles the Madison Avenue profile, and the visibility as one of the anointed successors to Michael Jordan’s marketing throne, but on the road he stays in his hotel room, preferring the solitude of writing poetry and music (his “Visions” CD is scheduled for release in March). Some see him as aloof, but the better description might be withdrawn.

“I’m not going to go hang out just to be hanging out. That’s a waste of time. Time is precious.” So says the former 8-year-old with the mental day planner.

Finding his way has never been the tough part, not on the court or in the classroom or the advertising world. Kobe Bryant has found his place in the sun. Waiting for the others to get to the same spot, to fall in line with his strides, that’s the tough part. For all concerned.

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Off the court, Bryant is the essence of understatement. For a Sunday morning meeting at the Pacific Dining Car in Santa Monica, he arrives, on time, looking casual. He wears khakis, a beige DKNY T-shirt, a floppy beige Adidas tennis hat and Adidas sneakers (Adidas being one of his most prominent endorsement clients). Even though he’s one of the most popular basketball players in the world, he seems to go unnoticed by the brunch crowd. The only thing that could draw attention to him this morning is his means of arrival: a black Mercedes 600, and we do mean black. Black paint, black rims, black-wall tires. It’s the favorite of his five cars, and his only full-time wheels: He bought the other Mercedes for a sister, the Volvo for his married, family-minded sister, the Lexus Jeep for his mother and the BMW for his dad.

Bryant is polite to everyone, from the hostess at the front door to the waiter who brings the cappuccino--which isn’t a surprise since he still sometimes earnestly refers to Jerry West, the Lakers’ top basketball executive and a friend, as “Mr. West.” His entourage? The usual. A family member. In fact, most of his closest friends are family members. His best friend is a cousin, John Cox. On this occasion he is accompanied by his new brother-in-law, Jerrod Washington. Bodyguards are a rarity; he uses security only if he’s heading to a big event such as a concert.

Kobe Bryant is simply devoid of pretense, which is one of the reasons West didn’t think it was such a huge gamble to bring a 17-year-old who was one month out of high school to Los Angeles and the NBA. Because it was this 17-year-old, mature enough to move in a grown-up world and stable enough to handle the distractions.

Bryant thirsted for learning. Among Laker coaches, he was known as the player who wouldn’t wait for tapes of upcoming opponents to show up in his locker; he actively sought them out. Derek Harper, a teammate last season, marvels at Bryant’s dedication: “The one thing that people wouldn’t believe is how hard he works. The kid is gifted and obviously he’s very, very talented as a young basketball player. But the reason he’ll be great one day is because of his work ethic. He simply works harder than anybody I know. He’s the first guy there [to practice], the last guy to leave a lot of times. He studies the game and takes it very, very seriously, and that, for a young player, was a little bit surprising for me.”

The fans knew a good thing when they saw it. Bryant started his NBA career--at the age of 18--with the popularity of a longtime superstar thanks to his slashing moves while racing downcourt with the ball, his between-the-leg dribbling and the slam dunks. Especially the slam dunks. One-handed, two-handed. Sometimes teammates sitting on the bench couldn’t help but fall over each other in amazement over some maneuver, colliding like bowling pins in the ultimate compliment to a fellow player. Corporate America joined in the adulation. Bryant wasn’t even 21 before he had major endorsement deals worth a little more than $10 million annually from Sprite, Spalding, Mattel and Nintendo as well as Adidas.

And then there is the supreme compliment, from Phil Jackson, the new Laker coach: “He’s dedicated, he’s competitive. He reminds me a lot of Michael Jordan, and there’s not too many players who have ever done that.”

Jordan, of course, arrived in the NBA after three years of college, a structured program at North Carolina that provided early discipline to all that natural talent. Bryant arrived self-taught. Which takes us back to that place in the sun issue. Other Laker coaches hoped Bryant would strive to be a solid player and not try to advance straight from the senior prom to instant greatness. So has Jackson, ever since Bryant returned Dec. 1 from the broken right hand that cost him the first month of the regular season. But Bryant has offered inconsistent play, bouncing between the spectacular and the frustrating. So we’re all still waiting to see who falls in line with whom.

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He’s always been different. Joe and Pam Bryant named their only son, born in Philadelphia on Aug. 23, 1978, after the pricey beef that comes from cows in Kobe, Japan. At the time, Joe Bryant was a 6-foot-9 forward playing for the Philadelphia 76ers; he finished his career in Italy and France, family in tow. Kobe was 6 when he first encountered European culture. “It wasn’t too hard, because I always had my sisters with me,” he says. “It wasn’t like we were trying to adapt to [the locals]. We made them adapt to us.” The Bryants spoke Italian around the house but kept connected to the United States with summer vacations in Philly. (Now the Bryants have reconnected to Italy. Last month, Bryant announced that he had bought a 50% interest in Milan-based Olimpia Milano, a team he followed closely while Joe Bryant was a star player there; Joe has been named an executive vice president of the team.) Kobe was 13 when they moved back to the United States for good, became a star at Lower Merion High in suburban Ardmore, Pa., and became a celebrity when USA Today and Gatorade named him their national high school player of the year.

Bryant--bright, mature, grounded, personable--had credentials to get into almost any college. But play in college? Please. He wanted the immediate challenge of playing against the best, and no one had a chance of talking him out of it. A year of structure and discipline in his game would have been a huge benefit, something he could have received at Duke or North Carolina, two schools he liked, but that didn’t matter. He wanted stardom yesterday. The Charlotte Hornets drafted him in 1996 as part of a prearranged trade with the Lakers. Three weeks later, O’Neal signed his seven-year, $120-million deal.

The star power that playboy owner Jerry Buss so coveted but lost with the retirements of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had returned in an instant. The new pairing would not match its predecessors in every way--Abdul-Jabbar was an intellectual who seemed distant; O’Neal flashes a smile the size of a European principality and announces at post-game press sessions that the media are welcome to join him later at a strip club--but it was the next wave one way or another. A guard and a center, both with the ability to dominate opponents and captivate crowds, each living Los Angeles.

It seemed a perfect pairing, and at the right time, since the Lakers soon would need to sell luxury suites in the new downtown Staples Center. Perfect until reality intruded. Bryant was not only confident he would become a superstar, he was going to prove it every game. He was so determined to show everyone that he could make the jump from high school to the NBA--that he was worth all the attention, that he really was All That--that he forced things. There were wild shots as a teammate stood unguarded 10 feet away and turnovers that came when he tried to dribble through three defenders.

The backlash would have been bad enough--veteran superstar Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz did not hide his disdain, in words or body language, after newcomer Bryant waved him off of a play at the all-star game--if it had come with the support of teammates. But Kobe had also alienated many of the Lakers. To reach out for help would be to concede weakness, even at 18 or 19 years old, and that would never happen.

“I can say we’ve experienced times where he’s amazed us and we’ve been proud of him,” Fox says. But. . . . “You get frustrated. You wouldn’t give your 10-year-old the keys to drive the whole bus to school. So it’s difficult.”

Difficult? During one game last season, Bryant had the ball near midcourt and took it in himself rather than pass to a wide-open teammate, Ruben Patterson, who was 10 or 15 feet closer to the basket. A pointed exchange in the locker room afterward concluded with a “kick your ass!” threat from Patterson if that happened again. It is the best example of what grinds fellow Lakers: not that Bryant shoots a lot, though they are not exactly thrilled with that, but that he will do so at the expense of ignoring available teammates.

Even a major supporter in management, of which there are many, wishes Bryant would take more of a role in diffusing the tension instead of putting his head in the sand. Says West, his biggest booster of all: “I haven’t really broached that, but I think it’s something that’s really, really important for him to understand. I feel it’s important for people to understand the dynamics of a locker room. I’ve always felt, be who you are, be yourself. But I do think you have to embrace your teammates.” Bryant won’t, at least not yet.

“What he’s doing, he’s thinking of an edge,” says former teammate Harper. “When he sort of pulls himself away from everybody else, he’s thinking of a very cunning way to be a little bit more successful than he already is as a basketball player. I think in his heart of hearts, he wants to be the greatest player ever to play.”

There is no doubt about that. The uncertainty, the biggest question about the whole team, really, is whether he can be the greatest while paired with O’Neal. West, close friends with both and the man who put them together in the first place, scoffs at the oft-made suggestion that we’re all rubber-necking at a train wreck in the making. Others are not so sure: “If the relationship is like it is right now,” says a former member of the Lakers staff, “I can see a problem. When you have two guys like that, I think it pretty much has to be established whose team it is, who’s running the team. I think in [Bryant’s] mind, at some point he expects this to be his team and that’s what he is striving for. He wants it that when people think about the Lakers, the first name that comes to their mind is Kobe Bryant.”

The internal struggles went public in April when O’Neal told CBS SportsLine, “I’m not going to be here that long that I want to wait years for him to figure it out.” Bryant insists he wasn’t bothered by the slap, but everyone around the team just assumes he doesn’t want to admit to being hurt.

Privately, Bryant says, he thought it wrong of O’Neal to air feelings through the media instead of coming to him man to man. In the worst of times, Bryant imagined himself being traded to another team or O’Neal going elsewhere. “I’d be lying if I was like, ‘Every morning when I get up, things are going to work out. It’s perfect.’ I’m optimistic, but damn. That’s only human nature. I’m sure he felt the same way.” Bryant mentally tried on the uniforms of just about every other team in the NBA, wondering how they would look.

But none of the other jerseys ever fit in Bryant’s mental fashion show; he never considered approaching West and asking for a trade. He felt loyalty to the organization, and the man, for taking the risk on an untested 17-year-old in the summer of ’96 and for the six-year, $70.9-million contract that came last January.

By the fall, there were indications of a thaw, or at least of both sides trying to communicate. The biggest public gesture was O’Neal’s attending Bryant’s 21st birthday party at a nightclub on La Cienega in September, a bash with about 300 people in attendance and the guest of honor spending a large chunk of time in the relative quiet of a back booth, away from the crowded dance floor. Bryant had conceded that the O’Neal tension “probably already has” cost the Lakers some wins. “Professional” is how he described the relationship. “And I think that’s the way it should be. I don’t want to come in and be buddy-buddy and fake it because people are saying we don’t get along or whatever. It’s not like that, so we’re not going to make it be like that. But we do get along on the basketball court and we do communicate on the basketball court. . . . That’s the kind of relationship we have and that’s perfect. I wouldn’t want it any other way, really.”

“How will it play out?” Bryant wondered over the summer. “We’re just going to have to find out. I guess that’s what makes us interesting.” Can the two coexist? Probably. Is a showdown inevitable? He laughs. “I don’t think so. If there is, everybody has their path, everybody has their course. You just have to let the course pan out. That’s why I don’t worry about it too much. I’ve never worried about other people getting upset at me for wanting to be the best at what I wanted to do. If I did that, I wouldn’t be here.”

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Only his family and closest friends know about balance mode, a state of mind in which Bryant maintains his composure just as the tears are about to flow, sometimes literally tilting his head back to balance the first drop on the eye before it has a chance to escape the bottom lid. Just like at the wedding on June 26 of sister Sharia, 23. The bridal party made bets in the morning about who would cry first. Bryant, the best man, the ever-competitive and emotional man, put his $5 on a cousin. He knew some folks had picked him as the first to cry-- and then felt himself swelling up on the altar. “I had to go into serious balance mode. It was, like, fourth quarter.”

In a big upset, Joe Bryant, the choice of no one, gushed as he came down the aisle before things got too far along. In the middle of the ceremony, Kobe thought to himself, “Oh, no. Dammit. I lost.” But at least he didn’t break down himself. One victory.

Maybe it was the experience factor. It is the same discipline, after all, that had served him well in a small room underneath the stands of the Great Western Forum, a cubbyhole, really, about 20 feet from the court and 30 feet down a corridor from the home locker room. Those in pain would meet him there.

Bryant is generous and genuine with his charity work, not tied by some begrudging sense of obligation, and nowhere was this more evident than at the small gatherings in that glorified closet before his team moved to Staples. His involvement with most of the charities started when he was a rookie, through Elissa Fisher, who works for his agent, Arn Tellem. He would meet abused children, his pet project, and troubled and dying youth for secret pep talks, then quickly compose himself upon returning to the locker room. That usually meant sitting in front of his stall and blocking out the banter of his teammates, focusing on the game ahead and getting predatory all over again. Balance mode. He is not worried about the kids seeing him cry, though he never wants that to happen since he is there to cheer them up. But he really doesn’t want the other Lakers to see him affected.

None of them has an idea how much those meetings impact their team, and their own relationships with the young star. Bryant is court side at Staples Center, the current meeting place, about two hours before game time. He is joined sometimes by teenagers straying down the wrong path, sometimes with kids from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, often with participants in the program at the Center for Abused Children, and he is taking requests. They ask to see an outrageous dunk that night, and he does his best to comply. Fallout be damned. Like the final regular game of last season, against Portland. “It wasn’t really a fastbreak, and Rasheed Wallace [of the Trail Blazers] was right behind me,” he says. “I got to the basket and did a 360. My teammates were like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ But the kid I met before the game, I asked him what kind of dunk he wanted to see, and he was like, ‘I want to see a 360.’ So all right, what the hell.”

So OK, teammates gave him grief. “I don’t really care. They didn’t know what I was doing.”

Are you supposed to praise Bryant for putting a sympathetic emphasis on the emotions of the troubled or blame him for disregarding those who are supposed to be on the same side in the pursuit of a championship? This is part of what has become the eternal struggle of Kobe Bryant, at least to everyone else. For Bryant, there is no struggle; only the waiting for others to fall in line.

He has the enviable bond of family. Joe and Pam and sister Shaya, 22, have moved out of the house in Pacific Palisades they all shared the first three years in L.A. and into another house about a quarter mile away, but Bryant is talking about connecting the two lots, maybe with a gym.

“I roll by myself,” he says. “If I don’t have my cousin out here with me, I’ll go by myself. I have no problem with that. Or I’ll go with my sisters. I just don’t believe in a big entourage. I believe in having people close to me that I know, that I can trust, feel comfortable with.” There is barely an attempt at a similar bond with the teammates he sees almost every day for nine months of the year. They can adjust to him.

Or can they? That wait may be a long one.