Kobe Hands Out a Nice Assist

Steve Tyson met Kobe Bryant last weekend in an Italian restaurant in San Antonio--just walked up and stuck out his hand--and Bryant smiled and did the same.

For a few minutes, while Bryant’s bodyguards ate, Steve and Kobe talked, about Gary Payton, Steve’s favorite player, and about the senior prom Steve was headed to, and about the playoff series against the local team, the San Antonio Spurs, and Steve hardly coughed at all.

They took a picture, Steve and his date, Megan, and Kobe Bryant, who laughed and shook Steve’s hand one more time and wished him luck. Steve returned the sentiment, and hardly coughed at all, and everybody said goodbye.

Bryant could not have known that Steve Tyson had all but sneaked away from Room 964 at Wilford Hall Medical Center on the Lackland Air Force Base a few hours earlier. Tyson had disconnected the IV bag above his head, then coiled the line beneath the sleeve of his tuxedo shirt, told a nurse he was going and left.

Bryant could not have known that Steve sometimes coughs with nearly every breath, and that a tube allows nutrients to be pumped into him overnight, every night.

Or that Steve weighs 110 pounds on a good day, because he has cystic fibrosis, a disease that affects the respiratory and digestive systems. Is dying from it actually, something his parents have known every day since Steve was a month old.

Tyson just stuck out his hand, and Kobe took it, and Steve grinned. Later, his parents wept when he called them, at 1:30 a.m., from Room 964.

“He had no clue,” Steve said. “He was just being nice to a normal person.”

That’s why Steve’s father, also Steve, wrote the e-mail.

“I was thankful that someone like Kobe had taken the time to spend some of his time on a busy Saturday night with my son,” the elder Tyson wrote. “Kobe did not know who he was ... but he treated him like a real friend and gave Steve a memory he will always cherish. The 10 minutes Kobe spent with my son did more for him than any medicine could have done. As we watched Kobe dominate the final few minutes of the game [Sunday], we remembered how nice Kobe had been to our son, and we realized it’s possible to be a gentleman and also be aggressive on the floor and have a tremendous will to win. We just became Kobe fans.”

Bryant put down a hard copy of the e-mail.

“I have chills,” he said. “I have chills right now. I’m so happy I picked up his spirits. It’s better than any game-winning shot I ever hit.”

Steve, the son, is 19. He will walk through graduation ceremonies with his friends at Marshall High in San Antonio in June, then graduate in December.

He’ll spend about four months of every year in the hospital, in Room 964, or one like it. He has a cell phone, and Megan calls, and his parents call. But the room TV does not carry cable channels, so Steve, a fan of all sports, can’t watch all the games he’d like.

He’d been in the hospital for a week when it was time for the prom, and doctors thought it best he not go.

“We had such a bad week,” the elder Tyson said. “The doctors didn’t want to let him out.”

But he had to go, was willing to run off to do it, and enough people looked the other way to allow it.

Steve arrived at Paisano’s with 15 other couples. Bryant was in the corner. Steve hesitated.

“I didn’t want to bother him,” Steve said. “But if I didn’t at least say hello, if I left, I would have been kicking myself forever.”

So he walked over.

“It’s amazing, because he’s got this fatal disease,” Steve, the father, said. “But he’s the bravest kid I’ve ever met. He has no fear of doing something like that.”

There are greater things to fear, perhaps.

“It’s fatal,” Steve, the father, said of the disease. “But, the good thing is, the life expectancy is better. It used to be 18, 19 was all they’d give you. Now, it’s in the mid- to late-20s.”

Everything, then, means something.

“Kobe could have blown it,” the father, said. “He could have been a jerk. But, he talked to him. He took a picture with him. He invited his date over. It meant everything to Steve.”

Steve watched on television Sunday afternoon, when the Spurs were on one of the local channels. And when Bryant was introduced, the kid in Room 964 cheered for his friend.

“I met him,” Steve said. “It feels different now.”

Then Steve hung up the telephone after five minutes. He hadn’t coughed once.