Kobe Bryant was not one to let the fans down by not showing up.
Throughout a 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers – spanning 1,392 regular-season games, 220 playoff games and an untold, uncountable number of twilight hours in the gym – the physical toll added up: broken and dislocated fingers; taking IV bags to fight through the flu; a torn labrum; a ruptured Achilles. In between those moments in the spotlight, Bryant’s life came to be dominated by ice bags and stretching, by recovering from the beating he put on his own body.
And yet more times than not, Bryant soldiered through the pain. On more than one occasion, Vanessa Bryant asked her husband why he did it.
“He said, ‘What about the fans who saved up to watch me play just once?’” Vanessa Bryant said Saturday evening, in an emotional speech. “He never forgot about his fans. If he could help it, he would play every minute of every game. He loved you all so much.”
Kobe Bean Bryant, a competitor synonymous with relentless competitive spirit and squeezing the most out of every minute, was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday in Connecticut amid a crowd of peers who inspired him and challenged him to be one of the greatest players in NBA history. Bryant herself helped design the new exhibit that will house his legacy in Springfield, Mass.
The great and bitter irony was that the man who never wanted to leave a fan hanging could not attend his own crowning career achievement.
In many ways, the basketball world has never stopped reeling from Bryant’s death in January 2020, when a helicopter crash on a Calabasas hillside killed him, his daughter Gianna Bryant and seven other people. The raw, tear-stained faces in the arena at the Mohegan Sun resort for Saturday’s induction ceremony spoke to the grief that still is undeniably deep and vast. He was only 41 years old, and Gianna was only 13.
But perhaps drawing on her husband’s sense of resilience, Vanessa Bryant stood in Kobe’s place, calmly powering through a 12-minute speech that breathed life and intimacy into his career achievements. She spoke about his conquests on the court, but also the pride he took in being a father to his four daughters. She touched on his best-selling books, and the Academy Award he won in 2018.
These accolades, she said, were the product of an unmatched ambition – the wages of a man who was committed to being the best in anything he did.
“You once told me, if you’re going to bet on someone, bet on yourself,” Vanessa Bryant said, addressing her husband directly. “I’m glad you bet on yourself, you overachiever. You did it. You’re in the Hall of Fame now. You’re a true champ. You’re not just an MVP. You’re an all-time great.”
The moment he retired in 2016, Bryant was a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. Piled high, his numbers reach some of the rarest air in NBA history: No. 4 on the all-time scoring list (33,643 points), No. 6 in shots made (11,719), and top-20 in games played, minutes and steals. He was an 18-time All-Star (four-time All-Star MVP), a 15-time All-NBA honoree, a two-time league scoring champion and the 2008 regular-season Most Valuable Player.
When the Lakers retired both No. 24 and No. 8, Bryant’s two jersey numbers with the franchise, it was pointed out that if his career was bisected by that switch, Bryant still could have made the Hall of Fame with both the first and second half of his career as separate bodies of work.
A tribute to his aggressiveness and audacity is that Bryant is also the all-time leader in missed shots (14,481) and led the league in that category six times. Like Babe Ruth leading pro baseball in strikeouts during his career, it is revealing: Bryant never met a shot he didn’t think he could hit.
But Bryant’s greatest legacy is inextricably tied to winning: He won NBA championships in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009 and 2010, a star in two very different eras of the same dynasty. In those two latter championships, he earned Finals MVP. For his country, Bryant was a decorated Olympian who won gold medals in 2008 and 2012.
It was telling that two of his fellow inductees, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett, thanked Bryant for inspiring the best in them. Duncan led the Lakers’ greatest Western Conference rival, the San Antonio Spurs, as the two franchises wrestled for dominance during the 2000s. Bryant faced Duncan six times in postseason series, going 4-2. Though he played the bulk of his career in Minnesota, Garnett was the star of Boston’s teams that met the Lakers in the Finals in 2008 and 2010, with the historic franchises splitting 1-1.
Standing at Vanessa Bryant’s shoulder was Kobe’s idol, Michael Jordan, whose own steely composure cracked as the still-grieving widow and mother spoke with riveting and heart-breaking insight into her husband’s inner life.
Bryant was not announced officially as a Hall-of-Famer until April of last year, when he had already died. But he knew one day he would be in, and Vanessa said he had already contacted the Hall of Fame to make sure the family got six tickets instead of the standard five so each of his daughters – Natalia, Gianna, Bianka and Capri – could be present.
“His most cherished accomplishment was being the very best girl dad,” Vanessa added.
It was not all sad. She touched on Kobe’s sense of mirth, picturing him watching the proceedings with arms folded and a devilish grin saying: “Ain’t this some (expletive).” She also acknowledged his most powerful fuel: Those who would cheer to see him fail.
“He would thank all of them for motivating him to be here,” Vanessa said. “After all, he proved you wrong.”
Bryant’s posthumous induction was the bittersweet denouement of one of the Hall’s most decorated classes ever. Beyond Garnett and Duncan, two of the game’s best-ever forwards who were league MVPs and champions in their own right, the Hall also welcomed WNBA star Tamika Catchings, as well as coaches Eddie Sutton, Kim Mulkey, Barbara Stevens and Rudy Tomjanovich. International executive Patrick Baumann was also honored.
Tomjanovich is best known for his coaching tenure with the Houston Rockets where he won back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995, and he led USA Basketball to gold in the 2000 Olympic Games. But he also briefly coached the Lakers in 2004 between Phil Jackson’s stints, resigning due to health issues and taking a consulting role in the franchise.
After a long wait on the ballot, Tomjanovich thanked the Buss family, the owners of the Lakers, in his induction remarks – and he also stumped for another former Laker and teammate of Bryant: Robert Horry.
“He is truly a legendary player,” Tomjanovich said. “He made so many clutch shots. He has seven rings to prove it. This is where he belongs.”
The speeches by the inductees on Saturday were moving in dramatically different ways. There was the unbridled optimism of Catchings, who succeeded despite significant hearing loss and encouraged others to chase their dreams. Mulkey laced her speech with humor, barbing Bill Walton and Magic Johnson in the process. Duncan’s anxiety about public speaking led him to acknowledge that he was more nervous than he had ever been in his life – but his clipped restraint spoke to deep reserves of emotion and gratitude for a charmed career and the people who made it possible, including Coach Gregg Popovich.
Along with Bryant, Sutton and Baumann were inducted posthumously, with dedications delivered by family members.
Vanessa Bryant wished she knew what her husband would have said, or who he would have thanked – “he winged every single speech,” she said. But without a list, she thanked Kobe himself.
“He did the work. He broke those records,” she said. “And he inspired people to be great.”
