A side effect to being born with a destiny for greatness seems to be an unwillingness to let this fate play out on its own. The very drive that creates such potential stirs dissatisfaction with achievement on anyone else’s terms. A prodigy will necessarily reach the point at which he can’t help but engineer his own ascension, even if it leads to his downfall.
“I know where you come from, before you called yourself ‘Kylo Ren’”, defiantly spoke Lor San Tekka moments before being killed by Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This scene offers a first look at the raw cruelty of the villain and his disregard to the value of others in his pursuit of greatness.
One might imagine a similar scene playing out on a basketball court during the prime of Kobe Bryant’s career. Perhaps during the third quarter of the game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors on January 22, 2006. It’s natural to picture Kobe holding the ball on the wing, guarded by Jalen Rose as he fruitlessly pleads, “I know where you come from, before you called yourself ‘The Black Mamba’” right before Kobe drives, spins and attacks the hoop for yet another made field goal on his way to an 81 point total for the night.
Kobe Bryant was a villain. He was a ruthless killer with an invulnerable mind. But he wasn’t always this way.
When I say Kobe wasn’t always this way, I don’t mean that there was a time before Kobe became this villain and a point after which Kobe solidified himself as a villain, though that is certainly true. I mean that Kobe wasn’t always this way all the time. He was a conflicted prodigy, much like Kylo Ren, who realized what his potential legacy was and he realized that he played in the shadow of the greater legacy of an even more ruthless killer. Kobe measured himself against the only standard he knew would require his absolute best to even hope to match. Kobe was inspired to be like Mike as Kylo Ren was inspired to be like Vader. His game, his mannerisms, his aspirations for success all reflected the icon who came before him.
Probably no one more than Kobe respected how difficult it would be to achieve the level of success that Michael Jordan had. He was a student of MJ, a follower, a believer in his ways. If MJ won six titles, five MVP awards, and ten scoring titles by being an irrefutable, though contemporaneously well-disguised, villain, then it was clear what Kobe needed to do.
Kobe needed to block out all the light within him. He needed to shed any inclination toward being Mr. Nice Guy, a popular teammate, an unselfish competitor. He needed to choose to be evil. He needed to embrace what Michael Jordan was so naturally, a sociopath on the basketball court who used and berated teammates more than acknowledged and appreciated them.
Kobe could be as his coach, Phil Jackson, called him, “a killer, a gunslinger, a guy who will take the weak and have no mercy on them” and “quite often I could feel his hatred”.
But Kobe acknowledged his moodiness as somewhat of a misconception, “The way I am on the court [isn’t] the way I am off the court. I'm completely different at home…”, Bryant once stated.
Like Kylo Ren staring at the charred remains of Darth Vader’s mask, Kobe might have sat at home preparing for another grueling day, one of many over a 20 year career, staring at a well worn original pair of Air Jordans and declared, “Forgive me. I feel it again... the call from light... Show me again the power of the darkness”. He might then get up and go to practice and tell teammates they don’t have enough accolades to talk to him or declare them otherwise inadequate to help him achieve his goals.
It would be well within the expected bounds of the Star Wars franchise to eventually provide redemption for a villain like Kylo Ren. Kobe may be experiencing his own redemption now on this current, nonthreatening Lakers squad, with his diminished ability to be the once ruthless enemy, all in the light of his forthcoming retirement. The announced end of his reign of terror allows others a safe nostalgia, like looking at The Black Mamba through safety glass and remembering how dangerous it used to be before it was caged.
