Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Roland Lazenby
Date read: 4/11/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

The definitive Kobe Bryant biography. Lazenby details Kobe’s upbringing, his struggles, his triumphs, and his coming to terms with how to balance basketball alongside family—often learning the hard way. Throughout the book, Lazenby explores Kobe’s impenetrable, unshakable self-belief, his singular focus, and his ability to punch above his weight. No one understood the power of visualization, preparation, and seeking world-class mentors as well as Kobe. Well worth your time and one of the most powerful sports biographies I’ve read.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Preparation:
Gained a reputation for being a master of study and intense preparation with a singular focus on the details. 

Even as a kid, would pour over footage of players: “Soon Joe was subscribing to a service that delivered video of games directly. Joe and Kobe would pour over them together, taking note of all the key subtleties, the footwork, a primer of drop steps and jab steps and V-cuts, the various offensive and defensive styles of NBA teams and their stars. ‘I used to watch everybody from Magic to Bird to Michael to Dominique Wilkins,’ Bryant recalled. ‘I used to watch their moves and add them to my game.’ It was the beginning of a career-long focus on studying game recordings, normally the domain of the Xs and Os wonks, who serve as assistant coaches.” Roland Lazenby

“By the time he was an NBA player, he would invest long hours each day breaking down his performances and those of opponents, far more than what any other NBA player would ever contemplate undertaking.” Roland Lazenby

By the time Phil Jackson joined the Lakers, Kobe had already mastered the triangle offense because of how much he studied the Bulls growing up. He knew the right spots on the floor, the right actions, etc.

“It began with his immaculate footwork—an array of pivots, reverse pivots, jab steps, and feints that allowed him to create the room to rise up in a tight space, often pinned in against the side-line; to elevate over the defender and make seemingly impossible shots under impossible circumstances. This unique skill was the perfectly formed product of his study of untold hours of videotape of every single one of the game’s great scorers. It also involved conversations and more film study with Tex Winter about footwork, and time spent with Jerry West talking about a million important details, such as the angle of his elbow in relation to his forehead for the perfect shot.” Roland Lazenby

On flights after games, while teammates were sleeping, Bryant would watch the game he just played to review and critique his performance, then watch the scouting video for the next opponent, all before allowing himself to sleep. 

Impenetrable, unshakable self-belief:
“At every turn, his declarations of future greatness have been met with head shaking and raised eyebrows because such dreams as ludicrous, impossible to fulfill. ‘Kobe’s crazy,’ the people around him concluded time and time again with a laugh.” Roland Lazenby

“Bryant’s existence has been a singular, almost inhuman, pursuit of greatness.” Roland Lazenby

“A lot of guys his age didn’t really believe in themselves yet. It’s not enough to be good; you’ve got to know you are good. Kobe, he believed it.” Gary Charles

Willpower: “He was always trying to get better, to the point that he cut everything and everyone off. It was just, he had a vision. He had a goal in mind, and that was it, that was the end-all, be-all. He played like every game was his last, every workout was going to be his last. He would outwit people, man. His will was just unmatched.” Donnie Carr

Visualization:
Kobe would play alone when he didn’t have anyone else to play against while his family was living in Italy. He called it ‘shadow basketball.’ “That, of course, involved intense visualization of the NBA stars he had stored in his imagination from the video screen.” Roland Lazenby

As a young teen playing in a Philadelphia summer league, Kobe’s counselor cautioned him against his fixation on playing in the NBA and urged him to consider more realistic plans. Kobe was focused on being one in a million and had an extreme sense of purpose paired with an elevated skill level to do it. 

“Kobe Bryant had a clear destination in mind, and if you weren’t one board, he had clearly conveyed the idea that he was the sort who wouldn’t hesitate to grab you by the collar and throw you right off the train.” Roland Lazenby

After his rookie season: “For the next six years young Bryant had lived his life as if on a mythical quest. The only way he could keep the whole dream going was to work harder and harder and harder, to spin his fantasies around and around until they wrapped him tight in a new reality. Visualization was immense for that. It drove his many hours of solitary practice time. In America, as in Italy, he took to playing entire games along on the court in his own personal practice right before he played them for real in front of audiences.” Roland Lazenby

Kobe’s focus entering the league was to be an All-Star, to be a starter, and to average 20 points per game. 

“Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question…Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn’t it is of no use.” Carlos Castaneda, The Teaching’s of Don Juan

Focus:
“Kobe on stage was probably the most focused kid I’ve ever seen on the court. No bullshit, no taking it easy. He’s not going to smile at you. He’s going to kill you from bell to bell, no mercy. He didn’t give a fuck.” Sam Rines

Pick a lane: Kobe failed to launch a successful hip-hop career—what many athletes were attempting to do at the time. He was laughed off stage at a performance during All-Star Weekend. “He put it in perspective. You need to respect the ground that everybody else walks on. He didn’t treat music the way he did basketball. It’s a different investment. You can have supreme confidence, but you can’t go in there thinking if you want to do this at a higher level, it takes less than what you put into basketball.” Scoop Jackson

Mental toughness is what set Kobe apart. Being able to accept responsibility night after night after night. 

Severed relationships:
“It’s like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Show me a hero, and I’ll show you a tragedy.” Anthony Gilbert

“In one fell swoop, in the days before the 2001 playoffs began, Bryant had simply removed his family from his life.” Roland Lazenby

“He was like the Russians with the Romanovs. He got rid of them all.” Sonny Vaccaro

Learning the value of family: “Despite all his ambition and drive, the basketball star found nothing more important than his two daughters. The children were the priority for which he would skip a workout….Bryant had long encountered self-destruction in life, and by age thirty-four, he had learned to back away and move toward centering his approach. In a life filled with focus on competitive titles and glory, he was perhaps learning once more that there were other important things to be won.” Roland Lazenby

Distance:
“Since he mostly worked out alone, his teammates rarely saw him developing his game. Between the obvious talent, the inexperience, and his reclusive nature, Bryant presented quite a mystery. Derek Fisher had come in as a rookie with Bryant, had played with him for two seasons, and still had absolutely no idea who the kid was.” Roland Lazenby

“His basic strategy for dealing with other Lakers was to talk as little as possible.” Roland Lazenby

Punch above your weight:
Summer before his senior year of high school, Kobe would scrimmage and play with pros while he was facing a decision on whether or not to go straight to the NBA or go to college first. “It remained difficult to draw too many conclusions from Bryant’s experience working out with the pros that summer except for one impression that really mattered—Bryant’s own. He came away thinking that he could do it, he could play against NBA players right away.” Roland Lazenby

Game 5 - Second Round of NBA playoffs:
Lakers down in the series with the Utah Jazz, 3-1.. Shaq fouled out with just under two minutes to go and the game was then in Kobe’s hands (it was still his rookie season, he was 18 years old). With one minute left in regulation, John Stockton blew by Kobe for a layup to tie the game. Kobe got the last shot to win it in regulation from fourteen feet and threw up an airball. “Overtime would only extend his nightmare. With O’Neal out of the game, the Lakers found themselves putting the extra period in the rookie’s hands. His three deep air balls goosed the home crowd into delight. Bryant raised his eyebrows, licked his lips, appeared almost, for a moment, to squeeze back a tear.” (page 268 for reference)

After Kobe returned to LA he was on the phone with Sonny Vaccaro who asked him how he felt about getting beat up by the press and fans for his crazy air balls. “Fuck ‘em,” Bryant replied quickly. “Nobody else wanted to shoot the ball.”

“That evening after the loss Bryant went straight to a gym at a neighborhood school as soon as he got home to L.A. ‘He went in the gym that night and shot until three or four in the morning,’ Scoop Jackson said. ‘There’s no crying, there’s no running to lay up with some woman he just met in a club. None of that shit. He went straight to the damn gym.’ ‘There’s not another teenager on the planet who could miss those shots, fail the Lakers, and recover from it,’ Vaccaro said, looking back.” Roland Lazenby

“It was an early turning point for me in being able to deal with adversity, deal with public scrutiny and self-doubt. At eighteen years old, it was gut-check time.” Kobe

“What if he didn’t have that game? What if he didn’t have that moment? What if he made one of those shots? What if he made one of those shots to win the game? Would he have turned out to be as good or better? I think that game was vital to how good he became. That level of embarrassment to happen to someone like him? The next year he came out like a fucking maniac.” Robby Schwartz

Mentorship:
“Tex Winter, the Lakers’ new assistant coach and resident offensive genius, would take the kind of grandfatherly approach that Bryant had long responded to. Winter could be harsh in his assessments of players, but he stressed early on to Bryant that when he criticized—and he would criticize often—he was aiming his comments at the player’s actions, not at the player himself.” Roland Lazenby