S1E5: We Need A Hero

first heard the name Kobe Bryant. So I've just parked here at my alma mater, LSU University, and I'm heading to the Connelly Library so I can find the very first article I ever wrote about Kobe Bryant. I graduated from Lasal. It's a private Catholic university in Philadelphia, a mid size university with about four thousand undergraduates. And I

was kind of meant to go there anything. After all, my father went to Lasal and his brother went to Lasal, and my mom's brother went to Lasal, and my younger sister went to Lasal. And while I was there, I spent a lot of my time in a tiny, cramped office in the basement of the student union building, the headquarters of the university student newspaper, The Collegiate. I don't know how many times I've come through this door left the store late at night, back when I was writing

for and editing the student paper. Just feel so weird, like all this happened yesterday, or it all happened a quarter century ago, A kind of violing back and forth between those two feelings. Plus, it's always a little strange to come back here. In some ways, it feels like I haven't graduated. Everything kind of comes rushing back. The campus doesn't look that different from when I was here in the early to mid nineties, and some of the

buildings and rooms even smell the same. My freshman year at LaSalle began in the fall of another person's tenure at the school began that year too, Joe Bryant's Kobe's dad, Speedy Morris, La Salle's men's basketball coach, had hired Joe as an assistant, and one of the intended by products of that move was the belief that Kobe would decide to play college ball there. Actually, for those of us who were connected to Lasal. It wasn't really belief. It

was hope. Who was this kid playing at Lower Marian? Was he that good? Was he as good as his dad had been when Joe played for LaSalle? Was even better? So yes, I remember the first time I wrote about Kobe. I just don't remember what I wrote. I'm not really looking forward to seeing this article. If there's one thing that I think all writers hate, it's going back and looking at their pieces or stories or whatever they wrote

when they were young. I know for me, I was trying so hard to find my voice that what I wrote was really stilted and kind of old fashioned in a way. So I'm not looking forward at all to seeing what I actually wrote about him. I didn't know much about Kobe then, his background, his personality. I just knew he was this tremendous high school basketball player who might end up being a tremendous college basketball player at

my college. To find the article, I got in touch with Carol Brigham, whose official title at LaSalle is Associate Dean of Operations and Collections Management, which means he's in charge of a lot of the archival material at the Connelly Library, which means she's in charge of all the back copies of the Collegiate. She was waiting for me when I got to the library and went through the front turnstyle. I'm sorry you, Mike, I am, and then I'll say hi, I'm caring car with the you can't

tell Vernice to see you. Thanks for doing this problem. Yeah, so I'm here to check out the Collegian. You know what it is to your hair is very much Were you here when I was a student here? Oh yeah, okay back in the nice yes, yes, yes, I should have warned you. That's okay. Am. I allowed to ask him?

Why sure? Um? So an in January? That vie um and that also, which is why A here today right come out later this year, and as part of it, one of the episodes delving into the possibility to Coobe would have come here and the fact that I was a student in right third with Collegian at the time, so I wanted to take up I know this is the first article. Yeah, so in front of me, I have about eighteen issues of the Collegian from my junior year, and I've got to find the article that I wrote

about Toby. So let's see the saying it and here it is. I found it Wednesday, December and guess what it is? Every bit as bad as I feared it would be. I'm Mike Sealskip and from Diversion Podcasts, this is I am cooked the White wat Stein, Create myself, exact signs, Create yourself, say nice, go on, create yourself. You gotta learn of friendly great minds that we gained line selling that's getting signed. Episode five. We need a hero. Growing up just outside Philadelphia, I got turned onto Big

Five Basketball at an early age. The Big Five is an informal association of college teams from Philly, some of the oldest and most successful men's basketball programs in the country. Villanova won the national championship just before I turned ten. I can remember watching that incredible upset of Patrick Ewing and the Georgetown Hoyas at home with my mom while my dad was out of town for work. Penn was

the Ivy League school that held its own and then some. St. Joe's always had this kind of underdog status, fit for its motto the Hawks Will Never Die. Temple had its wild eyed genius coach John Cheney. He had his team's played this weird matchup zone defense that nobody could figure out. But of course my team was LaSalle. My family had all those connections to the school, and I'd watched the Explorers games with my dad, including a few with the Pialester,

which we talked about previously in this series. Plus LaSalle I thought was the best team in the Big Five to watch. The school had won a national championship in nineteen fifty four and had been great in the late nineteen sixties when my dad was a student there. It would traditionally recruit and get one or more of the best players in the city, if not the best, and in the late nineteen eighties, the Explorers coach Speedy Morris

continued that tradition. Speedy is still around, but he's experienced some health problems in the last few years, including Parkinson's disease. So I spoke to his oldest son, Keith, who played for him at LaSalle and became a high school coach himself. When you think of the Big Five, what comes to mind tremendous history, worse didn't matter if you were University of Penn having a tough season. We'll say having a

tough season, anybody could beat anybody. Any given night, sadness a little bit, and then it's not what it was. TV money, conference money obviously ended those palestrial doubleheaders, and you know, you get it. There's nothing like it in the country. We all know that. And some great teams, great players, great coaches, and just it's silly Philly. I missed the old days with it, to be honest. Speedy

is a Philadelphia institution himself. Grew up in the city, got his first coaching job in a C Y O league, was a great high school coach here for years. One writer in town said that Speedy was as much a part of the fabric of Philadelphia as Chiefe steaks, dripping adjecta and soft pretzels flavored with bus exhaust. What a great line. During games and practices, he had a volcanic temper.

He'd scream at his players, ball up his sport code and chucking in the stands, roll up a game program into a baton and smack a kid in the back of the head room. He could be tough to play for. I'll give you an idea of what I mean. Andrew Trella grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and was a year behind me. At LA South. His dad went there too, just like mine. Andrew was six ft four, a really good basketball player, used to destroy me and my team

and intermurals. These days, he lives and works just outside Philly and coaches bass the ball at his local high school. His sophomore year at LASAL, he tried to make the team as a non scholarship player, a walk on, which meant he got an up close look at Speedy's approach. Here's Andrew. The one thing that really stuck out to me, and it actually has affected me a little bit. I think in the way I coach my kids at high school.

At the high school level, is he I don't want a bad mouthing, but boy, he would curse up a storm. He would just dress kids down and just you know, I couldn't believe his mouth. I was like, wow, he's really ripping guys a new one here. So he didn't take any nonsense, and I respect that, but I certainly have a more kind of gentler approach and maybe less

profane approach to coaching than he did. But it was like a mile a minute he was he was slaying into people and it wasn't you know, PG rated for him It was just kind of a constant riding and ride, and I was like, this is kind of uncomfortable. Not everybody loved the way Speedy went about things, but man could he coach offense. When he took over Asal's men's program in the n c a A had just added the three point shot to college basketball. It didn't take him long to fall in love with it, and he

got guys who could shoot. Tim Legler dug over to Randy Woods and the best of the bunch, the l Train. Lionel Simmons, during the sideline report from Philly broadcaster Mark zoom Off, explains exactly how LaSalle's offense could easily score inside or kick it out to a three point sniper like Tim Legler and destroy you from left marks. Team failed to win a single Big Five game last year, as Big Five Player of the Year had posted decided that weight hy dramatic dial Lionel let Let's dottle a

perfect record so far. Clearly the Explorers are back if that's the state. But those days were fading away when Kobe was making his rise through the high school ranks. It would have been a miracle for LaSalle to win a national championship or even sniff one. The school didn't spend much money on its basketball program, didn't even have an on campus arena. The team played all its home games at the Palestra or the Philadelphia Civic Center, twenty

minutes away from campus. But somehow the Explorers were contender to win their conference every year, make the n c A tournament, and earned some city bragging rights. Here's Keith Morris again explaining how his dad tried to keep Lasale competitive. Get those solid Philly players one or two a year if you can, and build around it. Was his philosophy, get them here, and I think one of his greatest attributes was making it known and making guys feel like I'm here for you off the court as well as

on the court. There was a family atmosphere for sure. My mother, Mom Morris, as many of them call her, cook many a spaghetti, lasagna, meatball dinner for a lot of these guys. So the family atmosphere, and that I think enabled him to coach them hard. The kids knew he had their back off of the court, that he was more than just their coach, he was a father figure. Hey, this is Mike Sealsky, host and writer of I Am Kobe.

This podcast project came out of my work on a related book called The Rise Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality. If you want to explore other parts of Kobe's story, check out The Rise. It's not just a book version of the podcast. I dive deeper into some of the topics covered in this series, and even some that we don't cover at all. Kobe's upbringing, his family, his identity, his effect on his friends and teammates, his journey into the NBA, and his earliest days with the Lakers.

The Rise Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality is out now. Just head over to the Rise of Kobe book dot com and you can buy it from any of your favorite retailers. That's The Rise of Kobe Book dot Com. Thanks. The first look that Speedy and Keith Morris got at Kobe was during a Summer League game, right around the same time that Speedy hired Joe Bryant as an assistant coach. Keith was impressed with the kid.

Kobe was raw in that game as a freshman, but you could tell very very talented, and what nobody realized was that kids. Work ethic was just off the charts, and each and every year after he's getting better and better, to the point where my dad's LaSalle can't in the summer. You know, there are ages eight through seventeen, so you know, when I attended that camp, there were actually juniors heading into their senior year in high school that attended it.

There were some decent players that came. Kobe I think stopped coming after maybe tenth grade, because he just started he culminated the camp. He was just he became that good. It didn't take long for people, especially people around LaSalle, to start to think that maybe, just maybe Kobe would turn out to be good enough to play for his dad in college someday. Kobe played a ton of pickup games in Lasal's little sweat box of a practice gym.

Andrew Trella got to go up against him a few times, and he could see how much better Kobe was than anybody else in that gym. He had moves. I would go back to the dorm after plane and see that. My body's like, I don't know how he gets around the court so quickly. I don't know if he's traveling, but he kind of had a game that I was like, it seemed like it was already NBA ready, and maybe he was traveling. Maybe he just had that good footwork that I didn't know how to get in front of him.

But he was really adept at getting around the floor, maximizing the two steps that you get college basketball. I guess, super competitive kid. The way he got around the floor, that's what I really remember. It's kind of it was very effortless, how he could get around the floor. You think he might come to a sale if if Oh, yeah, no, I definitely did so. And this was a running in conversation I had with my buddies who I lived with, was his dad's here he could be this second coming

of line one really turned the program around. You know, there was a lot of talk at that time. I believe it was Duke was mentioned pretty heavily. I remember getting a lot about Duke um and then obviously he

heard the whispers about the NBA. But I guess I just had never been around with someone who made that kind of jump to the n B A And you know, he was still what at six six six seven, he wasn't physically he hadn't failed out completely, So it seemed to me, like, you know, he would be an awesome college player for a couple of years, and the fact that his dad was on campus and helping out with coach, and I was like, yeah, this seems like a great fit.

I certainly hoped and thought that, you know, he would be kind of the next guy to turn the program around. So because he could have walked in and the ball was his, Andrew was onto something back then. Early in his high school career, Kobe was actually open to the idea of going to a sound He was genuinely considering it because he knew he would be a superstar if he went there. But I thought that was fund probably be a nice right, not a couple of years, and

right sounded great to us. Kobe could come to Lassal, stay for a year or two and dominate. We'd have been cool with that. Heck, we needed him to do that. Thanks to the programs athletic director Bob Mullen, LaSalle had just changed conferences, moving to the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, which included schools like Detroit Mercy and Illinois Chicago. It was supposed to be an upgrade, better competition, more money, but

it was a ridiculous decision. No one from the Philadelphia area wanted to watch basketball games against those schools, And you could be darn sure no Philly area players wanted to go to Lasal to play against those schools. I mean it, I was there. Nobody showed up sitting courtside at the Civic Center for a Lasau game. It was

like being at the bottom of the Grand Can. One night, I was sitting courtside on press row and the Civic Center was practically empty, and a sportswriter leaned over to me and said, you know, if you put everybody in this building on the court, no one would get called for three seconds. It was a great line. It's stung, but he was right. Competitive ball game, turning it inside

out as always be winning. That clip of a loss from a matchup between LaSalle and Temple was just one of many examples of the Explorers getting trounced in that era. If Lasal basketball was going to have any kind of renaissance, it needed Kobe bad and everyone knew it. So Bob Mallen,

the a D pulled out all the stops. He gave Joe a raise, and he arranged for Kobe's older sister, Shia, who played volleyball at Lower Merion to get a full athletic scholarship to less out, even though the women's volleyball coach never even met her, let alone recruited her. Through all that, though, Kobe was pretty ambivalent about the idea

of becoming an explorer. For example, one of his pickup partners at LaSalle was Larry Kentner, a six ft ten stud at Roman Catholic High School, a Philly basketball powerhouse. Kenner was a year ahead of Kobe in school, and he was thinking about going to Losal himself. Kobe told his friend Jeremy Treatment that Kentner basically gave him an ultimatum, if you go Ala each other. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Kobe, I'll commit to that. I have no clue what I'm doing. U. Yeah.

It was fun about goal there to play there. I thought I could play there. I never really were out there like it didn't man, that's all. Larry said, I'm there tomorrow. And Larry Kenner wasn't the only big time recruit who was considering the Sound just because of Kobe. I got another one for you, Corey Benjamin. Corey Benjamin was a six ft six shooting guard from Compton, California. Kobe met him on the AUTH circuit. He'd go on to be a first round draft pick and play three

plus seasons in the NBA. He said, going to I'm going to because you know, you can't cout happen a good time of hanging out. It started that he played in comin with each other very well, going to the South. I'm going all the way out there and I'm going that's for you. I mean, what players standpoint. Then they're saying if you college, If you do go to college, I'm coming rich girl, I'm saying, but they know. I mean, if they were my things, she may be taking man

and it would be a nice plot. But at the same time, you might want to go to college and having become a good time. So you never know what to happen. So even in retrospect, it sounds too good to be true. Kobe Bryant, Larry Kentner, Corey Benjamin All a little old lassal well, guess what it was too good to be true? Kentner picked you Mass. Benjamin ended

up going to Oregon State. As for Kobe, he was keeping most of these plans to himself and even though his dad was in a tough spot being an assistant coach and everything. He and Kobe were kind of stringing Speedy Morris along. Here's the other thing. Jeremy Treatment was the radio play by play guy for the Explorers at the time, and he was tight with Joe Bryant. I mean, I saw your dads being Marson's jumping out the sound. Well. I think at good time, I thought I'd be going

to the South. IM be a nice back my father. Those of us who weren't really in the know, thought that bond between Joe and Kobe might be enough to pull the kid to the South. Our school might have a chance to get him. Our school might be the one that Dick Vitale was screaming and shouting about on ESPN. Our school would be in the spotlight for a change

that chance. However, Slim made a certain high school basketball game in December of a huge event in Philadelphia, and particularly to everyone who followed was sal Who's The game was between Lower Marian and Roman Catholic. Larry Kentner had graduated, so Romans best player was a guard named Donnie Carr. He and Kobe were friends. They played summer ball against each other for years, and Donnie was Speedy Morris's top

recruiting target. He was just six ft three but strong, could shoot from the outside and had a great handle, the perfect Lasal player. The game was at Drexel University, and Donnie and Kobe went toe to toe. That was the game that inspired me to write my first article about Cope. There had been so much build up to it and so much reaction after it, and Kobe and Donnie had played so well that I felt I had

to weigh in. I had a regular column for The Collegian back then, and here's a snippet of the one I wrote after the lower Marian versus Roman Catholic game. Prepare yourself for some awful probes. Last Monday night, the prospective saviors of the LaSalle basketball program stood out in the center of Drexel's Physical Education Center, drew their cult forty five, and blasted away at one another. Neither blinked. Kobe Bryant, Lower Marian's sleek and supple guard, scored thirty points,

flying and floating through the heavy gymnasium air. Roman Catholics Donny Carr scored thirty four points. The game was a victory for Roman, the gunfighting duel a draw the future for Explorer basketball should these young snipers choose to come here blinding Yikes, that's some overwrought college paper garbage. But I was just one of several writers who read way too much into that game, who didn't really know what

Kobe was thinking. And as I would learn much later, what he was thinking was I don't want to play for La Salle, and I especially don't want to play for a coach who screamed so much. Right as the season when I really I really begin to dislike me more because the way he's coaching. A couple of things you did, I mean didn't like. I said, Man, yeah, you know, it's not you. I really just don't like like I did. Decided to college, and I would not be side. I really want to thinking, you don't realer

what you're doing. I remember, but I know my mother dart where Kobe was pretty emphatic there, and you have to put his thinking in the right context, the context of that time and the context of him Back then, it was a pretty natural thing for a great high school basketball player to go play for a coach like Bobby Knight or John Chaine or Speedy Morris, a coach who would scream and yell and push his players to

the breaking point. But Kobe was at the vanguard of a new generation of players, young men who knew how much power they had and knew that they could wield him. Kobe could choose any path he wanted, college, the NBA, whatever, he could do what was best for him. He just had to be bold enough to follow through on it. Kobe's future wasn't dependent on Speedy Morris. If anything, it was the other way around, and Speedy Morris's future wasn't

exactly a high priority for Kobe. It got to the point that he started mocking the idea that he choose lasal Remember the volleyball scholarship that Shaya got. Well, Kobe's other sister, Shariah, already was a Division one player at Temple, another Big five Phillies school, And as Kobe told Jeremy Treatment, he had a lot more fun watching Sharia's matches than he did. Shays, Oh yeah, yeah, there's a lot of fund game the South, like Temple bar on the south

of the really stinks. Saying those the teams stinks. You attended the day volley board teams stinks. So Jeremy asked Kobe the logical question, if you weren't going to Asal, where were you going? What are you going to check out? There? What I'm thinking about checking out? Mr? Game? You're gonna go to all these places? I definitely check out what's ks trying to percentage cheese? You might change the funds

a little defender, but you never know what happened. I never never right right out there at the best time in your life. Enjoined the coach choo where you wait for you. There's a couple of schools that I like, like North Carolina, but I'm gonna pick them. You don't pick them because of affects. Michael Jordy not able to have your own identity right now? You do. There are a couple of really interesting insights into Kobe just from

that clip. One, even though he admired Michael Jordan's and patterned his game after Michael Jordan's, he didn't want to go to North Carolina because that's where Michael Jordan's had gone to school. He wouldn't be his own man, he wouldn't have his own identity there. Two, he would have gone to Duke. That admission confirms what a lot of people were saying at the time and have said in the years since, that if Kobe went to college, he was going to play for Mike Chaszewski. But here's what

very few people knew at that time. All the lip service that Kobe was paying to the idea of going to college would turn out to be just that lip service. There was no chance he was going to Duke or North Carolina or Michigan or Arizona or LaSalle. Looking back, all of us who are around back then can see that possibility of Kobe going to LaSalle for what it was, a flight of fancy for a prodigy with bigger dreams, a one in a million shot at glory for a

struggling college program, A notion that captured our imaginations. But that turned out to be a pipe dream. But man, it was fun to dream. Even Carol Brigham, tucked away in the Connelly Library about as far from the world of basketball as you could get, hoped Kobe would end

up at the site. I remember it all. I remember being so disappointed when I decided, yeah, yeah he uh he thought about it, thought yeah, yeah, you met him, Yes, I met him a number of times, but once Kobe reached a certain point in his development as a player, he was never ever going to do it. He had made himself stronger and smarter. He was adding muscle to his skinny frame. He had more experience. He knew better how to CounterPunch against just about any defense, how to

up and safe for any deficiencies in his game. On a particular night, if his jumper wasn't falling, he'd drive. If an opponent played his own, he'd bomb away from the outside. Heading into the summer between his junior and senior years of high school, the Summer of Kobe had a plan, and it did not involve saving the basketball program at my alma mater. It didn't involve college basketball

at all. The plan was so wild and so forward thinking, in fact, that even Jeremy Treatment couldn't see its full scope at the time. The summer of nine was going to be Kobe's springboard to the NBA. In the next episode, I'll tell you the story of that summer, The summer when Kobe Bryant truly became a superstar. At one point, Stack House started found him high. They almost got into it, and you know, stack house grabbing him and we had

to kind of break them from those two up. He was relentless because, like I said, for a guy in high school, it was not even its going out the number one over pay. What's kind of crazy? That's next week on I Am Kobe. I Am Kobe is a production of the Version podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. This season is written and hosted by me Mike Sealsky. It's produced by Jacob Bronstein and directed by Mark Francis.

Story editing by Jacob Bronstein with editorial direction from Scott Waxman, Editing, mixing and sound design by Mark Francis. Stephen Tompkins is our production assistant. Our theme music is Create Yourself by Grover Brown featuring Justin Starling. Find Create Yourself wherever you stream music. Music supervisor is Scott Velaska's for Free Sons Sinking. Executive producers are Mark Francis and Scott Waxman. Join the conversation about I Am Kobe on social media on Twitter

and Instagram. It's at Diversion Pods thanks to Rain Rosenbaum, Susan Cannavan and Jeremy Treatment The Eyebries before the Sun. They don't understand when I said the grind is fun. Never clock you out. Even when my work is done.

If they're trying to block me, I might hurt someone through the blood sweat and says, we perseveit, stay tending in, let it, keep the hurses and then if they don't believe in themselves, gave a vert, defend that at Tampa says, So I'm telling no, pass my a. This the reason why I'm gonna work so damn different. So the negatives. I can't listen to see me at the time. You can't listen where I'm a mute to play like cashes see I pay my dudes because Texas gotta work. I

thinking grind ahead of his time. It's someone saying that they made you. Don't tell them you create yourself the best you ben or watch us, but by that time you gotta snake clock, then break clock, break we create yourself. Watch creet question, watch to create myself, sat climb, signs up and create yourself. They nice, ain't so hard to create yourself. You gotta learn from the great minds. No, we ain't lying to tell them that this is any time.

This talent wasn't given. It was made the future. Any time I could change better, tell them that I've made it back home. As I walked through the hearts of the fame, I came from the Valley of the Shadow with death waiting for us. Spoon, don't hold your breath, same town, sat train. But I did it with less. I know one that to be so there's nothing to guess. Yeah, there's nothing. Yes, it's our times. Tell them we up next. We don't got any regrets. I did it with my

soul hands and we never forget my an. This the reason why my work so damn different to the negatives. I can listen see me at the time. You can't listen for where rebuild, reach shape, give me your eye. You got to risk take do it now. When I'm saying while braves, I was saying that they made you, tell them you create yourself the best you finn l watch us by. It's by that time. You gotta sneak clock then break clock break we create yourself, watch me,

watch watch the create myself. Exac clia signs up and create yourself. They're nice and ain't go on create yourself. You gotta learn from the great minds. But we ain't lying telling them that ain't time diversion podcasts,