What Kobe Bryant Taught Me
Hi everybody,
This week, we’re republishing an essay that Gotham Chopra, ROS co-founder and director of the film Kobe Bryant’s Muse, wrote for The Word back in 2021, on the one year anniversary of Kobe’s death. Kobe’s birthday was this past Wednesday, August 23, and the Lakers legend would have been 45. Kobe has long been one of sports’ mythic figures—and as Gotham writes, he lives on to this day. May he rest in peace.
With that, let me turn the newsletter over to Gotham. I hope you enjoy.
-Joe
I got to know Kobe in 2015 working on a documentary calledMuse, and we spent a lot of time together in an edit room we built for the project in Newport Beach. Kobe lived in Newport, and as we got deeper into the story-building, he demanded that we build the edit space close to him so he could stay involved.
We affectionately called our small space “Kobe jail,” which of course Kobe loved. He’d occasionally shower the team with some signature shoes to make sure the prisoners stayed content….and for the most part it worked! During many long days and nights in the edit room, we talked about storytelling and his career. Kobe was intensely curious, especially about the details and the component parts that went into filmmaking—from editing, to shot selection, to composing an original score. He even asked questions about tedious things like color grading and sound mixing. It was both excruciating and exhilarating, intoxifying and, at times, 100 percent intolerable.
Occasionally, we’d get away from the doc, and in these moments, one of my favorite things to do with him was to watch NBA games. I remember once sitting with him watching one contest in which a player (who shall not be named) went 0-9 in the first half. In the second half, he didn’t take a single shot, finishing the day 0-9.
Kobe shook his head in disbelief. “Bro,” he told me. “I’d go 0-49 before I stopped shooting the ball.” I laughed at what I thought was a joke, but he continued. “The only way you really lose in this game is when you quit and beat yourself.”
When I heard about the accident that claimed Kobe and Gigi’s life, it was the first in a series of events that resulted in the most horrible year. There were many days throughout 2020 when I just didn’t feel like getting out of bed and taking on the day—but then I’d think about Kobe and what he said to me watching that game. Kobe didn’t think about yesterday or the last game or the last shot. It was always about the next one for him. Even if he had missed shot after shot, he was going to take the next one, and he knew he was going to make it. And if, somehow, he didn’t? He would just try again; he wasn’t going to quit and beat himself. Never.
That’s what I’ve been thinking recently and especially this week, as I mourn his and Gigi’s loss once again. These days of partisanship and bickering squeeze us from all sides. It occasionally all makes me feel like throwing my hands up and giving up, but then I think about Kobe. I remember him shaking his head, poised to take another shot. And I say to myself: Today is going to be the day it all turns around. And if not today, then tomorrow.
Ain’t no quit in him. Ain’t no quit in me.
Gotham Chopra is the co-founder of Religion of Sports and the Emmy Award-winning director of Man in the Arena, Kobe Bryant’s Muse, Greatness Code, and more. His book, a part-memoir, part-manifesto titled The Religion of Sports, is available now for preorder.
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