ON THAT MONUMENTAL day, the only thing Kobe Bryant carried with him was a basketball. It was early June 1996, on the morning of his now-legendary pre-draft workout in Los Angeles, when a skinny, smiley Bryant, then 17, stepped out of the swanky Shutters on the Beach resort in Santa Monica, California, with his favorite basketball tucked under his arm.
Waiting for him there in a Chevy Blazer was his driver for the day, Ryan West, the teenage son of NBA legend and longtime Lakers exec Jerry West. "It was the funniest thing, but it showed the two sides of Kobe," says Ryan, now a scout with the Detroit Pistons.