There are few people who transcend the game of basketball. There are even less that transcend the sports world in general.
Kobe Bryant is one of those people.
Growing up in southern Minnesota, we didn’t like the Los Angeles Lakers too much. They took our championship squad from us, and there was always a bit of a rivalry between the two teams in the early 2000’s.
When I was 10 years old, my dad turned on a game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Lakers. The Timberwolves were in that weird post-Kevin Garnett where everybody thought that maybe they’d do well, and then always dropped the ball during the big games.