Few jerseys are as recognizable as the purple-and-gold No. 24 (or No. 8, if you go back far enough), donned by a current player who will be elected to the Hall of Fame as soon as he's eligible. Few players are as respected as the man whose name has become virtually synonymous with a poisonous species of snake from sub-Saharan Africa.
Few names are as recognizable as Kobe Bryant's, whose presence in the NBA has been as ubiquitous as anyone's over the last decade-and-a-half.
But what led to the Los Angeles Lakers All-Star shooting guard turning into the legend he is today?
For starters, how about everything?
The definitions of stars and superstars seem to vary from person to person, but you'd find precious few people who would dispute No. 24's status as a superstar. Though I'm one of them, that's only because he falls more into the realm of "super-duper stars," a classification occupied by only a few players throughout NBA history.
Bryant simply transcends the game.
Even now that he's 36 years old and fighting to come back from two major injuries while carrying a mediocre Lakers squad, there's still a widespread belief that he won't skip a beat. No one has ever done what he's trying to achieve, but there's still this underlying assumption that Bryant is a superhuman, basketball-playing entity who is somehow beyond the reach of laws that apply to mere mortals.
Isaac Newton may have stood on the shoulders of giants while furthering the pursuits of physics and mathematics, but Bryant somehow looms even larger, unaffected by all those laws Newton helped quantify and explain.
Why?
Seriously, go out and ask a few basketball fans why they believe in Kobe Bryant. Chances are, you'll hear a few different answers of the same iteration: Because he's Kobe Bryant. Some might even include an expletive as Bryan...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers
