Bryant and Philly: From hero to traitor to beloved
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jeered like a traitor just a few miles from the high school where he won a state title, Kobe Bryant stewed on the bench as the final minutes of the 2002 All-Star game ticked away. Nearly every fan in Philadelphia had booed the hometown guy whenever he touched the ball.
Never one to forget a slight, Bryant was stung by the vitriol.
“I’m just out there trying to play and have a good time,” Bryant said. “My feelings are hurt, being from Philadelphia.”
His local roots meant little to the rowdy crowd that would not forgive Bryant for comments from the previous season when the Los Angeles Lakers played the 76ers in the NBA Finals.
Bryant had warned fans that he wasn’t coming home to relive the glory years at Lower Merion High School. He proclaimed he was “coming to Philly to cut their hearts out.”
The Lakers won the championship in five games, a series that began an unforgiving attitude from Sixers fanatics that continued until Bryant’s final NBA game in the city.
Bryant, killed at 41 in a helicopter crash Sunday, had a turbulent relationship with Philadelphia.
At his old high school in the Philadelphia suburbs, Bryant was a superstar, a friend and a benefactor who never lost ties with his beloved Aces. But after he went head-to-head with 76ers star Allen Iverson, Bryant became the All-Star fans loved to hate. They criticized his tony high school and his adopted LA swagger, saying Bryant was not as blue collar or tough as the city of his birth.
Bryant never apologized for saying he wanted to thrash the 76ers, just as he insisted he never forgot where he came from.
He spent much of his childhood living in Italy where his father, Joe Bryant, played pro basketball for several years. When his family moved back to the United States, Bryant went to Lower Merion High School, in an affluent suburb of Ardmore about 20 minutes west of downtown Philadelphia.
Philly native and former Temple star Marc Jackson, who spent seven seasons in the NBA, remembered Bryant “getting his teeth” kicked in during workouts with college ball prospects. The catch: Bryant was only 12.
“You could see he enjoyed it,” Jackson said Monday. “He enjoyed flourishing in that moment knowing that he was getting his teeth kicked in but it was for a purpose. He saw the other side of it and he embraced it.”
But after 2001, his relationship with local fans became strained, and when NBA Commissioner David Stern presented Bryant with the All-Star game MVP trophy in 2002, the boos were long and loud.
He wanted to cut out hearts; the boos broke his.
“The only people that took that in a negative way were not athletes,” Jackson said. “That’s the mentality you have to have. There are no friends out there. You have to cut hearts out, period. It’s not about trying to take it easy on them because it’s friends or family.”