Showboat
The Life of Kobe Bryant
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the 2017 Cross Sports Book Awards Best Biography of the Year
Bryant is one of basketball's greatest-ever players, a fascinating and complicated character who says he knew when he was a boy that he would be better than Michael Jordan.
Aloof and uncompromising, Bryant is the grand enigma of American professional basketball, easily the most driven player in the history of the sport, the absolute master of study and preparation. But his career has also been one of almost constant conflict: with his teammate Shaquille O'Neal; with Phil Jackson, coach of the championship-winning Lakers team that Kobe led; with the law; with his wife Vanessa; and with so many of his contemporaries, opponents and teammates.
Comprehensive and unflinching, Showboat unravels the conundrum that is Kobe Bryant.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this engaging though uneven biography, Lazenby, author of Michael Jordan: The Life, turns his eye to another basketball legend: the recently retired Kobe Bryant. As a kid, Bryant dissected videotaped NBA games and committed himself to practice with a flagellant's zeal, screaming at and then chasing a teammate who botched a drill. That devotion, coupled with his otherworldly abilities (his father, Joe, played in the NBA), made Bryant a first-round NBA draft pick at age 17. Dizzying success followed: five NBA championships, an MVP award, Olympic gold medals. However, he became hardened by challenges: an uncommunicative head coach in Phil Jackson; a superstar teammate, Shaquille O'Neal, whose fun-loving approach was his polar antithesis; and sexual assault charges in 2003. The book works best when Lazenby explores Bryant's childhood and his competitive makeup. This portion of the books also occurs before Lazenby's utilitarian fact/long quote/fact style grows exhausting. Eventually, the author runs out of sources, and the narrative turns into a year-by-year recap of Bryant's career, often lacking genuine insight.
