What it was like covering Kobe Bryant

As the words tumbled out of Kobe Bryant’s mouth, my eyes kept darting to the tape recorder’s little red light. Please, please: no malfunctions. Why the conversation had turned from Michael Jordan to Michael Jackson hadn’t become clear yet, but Bryant had turned it and started to unload a chestful of never-told Neverland Ranch stories.

This was November 2010, and Kobe Bryant had won the final of his five NBA titles mere months earlier at the Staples Center. The Lakers had beaten the Boston Celtics in a Game 7, and this was legacy time for him. He had two titles without Shaquille O’Neal now and still believed he could catch – and even pass – Michael Jordan’s six championships.

Still, Bryant resisted a line of questioning that nudged him toward Jordan’s influence. He wanted to tell a different story. We were sitting inside a steak house in the Lakers’ team hotel, and suddenly Bryant was delivering generous details on how Michael Jackson had a far more profound impact on his basketball career than Michael Jordan.

“It sounds weird, I guess, but it’s true: I was really mentored by the preparation of Michael Jackson,” Bryant told me.

“We would always talk about how he prepared to make his music, how he prepared for concerts. He would teach me what he did: How to make a ‘Thriller’ album, a ‘Bad’ album, all the details that went into it. It was all the validation that I needed – to know that I had to focus on my craft and never waver. Because what he did – and how he did it – was psychotic. He helped me get to a level where I was able to win three titles playing with Shaq because of my preparation, my study. And it’s only all grown.

“That’s the mentality that I have – it’s not an athletic one. It’s not from [Michael] Jordan. It’s not from other athletes.

“It’s from Michael Jackson.”

In my business, this was pure gold: Kobe Bryant on his relationship with Michael Jackson. This was Internet magic. I slipped my tape recorder into my backpack, marched through a cold night and unpacked everything inside my hotel room. I did a search on the Internet of old stories and my suspicions were confirmed: Kobe had never talked about this.

I called a close confidant of Bryant’s, and told him the story. Why did he tell me this now? “Come on,” he said. “It’s what Michael said about him. That’s why.”

Of course. In the aftermath of Bryant’s fifth NBA title, Jordan had been asked where Bryant fit into the all-time list of players. “Top 10,” Jordan said. This wouldn’t have been newsworthy – or even insulting – if Jordan had stopped there. He didn’t. Jordan called Bryant top 10 among guards.

Now, it was clear: This was Kobe’s “bleep you” to Jordan – ever so subtle, ever so calculated.

Classic MJ, classic Kobe. Michael had gone out of his way to mess with Kobe, to dismiss him on the heels of a fifth title. And Kobe answered in his own code.

If Bryant learned anything from Michael Jordan, it was this: a sheer, cutthroat desire to destroy everyone and everything in his path. Bryant had an obsessive nature that I’ve never known in anyone else. Yes, he worked harder. He worked longer. Smarter. The genius was in the details. Always. Yet he chased knowledge as a weapon – knowledge of everything.

Kobe Bryant didn’t just know his business better than anyone else; he often knew your business better too. He wanted to understand the competition between media entities in the NBA, how we operated, how we worked. He wanted to understand your work habits, your hours, the kinds of stories that clicked and the kinds that died on the ’net. He wanted to know about free agency and trades and coaching changes. He wanted to know everything.

Before he joined social media, he would ask: What do you think of Twitter? I always teased him, told him that it was a bad idea for him. “Twitter is for small talk,” I would say. “You don’t do small talk. You make grand proclamations. You have big ideas.” It was inevitable, and I knew it. I would always say it with a laugh, because I was so full of crap on the issue. After all, we all knew how this would go: No one in my business wanted Kobe Bryant to feel like he could cut out the middleman.

Kobe Bryant made his way to social media, because it was important to his brand – and he loved to write, loved to pour out his thoughts into posts. Nevertheless, I never found him less accessible, less interested in a good conversation, an interview. Yes, you could sometimes get time with him in Orange County near his home: his health club or the restaurant Javier’s, but the best Kobe was always game-night Kobe, walking to his car in the Staples Center, or walking to the bus on the road.

These were the times when Kobe Bryant was still raw, still feeling a big victory or a big loss, a partnership or a betrayal. He stood there and dropped F-bombs, and answered criticisms and answered questions, and spoke with fear and froth, anger and nostalgia.

Finally, it ends on Wednesday, goodbye to Kobe Bryant in the Staples Center. Something about the night will be unforgettable, a forever moment, and you can’t be sure if it’ll come before the game, or during or afterward. It just will come, because it always has. And eventually, there might be a moment when my eyes will be darting to that tape recorder, making sure the red light is lit, and I’ll know this: Someone else will be talking into that little contraption in these playoffs, and next season, and the years after that – and it’ll just never be the same. It’ll never again be Kobe Bean Bryant.