AN UNLIKELY ALMA MATER

Kobe Bryant’s Alma Mater is Lower Merion High School located in Ardmore, Pennsylvania and I suppose the pre-professional stories end there. No junior college, no red-shirt year to get stronger before playing 3-4 years in a Division I system and no offroading through alternative professional ranks a la the National Basketball Development League (D-League). Who can know if Kobe reminisces fondly of his Alma Mater where he was a 4-year STARter. That’s not a normal experience for anyone let alone a guy who, sources say, resided in Italy with his father prior to high school. I find myself wondering what mixture produces a Kobe? Whether you love him or hate him, he possesses that “IT” that’s so difficult to put into words. Cold, inconsolable, unwavering, arrogant, tenacious, singular are among the adjectives I’ve heard used in reference to him.  But I was talking to one of ma dudes today about the pride in one’s alma mater and how significant it is. I graduated from Chapman University, Orange, CA. My buddy is a Harvard Man while other mutual friends of ours are men of Troy (University of Southern California).

Bryant is one of the last men to successfully make the leap from high school to the NBA prior to a rule change that now requires that draftees be at least one-year removed from high school. He was preceded one year earlier by Kevin Garnett (Boston Celtics). But some might say that Alma Mater is a non-factor since high school doesn’t count. But supposing that logic holds, does Italy count? Does immersion in a foreign culture during the most formative years of your life constitute an Alma Mater? It should. Isn’t the Alma Mater the school you attend during your formative years? But we think linear and that’s why Kobe’s story is strange. It’s as if he got college done before high school. By the time he arrived to Lower Merion, he was fluent in two languages besides English and eerily over prepared to dominate prep basketball in Pennsylvania. His mother and father are media elusive and I just learned that he has two sisters. There’s certainly something peculiar about how this demagogue was formed and his ability to command Michael Jordan comparisons. There are plenty of stellar basketball players in the NBA with stories all their own. Kobe just happens to have a more intriguing Alma Mater Studiorum (“Nourishing Mother of Studies”). What’s yours?