that could take us anyplace we wanted and even places we had never imagined. [bell dings] - was that the oven timer? - that's right, my friend. it's time for... both: "baywatch"! - oh! - can you believe they gave stephanie skin cancer? - i still can't believe they promoted her to lieutenant. - ah, you're just saying that 'cause you're in love with yasmine bleeth. - well, how could anyone not be in love with yasmine bleeth? - hey! hey! they're running! - see, this is the brilliance of the show. i say always keep them running. all the time, running. run. run! run, yasmine! run like the wind! [ominous music]

best of luck for a happy and healthy future. you have the 100% support and love. [applause] it was a dream of mine to play for the lakers ever since i was a little kid. i would watch magic play. i'd watch michael play. and i'd say, you know, can i get to that level? hi, kobe bryant. i have decided to skip college and take my talent to the nba. [cheers, applause] [ominous music] i want to be the greatest player that i could possibly become. he was fearless. his intensity was unmistakable and uncontrollable for him. it was a bumpy road.

kobe bryant has been accused of sexual assault. to reinvent himself the way he did. 20 years, five nba championships. 17 all-star selections, a league mvp award, and two olympic golds, kobe bryant. it's like one of the most remarkable stories in sports history. how do you channel the villain to unleash the hero? how do you use darkness to create greatness? we are all mourning the loss of a legend tonight. people who may never even know what a basketball looks like felt his presence. it started with joe, and it started with pam. they're making sure that kobe is able to live the dream. we need to tell that story of kobe bryant and his family before to really understand who this guy really was.

i saw kobe at 15, 16. he took two classes from me, english 2 and speaking arts as a senior. i'm going to speaking arts. i'm about to give a oral presentation for 2.5 minutes, 3 minutes. he's just very quiet and very self-possessed. and he was doofy. [vocalizing] he was dear, and he was doofy. i've admired a lot of people, people such as magic johnson, michael jordan, emmitt smith. but the two people that i admire the most are my mother and my father. he was very much moved by the fact that we spent a lot of time in sophomore year talking about joseph campbell and the hero's journey. the idea of determining what it is that you really love

and what it is that you want, and going after that with every fiber, every part of your body and heart and soul and passion. hearing the ball bounce. feeling that you get out, making a great pass. walking on the hardwood. lacing up your sneakers. i just love it. i love jumping. i love dunking. i love hearing the crowd going ooh and ah. the whole game is just tremendous. i love it. starting lineup for tonight, number 24, kobe bryant. lower merion was not a great basketball school. it was a school known for its academics and kids going to ivy league schools more than for producing superstar basketball players. [cheering] they hadn't won a state championship since 1943.

[cheering] and when i started to talk to the team, i said, i'm here to help you win championships. and as i said that word, i could see kobe kind of sit up. i locked eyes with him, and we had his attention then. [cheering] he wrote a contract to himself. i'm going to work out with weights in the morning. i'm going to do my basketball stuff in the afternoon. he's the first one in practice. and every single practice, he was 110%. 1,000 jump shots a day. [cheers, applause] every single practice, when he played offense, he was going to attack you every time he got the ball. like, every time he got the ball, doing suicides. you'll have guys that are the best on the team

or the most talented on the team, and they're just like running with the pack. he will full out sprint. and i'm like, what is he doing? he had a contract with himself, and he's not going to break that contract. i grew up in west philadelphia, also known as... affectionately known as “wild west.” kobe and i were friends. when i show up to the gym, he's like, i need you to tell me, like, what are they saying about me in the city? lower merion at that time was just seen as a suburban program compared to the city. [cheering] [whistle blowing] what are they saying?

[cheering] mm, “he goes to that white school in the suburbs.” [cheers, applause] that was something that he held on to for a little while. and that's something that he used as fuel. [suspenseful music] i was really, really good at taking negative things and just refocusing them. there's nothing anybody can say that's really going to take you backwards. you know what i mean? because you just use it all. my favorite game that season was a game against haverford high school. [cheering] kobe is throwing up in the locker room, has the flu. so we come out, and they are like excited because they don't see kobe. warm up. we go back to the locker room for our final speech that coach downer is giving.

kobe comes back out. and you could tell the expressions from the other team went from super excited to like, here we go. [cheering] kobe is throwing up during the game. he ends up scoring like 45 points. once you step on the floor you■re defending your self-pride. [cheering] [whistle blowing] [cheering] you go out there. you're not only representing yourself, but you're representing your family. you're representing your team. [horn buzzing] [applause]

it drove me a lot more, having to follow that play. and my father always challenged me to become a better basketball player than him. joe was an immensely talented basketball player who took his game to high levels. mr. joe bryant is the master builder. he knew that his son was going to be a basketball legend. miss pam, she was very serious. just a tough, strong black woman. like, don't take no shit. these people are the ones that raise arguably one of the greatest basketball players of all time. they instilled that into him. his drive, that comes from them.

my mother used to tell me stories that my father used to play basketball on tv. and i would play, too. i have a little hoop in the living room where i play. then they take a timeout, then i take a timeout, sit down, have some water. and then he start playing. then i play again.

i'm three years old, and i will do this for the entire game. joe bryant grew up in southwest philadelphia. he comes from a pretty tough part of town. [music playing] basketball was his outlet. joe began his career with his hometown team, with the philadelphia 76ers. joe bryant was a very colorful player, had a big personality. he was showtime before there was showtime, as people like to say. he was just ahead of his time. [suspenseful music] in his rookie year, joe had a little bit of a problem with the police, where he was pulled over. he's with a woman who is not pam bryant. there's cocaine, and he ends up panicking. and he actually leads the cops on a chase through the streets of philadelphia. and it leads to one of the worst nights of his life. joe's entire family is there at the trial.

they were the original ride or die couple. and they were like, ok, let's figure this out. but i'm not leaving. the judge who handles joe's case dismisses the charges. but this was an incident that followed joe. it's not long after this that the sixers trade him to the san diego clippers. and he's not in san diego very long before they trade him to the houston rockets. and he's not with the rockets very long before they say, “you know what, joe? it■s time to move on.” it actually got so bad for joe after his nba career ended that he took a job as a car salesman. he wanted to be a superstar. and so, yeah, selling cars was worlds away from where he felt like he should have been. so joe is seeking counsel about what he should do next. and one of those friends advises him, “hey, go play in europe.” [music playing] so joe takes that advice and moves to italy.

[speaking italian] in italy, joe gets the love and appreciation and celebrity that he never got in america as an nba player. [speaking italian]

he was a person, a player with a lot of passion. and he was able to transfer this passion to the people. [cheering] we don't want just leaders without passion. joe bryant was that kind of player. i know that had to be jarring for the rest of the family

because i don't know many black families picked up and moved to italy. in that point, it wasn't as common. [speaking italian] the courage that took for he and pam to do that, to take their kids, to separate them from their extended families. it must have been very hard for them, but they did it. at the time, i was only six years old. and i was pretty much clueless about the whole situation. my parents basically told me, kobe, you're going to an italian school. we want you to learn a new language. and when you're young, you just basically do whatever your parents tell you to do with no questions asked. [speaking italian] every time i saw my father step on the court, i got happy. i got chills because everybody's going crazy cheering for him. and that's how i felt about my father.

he's getting a master class in basketball at an age when most kids are worried about where they're going to get ice cream next. i remember asking him that question about his favorite gift. and i think it was a basketball he received for christmas. i think once he got that basketball as that kid, he was never, ever, ever going to let this go.

basketball has the ability to take you places you don't know you could ever get to. [speaking italian]

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[music playing] [whistle blowing]

kobe believed in himself, even at the youngest possible age, to a degree that i think is hard to comprehend. his parents believed in him that much, too. joe plays for four different teams while he's in italy. the family is constantly moving. reggio emilia was the last stage of his italian life. reggio emilia is a very safe town, a small town. and you were very independent due to that.

[bell ringing] i remember this long afternoon playing in this court. kobe didn't want to leave having lost the last game. sometimes, he lost. and it was like no, no, no. play one more. play one more. i want to win. play one more.

[music playing] my grandparents used to send me out all the tapes of all the games. so it was the lakers, the celtics, the bulls. her and my grandfather used to put a packet of tapes together, and he used to send them out to us. and i used to sit there at the house and just watch the games over and over and over again.

that's where i grew up. that's where all my friends are. and that's where i basically learned the facts of life. so that's my home. my heart is there. my heart will always be there.

so it's very hard. my father told us that he's retiring from the game of basketball, and that it was time for us to come back to america. i didn't want to come back and my sisters didn't want to come back. it was very hard getting adjusted simply because i had a lot of trouble understanding english and the slang. i wasn't invited to parties or friendly gatherings on the weekends. fridays and saturdays, i would go to my rec room with my basketball and basically dribble myself to sleep. and i think that that was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. because during those lonely hours in the rec room, i discovered the hunger, the motivation, and the desire to be the best possible basketball player that i could be.

(woman) i've got this dream... and you're all in it! (banker 1) let's hear it! (vo) with wells fargo premier a team can help you plan for your dream. (woman) i have this vacation home... (banker 2) so, like a getaway? (woman) yeah, but... it's also an eco-friendly artist retreat. (banker 3) so, you're expanding your business... (woman) ...and our family! can you help me plan for that? (banker 1) yeah! let's get started. (vo) ready to meet the dream team? you can with wells fargo. my parents basically said to me, “kobe, if you don't do good in the books, you're not going to play basketball. it's that simple.” i just kind of clicked. i said, “hey, man, you're not taking basketball away from me” kobe took my speaking arts class as a senior, and that was a wonderful opportunity to talk with him

a little bit about his interest in considering pro basketball. i was adamantly against it. adamantly, adamantly against it. i was very worried about this young man going off into the snarls of pro basketball and all the glittery stuff that comes with it. if a high school basketball player wanted to get noticed, he would go to the abcd camp. [whistle blowing] the abcd camp was where the best players in the united states came together to compete against each other. [applause]

when kobe went to the abcd camp, that really elevated him to be the number one player in the country. [inaudible] 33 kobe bryant. [cheering] kobe was literally being recruited by every college there was. there was a change in atmosphere when i came back to watch kobe, his senior year. kobe has captured the hearts of fans all across america. kobe! kobe! every game, the crowd grew larger and larger. and in each one, kobe rose to the challenge. [inaudible] number 33, kobe bryant. every game was sold out. [inaudible] number 33, kobe bryant. the hype was overwhelming.

i just thought i was going to go in, have a great senior year and play basketball, have a good time, win some games. i really didn't expect all the hype that came along with it. but i'm enjoying it. i'm having a good time. [inaudible] number 33, kobe bryant. and kobe bryant. yo, yo, that's a-- you're my idol. remember me when you're in the nba. now, he's getting his own identity as a person. and now, people come up to me, “hey, that's kobe's dad.” and i'm like saying, hey. [laughs] we will call the action for you as it happens here tonight in the piaa boys quad a state championship. the champion out of the west, erie cathedral preps. the champion out of the east, the aces of lower merion featuring the best player, many believe in high school basketball, kobe bryant.

you see coming out onto the floor right now. the aces [inaudible] high score. i was a bandwagon hopper. yes, i'll admit it. and i went to the state championship. he was so bold and so loose. [cheering] number 33, kobe bryant, for 2. i love watching a body in motion. has a focus, has a drive, has a destination, and gets there. kobe bryant with the slam. and he was so good at that. nate's going to step into a 3. missed it. that's going to do it. it's over.

lower merion has won. and there's a young man that has been so ballyhooed and has packed this arena tonight. it drove home to me that this was not just a high school adolescent boy's hopeless dream. the father, jellybean joe bryant, son, kobe embracing on the side. this was real. and he just said, “mrs. mastriano, you've got to understand, that's just the window's closing. the great teachers in the sport aren't going to be around much longer. i want to learn from them.” [cheering] something is burning. it's pushing me to improve and to find out more about this game. this is the guy who had really one dream in life. and that's to be as good as the greatest player

to ever play the game of basketball. they had a press conference scheduled for the middle of the day in our gymnasium. there were hundreds of people there-- students, media, reporters. as he walked out, he had his sunglasses up on his forehead and a nice suit on. and gregg downer, who was the head coach, said to me, should i tell him to get those sunglasses off? they look terrible. and i said, gregg, he's not our guy anymore. i, kobe bryant, have decided to take my talents to-- [laughter, applause] he was hamming it up because, like, he knew what he was going to say. no, i have decided to skip college and take my talent to the nba. [cheers, applause]

the immediate reaction was just like, backlash, hate. wait a minute, what's a 17-year-old doing going into the nba? he's great against other high school players. that's all he is. well, i definitely think that these young players should go on to college and get some emotional maturity. any doubt at all that he can make this transition? i don't have any doubt in my son. i think what kobe has, i think he has that burning desire. and that's one thing no one can measure is your heart. they can see your talent. they can see whether you can shoot, dribble. but there's one thing you can't measure, that heart. and i've been with him for 17 years, and it's something. it's a look that he gets in his eye. kid has heart. i'm very confident in my choice. and i'm going at it 110% all the way. no turning back.

dennis! dennis! dennis, over this way. by the mid 1990s, nba stars have become giants within mainstream popular culture. you had shaq doing rap albums. you had him doing movies. - i am kazaam! you're talking about michael jordan selling gatorade, scottie pippen stopping traffic. so this is the world that kobe is entering at that time. there were no automatic shoe deals coming out for high school students at the time. kobe was different. even though kobe hasn't been drafted yet, the bryants signed a multi-million dollar shoe deal with adidas. joe himself gets a $150,000 annual salary as part

of kobe's deal with adidas. not bad for someone to be paid to be the father of a budding nba superstar. (singing) hip hop on and on till the break (speaking) he's going to wear number 8. and kobe, this is for you. thank you very much. i was in the airport on my way up here. and people would come up to me and say, hey, do you play basketball? and i said, yeah, i play basketball. and they say, well, what team do you play for? i'm used to saying lower merion high school. so i'm there. i'm like, well, i play for lower merion high-- no, you know what? i'm a los angeles laker. [music playing] we're the number one team you're the number one fans we're in the number one city the lakers weren't a run-of-the-mill nba team. the lakers were magic johnson and kareem abdul-jabbar. [cheering] it was hollywood. it was glitz. it was glamor.

[laughs] golden jersey, baby. [music playing] the whole family moved to pacific palisades. they were all under one roof, palatial house, the last on the hill of a cul-de-sac. everything was white and big puffy couches. i think they had the same dream of superstardom. two men understanding that this is a very special place. it's a rarified air that we're in. i didn't get it for very long-- joe. but kobe, you may have it for a very long time. i met kobe shortly after being drafted out of high school. and it was so great for me because i came from a place where it wasn't mom and dad in the home. i felt like i was part of the family-- sat down and ate dinner together. his mom, great cooking. oh, man, i enjoyed those times. i met him during the preseason practice and early games

in 1996. he was living his dream. and you could tell he knew. this is what i've always wanted all my life. just want to be very exciting for myself. when i walked out here, and i'm just trying to imagine the fans packing into the arena. i can't wait to finally walk out there and go through the warm ups. i was kobe's athletic trainer. and with my experience with the showtime lakers, i just didn't see it. i just didn't see it. he was just too young. and i think we put maybe too much pressure on him initially, or he put too much on himself. now, you got these 18-year-old kid. and when you know about the nba, when you halfway through the season, guys are not really practicing hard like that. but you got this 18-year-old coming to practice,

and he's full of energy. and he's trying to destroy everybody in front of him. these older guys are not going to appreciate that. foul. [music playing] there's rookies and everybody else. there's that threshold where they get treated totally different because you are rook. anything you've done in the past, no one cares about. no matter what you've won, where you won, what you did, you're back to the bottom of the totem pole. and he is not acquiescing at all. like, dude, you can't feel that you're that special. he was so obsessed with his game that it didn't really leave a lot of room for friendships on the team or deep friendships. because he didn't give a shit what they thought. he didn't care.

he's about this basketball, about his craft. he's real serious about this. and all the time-- i mean, i used to hear, i'm better than michael jordan. he used to say that faithfully. “i'm better than michael jordan. michael jordan ain't got nothing on me.” and i was like, “this dude is insane.” i don't care. what are you going to do? what are you going to do? we're all people here. we're just different people. you're going to criticize me because i don't want to go to a bar? you criticize me because i don't want to go to a club? for what? what growth can i get from that? i was one of the people that he would speak to a lot. but i was still cool with all of his teammates. and they'd be like, “man, look, if he wasn't such an a**hole, we'd tell him he's the best player on this team.” and that's including shaq. his life at that time was, “every teammate on the lakers, they don't get me. when i go home, nobody in my family gets me.”

in his family's mind, he's still an 18-year-old. in kobe's mind,“no, i'm a grown man.” as an 18-year-old, being an nba player, you got so much coming at you. and it's like, man, how do you deflect this, and trying to figure out how to juggle family with being the money guy? he definitely felt isolated. as soon as that practice was over, he would get in that mercedes benz coupe, and he was gone-- driving around ucla's campus at night, tinted windows so nobody can see it■s kobe bryant, watching the kids walking and having fun. i think he was searching. whether he had people around him or not, he still feels like he's out here by himself. and nobody wants to take the journey alone.

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kobe went through a period of his life where he wanted to be a rapper. i would say it probably started in ninth grade. i had an english teacher who used to make us write poetry. and he did it. he did a single with tyra banks called "k-o-b-e i l-o-v-e." (singing) uh, what i live for? basketball

beats and broads from italy to the us yes, it's raw it was fun to do it then. you see, the best thing that came out of doing that was i actually met my wife and doing a little video spot. [music playing] and i tap on her shoulder. she turns around. and i say, “excuse me, what's your name?” she said, “vanessa.” my eyes got real big. and it was just like, phew. when he came back in the trailer, he said, i just met the girl that i'm going to marry. nobody at home was really relating to him. he's got a disconnect with his team because he's too young, and they think he's arrogant. and vanessa is very receptive to hearing him and taking him for who he's presenting himself to be, even as young as she is. that had to be a feeling of euphoria for kobe. she was everything to him. she stopped going to high school because it became problematic.

i mean, kobe rolling up. and i remember he had this white mercedes benz. and i'm like, you're going to her high school. they got engaged very quickly after they met. i think six months. everybody in his world was very adamant that there should be a prenup. 50% of marriages in the real world end in divorce. nba is even higher. he did not want a prenup. he wouldn't do it. i think joe was nervous about it. i mean, they thought that he was moving too quickly. they thought he was too young. i think the first time any of us even knew about vanessa was when he brought her in the locker room after the 2000 championship. [whistle blowing] the la lakers beat the indiana pacers to win their first nba championship in 12 years. i'm so excited. i get two rings this year. [laughs] two rings. yeah, two rings, a wedding band and the championship ring. [laughs] [lips smacking]

is that my dad? [laughs] turn around. whoa! turn around. that's what i'm talking about, bro. he wants his father to experience this. it hearkens back to the state championship that kobe won at lower merion high school. he did exactly the same thing. kobe would tell people close to him that one of his goals in his nba career was to restore the bryant good name. it's not just that kobe has won a championship, his first in the nba. he wants his father to experience this, to remind people, through his greatness, of how great his father had been. ladies and gentlemen, the next man i'm going to introduce has it all-- youthfulness, talent, got lots of money, about to get married.

come on up, kobe. [cheering] kobe! when i heard they got married, i think all of us were just like, what? it was very, very quick. her family, a lot of her family was there. but for him, his family didn't attend. they couldn't see past what they felt like was a bad decision on his part. i think it was something that probably constituted a us against the world framework inside of kobe and vanessa's marriage. there is a time where the child just wants to just to go out and be on his own. and that time came for me. and go, push! come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.

kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. come on. push, push, push, push. joe, pam, the two sisters, they stay around for a little bit. but at a certain point, they do move back to philly because they don't really have that relationship anymore. it was just really devastating to see because i so admired what they had as a family. my mother and father, the people that are there, i can rely on. i can count on whenever i need something. and i love them with all my heart. my sisters as well. they've always been there for me. ever since i was a little kid, they were like my shield in a sword fight. they've always been there for me, protecting me from right and wrong. it's like, well, how does that get fractured so quickly because he gets married? how does that go away so quickly? this is the point where you start to see the people who had

been in kobe's inner circle start to fall away. kobe wants to take control of his own life. he wants the opportunity to make his own mistakes. and he's going to end up making them. [ominous music] charges were filed against kobe bean bryant. in connection with the alleged assault of a 19-year-old hotel employee. shock went through my mind. like, for real? --be blunt and ask you. did you have sexual intercourse with her? i think he realized at that point that he was not invincible. that's when the switch was flicked in. la wins again. thanks to the black mamba. the black mamba was born. [audio logo]