Edit : This article was published in April 2016, just before the last career game of Kobe Bryant, who died Sunday in a helicopter accident in Los Angeles. He looks back on the few months spent in France by the star when his father was a pro player in Mulhouse, in the late 80s.
It is not because we had the time to get used to it that we accept the end more easily: Wednesday evening, Kobe Bryant will play the last game of his career. After that, we will have to live without him and hang on to the memories of great evenings, or rather long sleepless nights, as far as we are concerned. Jimmy Vérove is luckier. The former French international knew Kobe before the legend, when the legend, precisely, it was rather Joe Bryant, the father, true Magic Johnson of Europe in the 80s. At 37 years old, Joe, at the end of course, had chosen a last challenge in Mulhouse, a stronghold of French basketball at the time. Like Vérove, then a young hope loaned by Limoges, the Bryant family finds itself housed in the 3000 squash space, on the outskirts of Mulhouse.
“Six very nice months of my career, remembers Vérove. Very quickly, we went to training together. And the little one was always there to follow us. ” The little one is Kobe, who never lets go of his father. "We saw the son of a basketball player who always has a ball in his hands or a ball of paper, anything that allows you to shoot." Vérove, a follower of extra hours at the end of training while Father Bryant is in the shower, quickly gets upset with this little American, never satisfied. “He came to see me as soon as I finished, even at the hotel. "Let's go Jimmy, we play, we play we play?”. I always loved transmitting to young people, I never refused him little games. "
"I had to tell him we were going to be yelled at by his father"
The fight is unequal between the young international U21 and the small teenager still puny of 12 years. But Kobe, without yet being the genius who was going to get closer to the Jordan myth, suggests a beautiful rage to conquer. "He martyred his body to at least touch the net of the circle. He never had enough. We would still be there if sometimes I hadn't stopped him to bring him back to the hotel. I had to tell him we were going to be yelled at by his father if we didn't come home quickly. He already had the touch, but especially that he was ready to work. He was already a Serb in his mind, he was so hungry for basketball ”. A work ethic that will never leave the five-time NBA champion, known for pushing his teammates to the end in practice.
Kobe Bryant's French youth did not last for centuries, but Vérove retained the boy's name. Until meeting him again in the columns of the Team five years later. "I remember it like it was yesterday. I was putting up a basketball hoop in the garden for my children, and there I read in the Team "Kobe Bryant drafted by the Lakers". There I said to myself "Purééééééééé it is the small one with which you played hardly five / six years ago, I was amazed". Later, I played with the first pair of pumps to his name. When you think it's the kid with the afro cut with whom I played little games… ”
At the London Games, Vérove misses the opportunity to talk about the good old days to a Kobe Bryant without afro cut. "I was not very far from him, but I did not dare to bother him to ask him if he remembered the guy who he played with in Mulhouse as a teenager." It is not lost. The Frenchman, who takes care of a little physical preparation, would be well offered his services to the double Olympic champion. "I would like to re-type it so that it makes a year more in Europe. Kobe at CSP Limoges, that makes you dream right? To play the new Euroleague, it sure would have a face.
- Basketball
- Kobe Bryant
- Lakers
- NBA