Manny Pacquiao: An Inspiration in 2009

It's been more than a year since my last post. 2009 is about to end but I still have nothing in mind for this year. Nothing to share or no time to waste?

I don't want to end the year without anything on my blog. So I specially took a time to share something about the most inspirational story for me for the year 2009.

MANNY PACQUIAO... Wow, what a story... It wasn't about the fame, wasn't about the riches, wasn't about the champioship belts... It was just purely the drama on the story itself that touched the world...

Here's the story written about his journey on November 16th, 2009 issue for TIME Magazine...


Manny Pacquiao is going through his throwing motion at Yankee Stadium. With easy deliberation, he shows off the form he says he perfected playing elementary school baseball in the dirt-poor southern Philippines before boxing took him over completely. His shoulder slips back, his torso pitches smoothly forward, left hand and arm torquing an imaginary ball into the depths of the air-conditioned players' cafeteria, where he is waiting to take the field for an announcement. The diamond stud in his ear catches the light.

The baseball pose has a balletic grace at odds with the savage power that the best pound-for-pound professional boxer on earth exhibits in the ring. "Best pound-for-pound" is the mantra intoned with every story about Pacquiao. It sounds strange because he has never been bound by the laws of physics. In the past eight years, he has risen through six weight divisions to win just as many world championships. At the stadium, his promoters have arranged for the Filipino to make official his plan to fight Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto for a seventh title, the welterweight, which has a maximum limit of 147 lb. (67 kg). That is a 40-lb. swing up from the 106 lb. Pacquiao weighed at the start of his career.

He carried increased poundage through his past two jaw-droppingly awesome victories: demolishing Oscar De La Hoya in December 2008 and knocking out Ricky Hatton in two rounds in May. This is how Pacquiao's coach Freddie Roach describes his skill: "He'll throw a combination at you. You'll think he's done, but then he'll keep pounding you. And there's not a dense hardness to his punch. It just jumps on you. It explodes." Roach, who has worked with boxing luminaries such as De La Hoya and Mike Tyson, offers a little poetry when he recalls the time in 2001 when Pacquiao first came into his gym. "I just did one round with mitts with him, and I thought, 'Man, can this motherf______ fight.'"

At Yankee Stadium on this September day, the Puerto Ricans who have come out to cheer Cotto are jeering Pacquiao, but for all that physics matters, the Filipino is the favorite for the Nov. 14 Las Vegas bout. His payday, it is said, will be about $18 million. Back in the Philippines, you can pun on Pacquiao with pakyaw — a verb, pronounced the same way, that means "to monopolize, to corner the market, to take everything at wholesale in order to maximize profit." Pacquiao knows he wants more than he has, more than boxing can give. At the stadium, he retails anecdotes from his life to a couple of Filipinos and repeats what seems to be both an assertion and a lesson learned. "'Di ako bobo," he says in Tagalog. "'Di ako bobo." "I'm not stupid."

A Face for the Selfless
Manny Pacquiao, now 30, is the latest savior of boxing, a fighter with enough charisma, intelligence and backstory to help rescue a sport lost in the labyrinth of pay-per-view. Global brands like Nike want him in their ads. He made the TIME 100 list this year. West Coast baseball teams invite him to throw out the first pitch in order to attract the Filipino-American community. He has even become an object of desire: ESPN the Magazine has his naked torso in its Body Issue, which explores the engineering of several athletic physiques.

In the Philippines, Pacquiao is a demigod. The claim goes that when his fights are broadcast live, the crime rate plummets because everyone in the country is glued to a screen. His private life as well as the ins and outs and ups and downs of his training regimen are tabloid fodder; his much brooded political ambitions are a dilemma many Filipinos feel as existentially as Hamlet's soliloquy: To be or not to be ... a Congressman?

Pacquiao has a myth of origin equal to that of any Greek or Roman hero. Aban-doned by his father and brought up by a tough-as-nails mother, the poor boy who loves to box is rejected by a local squad but then journeys many islands away, to the country's metropolis, Manila, to make it big. Then he leaves the Philippines to make it even bigger, conquering the world again and again to bring back riches to share with his family and friends. Now, in his hometown of General Santos City on the island of Mindanao, he and his family own commercial buildings, a convenience store, cafés and a souvenir shop that sells everything from DVDs of his fights to T-shirts to bobblehead dolls. In Manila, his children attend one of the most exclusive and expensive private schools. He is generous to a fault, spending thousands of dollars a day feeding and entertaining guests. For his last fight, he distributed $800,000 in tickets to friends.

The broad outlines of his history — his legend — have made the boxer a projection of the migrant dreams of the many Filipinos who leave home and country for work. About 10% of the Philippines' GDP is money remitted from overseas Filipinos: nurses, nannies, sailors, singers, doctors, cooks, X-ray technicians, mail-order brides, construction workers, prostitutes, priests, nuns. Some spend decades abroad, away from the ones they love, for the sake of the ones they love. Everyone in the Philippines knows a person who has made the sacrifice or is making it. Pacquiao gives that multitude a champion's face of selflessness: the winner who takes all and gives to all. "To live in the Philippines is to live in a world of uncertainty and hardship," says Nick Giongco, who covers Pacquiao for the daily Manila Bulletin. "Filipinos are dreamers. They like fantasy. And what is more of a fantasy than Manny Pacquiao?"

A movie has been made of his life. But Pacquiao says the full details of that life couldn't possibly fit into just one film. There are things to clear up. For one, he did not leave ramshackle General Santos City, a camp of tin and thatch, to pursue boxing, even though he did love the sport. He left home at 14 because his mother Dionisia, who did odd jobs and factory work and hawked vegetables by roadsides, wasn't really making enough to feed her six children. He had to go off and earn money elsewhere, doing anything to relieve the burden on his mother — even if she wanted him by her side. As it was, he was often absent from school because the family needed him to help sell snacks and trinkets on the potholed lanes where nearly naked children with matted hair still chase rusting bicycle wheels for fun. Pacquiao liked school, correcting and grading his classmates' homework. He "never cheated during a quiz — he wouldn't try to look sideways, this way or that," says one of his schoolteachers from the Saavedra Saway Elementary School. A decent education, however, requires several years and a lot of money. The Pacquiaos had trouble accumulating even a little.

And so young Manny plotted his trip in secret. Dionisia Pacquiao is slender and slight, like her son, and has his easy smile. "Manny has a strong mind and a strong body," she says. "Just like his mother. Except I am stronger." But she was heartbroken when he left for Manila. Dionisia recalls receiving a letter from him "saying how sorry he was [for leaving home] ... I was very, very sad. But after a while, I accepted his destiny."

From Zero to Hero
Pacquiao was not one to pick quarrels. But he did not shy away when friends got into free-for-alls: what he calls, with an almost pop-eyed relish, bukbukan — unrestrained fistfighting. He loved boxing. Dionisia recalls an 8-year-old Manny wrapping towels around his hands to mimic gloves. Rey Golingan, a General Santos City businessman, remembers the young Pacquiao attending the weekly bouts in the main plaza. "Manny was always there at the fights, waiting to be paired with someone," says Golingan. But his consistency wasn't matched by any obvious talent. "Honestly, I didn't see any potential in Manny. He was just another kid who knew if he won a few fights he might get 100 pesos [less than $3]," says Golingan. "He was always very courageous and had natural speed and power. But he wasn't a clever boxer ... He was [always] flailing around."

When he got to Manila, Pacquiao first worked as a laborer. His enthusiasm for boxing, however, had him returning to the ring, fighting in run-for-cover, barely legal matches pulled together in one of Manila's cramped suburbs. He lingers over the names of boxers he knew who died after such fights, then moves on. The death of a friend reportedly spurred Pacquiao to turn professional.

His 1995 pro debut on a boxing show — which he won by decision — made him a local star. After that, energy alone seemed to carry him through six inconsistent years, a period in which he still managed to win two world titles in fights in Southeast Asia. Finally, a Cinderella-like twist got him noticed in the U.S. market. In June 2001, Pacquiao stepped in as a last-minute replacement at a fight in Las Vegas to win the IBF super-bantamweight title by TKO. Soon after, he walked into the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood and met the owner, Freddie Roach, who would transform the way Pacquiao fought.

Roach makes a powerful impression when you meet him, because something is clearly wrong. His movements are a beat or two off-sync; the occasional phrase or sentence is interrupted by an abrupt pause, then a slurring. Roach, who is not yet 50, has Parkinson's disease, most likely the result of his own boxing career. But it has not stopped him from taking Pacquiao's energy and giving it strategy. Their partnership has created one of the most riveting fighters in boxing history. Roach seems prouder of Pacquiao than of almost any of his other famous trainees. He sometimes talks as if the fighter has already reached his peak. Manny, he says, "has nothing more to prove." He predicts a first-round knockout of Cotto but, even as people are already talking about the fight after that (Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the dream matchup), Roach says Pacquiao may have just two more fights in him and then ought to call it quits.

Pacquiao is certainly thinking of the day after boxing. In 2007 he ran for a congressional seat in General Santos City but was beaten by the incumbent, Darlene Antonino-Custodio, who hails from a wealthy family long rooted in the politics of the region. But he is almost sure to run again in the 2010 national elections, though not in the same district. (Pacquiao has his own political organization — the People's Champ Movement — but has been aligning himself with President Gloria Arroyo, who needs his popularity.) Most people say they'd rather he stay a boxer and win more accolades for the nation, that his need to help lift people up can be better served elsewhere. But politics as his second act may be a strategy born of a deeper survival instinct — from knowing the limitations of a boxer's life, particularly after the fighting is done. "'Di ako bobo," he might say.

You see, Manny Pacquiao is not the first famous boxer produced by General Santos City. The previous Filipino world champion, Rolando Navarrete, came from the same streets. Navarrete now lives in embittered obscurity on the city's outskirts, often falling afoul of the law. "Most boxers start with nothing and end up with nothing," says Pedro Acharon, the mayor of General Santos City. "Manny wants to end that story. He knows there's more to explore in life."

Will His Kingdom Come?
Pacquiao crosses himself before digging into dinner amid the Corinthian columns of Capitale, an old bank turned party space, just about where Chinatown starts in Manhattan. It is early June, and he is there to receive his second Fighter of the Year award from The Ring magazine. Even as old palookas cuss up a storm, he prays before his meal. His mother says he was always "very disciplined and God-fearing" — taking after her, of course. Her front garden features a coral-lined altar to the Virgin Mary, and an entire shelf in her living room is filled with icons and bric-a-brac in honor of Christ's mother. Dionisia wanted Manny to be a priest. Prayer reigns in his gym. "After each workout," says Giongco, "he requests a moment of silence where he prays, and then everything goes back to normal."

Being a good Catholic is a plus for a would-be politician in the very pious Philippines. But so is knowing how to handle a constituency. Pacquiao doesn't have one so much as he has a royal court. Roach is famous enough to have his own table at the Capitale extravaganza. Beside Pacquiao sits his wife Jinkee. Filipino tabloids have published her purported ultimatums against Manny's "playboy" ways, but tonight she says only a couple of sentences and even those guardedly. She speaks mostly to the other man seated next to her, Mike Koncz, a Canadian who takes care of the little details that matter to Pacquiao and his wife. The fighter, for example, must have white rice with his meals (a hard habit to break for all Filipinos), so Koncz goes scampering for a plate of it. The slightly fusiony menu lists a side of wild rice with the entrée. That will not do for the Pacquiaos.

If Roach is the most popular foreigner in the Philippines, Koncz, who has become a gatekeeper for the Pacquiaos, is the most loathed. And not just by Filipinos. In mid-October, Alex Ariza, a Colombian boxer who is Pacquiao's fitness coach, fought with the Canadian. Koncz, says Ariza, "is so condescending, so passive-aggressive, and just doesn't care if he's being unreasonable. He crossed a line, and I just bitch-slapped him." Roach shrugs off Koncz's influence. "I'm the only one who can really talk to Manny," he says. Still, he says introducing Koncz to the Pacquiao team was "the worst f______ mistake of my life." For his part, Pacquiao tries to remain above the fray.

The fighter appears anxious as the evening wears on. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out sheets of paper — his acceptance speech, in English. While Pacquiao has no problem understanding English, which is widely used in the Philippines, he is much more comfortable speaking Tagalog, the national language, and Cebuano, the dialect he grew up with. But he is a hit with the New York City audience. All he really has to do is grin, and they are in his hands. A Filipino listening to the speech, however, senses the trouble Pacquiao will face if he decides to run for office in the Philippines. His English is heavily accented, sounding provincial to anyone used to the softly musical English of the entrenched upper classes of Manila. What would they think of someone who pronounces everything as eebreeting? Snobbery is the unvoiced rationale behind some of the opposition to Pacquiao's political ambitions: He's not really one of us.

Even one of his closest advisers isn't sure he's right for politics. Governor Chavit Singson, 68, of the province of Ilocos Sur, in the northern part of the archipelago, hangs out with Pacquiao all the time. He styles himself a kingmaker but is unclear whether Manny can be a king. "He is so humble," Singson says. "He's a simple person." Singson, however, may be a role model for Pacquiao. The governor amassed his fortune as a tobacco-plantation owner and travels in a private plane and in a bulletproof Hummer. He is an epitome of Philippine politics, where power grows out of barrels of patronage. Political reformers worry that that is the style Pacquiao has been learning during his decade of kingdom-building and distributing wealth to family friends and allies. Ramon Casiple, a prominent political analyst and reform advocate, says Filipinos know that model too well to want it from their hero. "They don't want him to run, to dirty himself and open himself to charges of corruption."

Manny's sister Isidra, however, says her brother is too strong-minded to be dissuaded from politics. "Whatever Manny does, we'll support," she says. During the huge floods in Manila in September, he took a motorcade from the mountain resort where he was training to help distribute relief to victims. "He wants to be giving service," his sister says. "He has big potential. He is caring, thoughtful and generous." Dionisia is quieter about her son's career after boxing. "I will support and pray for him," she says. But she worries. "There's a lot of trouble in politics." Can Manny Pacquiao continue to be the most loved man in the Philippines when he quits the ring and enters the cockpit of politics? That is going to be the fight of his life.

TIME MAGAZINE
The Meaning and Mythos of Manny Pacquiao
By Howard Chua-Eoan and Ishaan Tharoor Monday, Nov. 16, 2009

Winners and Losers of 2008 Beijing Olympics

Dan Wetzel's one hell of an analyst. He has all the guts every writer just need to bring out intriguing topics...

I just love reading his articles. They are full of knowledgeable information, at the same time entertaining.

Here's one of those gutsy articles about the just ended Beijing Olympic games.
His points were amazing. Reading throughout the article, all I can do is just nod in agreement.

But I just want to comment about his last 3 WINNERS...
I think they were winners only for the Olympic perspective. Other than that, they're th biggest LOSERS...

Read on...

BEIJING – After nearly 1,000 medals were handed out here, someone needed to provide a Cliffs Notes version on the real winners (and losers) of the 2008 Summer Olympics. We’re here to oblige, and yes, readers from around the world, this is an American-centric list. Deal with it.

WINNER – Michael Phelps

With eight gold medals, seven world records, a possible $100 million in endorsements – and reports he’s hanging out with Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice – Phelps has redefined Olympic success.

Perhaps most impressive, he made Americans care about swimming. His race was appointment television at night and coffee-shop talk in the morning. The likelihood the Baltimore native achieves the goal of making swimming “more than a once-every-four-year sport” remains a long shot, although who wants to bet against him now?

LOSER – NBC

Because I was in China, I didn’t watch NBC’s coverage. I can only say from the flood of angry emails it hasn’t improved since the last time I was home for the games. Tape-delayed races, plausibly live coverage and covering up Chinese special effects for the Opening Ceremony, NBC is like the China Daily – a state-run propaganda newspaper – of American television.

If only everyone could get the feed for the Canadian Broadcast Company, which anyone in select American markets can attest does an exponentially better job of television coverage of the Olympics.

WINNER – Kobe Bryant

The two biggest surprises to come out of the redemption men’s basketball team was 1) the ease in which the U.S. dominated the competition to win gold and 2) the immense popularity of Kobe in China. Everywhere he went, he found adoring crowds, huge ovations and general rock-star treatment that not only dwarfed his teammates but also was at least the equal of national hero Yao Ming.

Not even in Los Angeles is Bryant this well received. Said Carmelo Anthony: “He ought to move here.”

LOSER – Liu Xiang

The Chinese hero was under enormous pressure to repeat gold in the 110-meter hurdles, an event he no longer dominates. He never even competed, pulling out due to injury before the preliminaries in an announcement that caused television reporters to cry on the air.

It was a devastating turn for Liu, whose likeness adorns advertisements across the country. While sympathetic Chinese journalists felt for Liu’s injury, many skeptical western ones questioned if it was just a face-saving measure. While only Liu knows for sure, it’s one of those clear cultural divisions in the world. Either way, the Olympics of Liu’s dreams turned into a nightmare.

WINNER – Hope Solo

A year ago, after she was benched in a Women’s World Cup game against Brazil, the U.S. goalkeeper ripped the decision, a move that tore apart her team and caused her temporarily to be separated from it. At the Olympics, she let her play do the talking, making a number of critical saves in a shutout of Brazil for the gold medal.

The entire U.S. women’s soccer team looked like it had entered a new era under positive coach Pia Sundhage. Solo is just the most obvious example.

LOSER – Ronaldinho

Soccer fans here were excited by the inclusion of the veteran superstar on the Brazilian men’s team, which, per Olympic rules, is mostly under 23. Once considered the best player in the world, Ronaldinho showed just how out of shape he is and looked a shell of his former self in a sad vision of how far and fast he has fallen. Very disappointing.

WINNER – Alicia Sacramone

Yes, she famously fell off the beam in the women’s gymnastics team finals and failed to medal in her only individual event final, the vault. She wasn’t too happy leaving Beijing.

However, the 20-year-old Brown University sophomore may wind up one of the breakout stars of the games. Even more than gold medalist teammates Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson. At least among male fans who help make her one of the most searched athletes of the Olympics.

Or as Deadspin.com put it: “Is Alicia Sacramone the New Anna Kournikova?” Anna never won, either. She made a lot of money anyway.

LOSER – Softball

In losing the gold to Japan, the U.S. may have made the best case for softball to be saved from elimination from future Olympics. That’s an awfully big price to pay for something that may not even be enough.

WINNER – Usain Bolt

Track seemed all but dead a couple weeks ago. Then along came this flamboyant speedster out of Jamaica.

He won three gold medals and set three world records, all while electrifying fans around the globe. He wasn’t just fast; he was flashy, a personality, a 6-foot-5 game changer who simply gobbled up track with each stride.

There hadn’t been anything in track like him in years, and coming off an era of extreme doping, he couldn’t have come at a better time.

LOSER – Jacques Rogge

If you wonder why everyone calls the International Olympic Committee out of touch, consider that while most of the world was celebrating Bolt, the organization’s president decided he should use his considerable bully pulpit to rip him for supposed showboating.

Rogge is a classic stiff-collared bureaucrat. His organization has made billions off athletes such as Bolt for years, yet he has to find someone to pick on.

He’s deathly frightened of criticizing any major nation – such as China, which broke a hundred promises to him in staging these games. He wouldn’t dare mention any of the dozens of athletes from big countries whose celebrations were just as bold.

A single sprinter from a small, impoverished, powerless island nation? Sure, hammer away.

Fortunately, Bolt came back and didn’t change his act at all in winning his third gold in the 4x100 relay. Rogge will soon fade into obscurity for a while.

LOSER – Smog

In a beat down worse than the one the U.S. laid on Germany in men’s hoops, the Chinese government all but eliminated smog from Beijing during the games. Trees were planted, factories shuttered, construction sites quieted and cars removed from the streets in an effort to produce blue skies.

It was a slow start to the process. Early on, the clouds of pollution were almost incomprehensible. The Chinese originally tried to claim it wasn’t smog but that it was just “mist.” Only the China Daily, and perhaps NBC, would believe this.

“We got absolutely snuffed out,” said a spokesperson for the Smog Olympic Committee. “It was a tough games for us. We just couldn’t get the carbons together to form a cancerous cloud, trap heat and sear eyeballs.”

WINNER – Smog

Guess what, it’s coming back. How depressing will it be to a Beijing resident the next couple of weeks? The smoke stacks will be relit, the coal plants fired up, the cars will return. Slowly, the reverse of the above picture will occur.

One older Beijing resident claimed the city hadn’t looked this good in a decade. Newer arrivals remarked the town was actually pretty. Yeah, not for long.

China has claimed it will curb the problem, but how? And Western corporations, all too pleased to take advantage of lax environmental laws, are part of the problem, too.

China gets routinely and deservedly hammered for its human rights issues in Tibet and Darfur. The biggest human rights issue may be the cancer in the air that its own citizens must breathe.

WINNERS – USA Volleyball and USA Water Polo

On the beach, the Americans swept the men’s and women’s competitions. Indoor, the men won gold and the women won silver. Both did so while dealing with some level of tragedy from the stabbings of Todd and Barbara Bachman, the parents of former women’s player Elisabeth Bachman and the in-laws of men’s coach Hugh McCutcheon.

In the pool, the men surprisingly took silver and the women also won silver in a last-second loss.

WINNER – Cigarette Smoke

Veteran readers of this column will note past criticism of Greek and Italian smokers, two medal contenders in the worldwide tobacco competition. At dinner, the Greeks smoke between bites. The Italians just never take it out of their mouths. (Smoking would be one of the more intriguing Summer Games events, although not as good as Russian Roulette, where gold really is the only option. Then there’s haggling at the Beijing silk market, where I’d have a shot to medal.)

Anyway, the Chinese appear to be far behind on cigarettes. It was mostly clean breathing (so to speak) around here.

LOSER – Chinese Coffee

Good tea here. Coffee, not so much. I’m dying for a Dunkin’ Donuts large black. Not four ounces of warm, darkened water. The Big One.

WINNER – Ara Abrahamian

Yes, sportsmanship and all declares that protesting a scoring decision by throwing your bronze medal down and storming off isn’t good form. Then again, who hasn’t wished they could do the same on occasion. The Swedish Greco-Roman wrestler inspired every take-this-job-and-shove-it wannabe around the world.

That’s a winner enough for us. And that was before an arbitration court ruled in his favor.

LOSER – Angel Matos

The Cuban taekwondo athlete was so angered at his disqualification from a bronze medal match, he deliberately booted the referee in the face. Yeah, that’s a little much. Matos and his coach were banned for life. Not sure how there could be an appeal.

WINNER – Beijing Organization

Considering the ability of the government to relocate people, build whatever infrastructure was necessary and control everything from private industry to dinner menus to traffic, there will probably never be a better tactically run games than these.

As long as you didn’t consider how it got done, working in Beijing was a breeze. The venues were modern and close, and the organization was sophisticated and smart. On this point, London and everyone else has its work cut out for it.

WINNER – Living in Beijing

Once the smog cleared, Beijing was tremendous. One of the best parts of covering an Olympics is you don’t see the host city as a tourist. You come here to live and work for a month, and while you’re obviously never a real local, you tend to get a little deeper into the place.

You learn how the subway works. You figure out a bus route. You have regular restaurants. We lived at Beijing Normal University, on the near northwest side of town, between Second and Third Ring Roads. It is surrounded by a real neighborhood, and over the course of nearly a month we met store owners, waiters, bartenders, cooks, security guards and local residents. We’d see them on the street and stop and chat.

The food was incredible and beyond cheap. The service was impeccable. And this neighborhood near “Bay-Shoe-Dah” was a tremendous place to live for a stretch.

WINNER – Chinese People

Nowhere in the world have I encountered friendlier people. Nowhere. Perhaps it was Olympic pride. Perhaps I was just an easily identifiable American with a press badge. It didn’t matter. The Chinese people wanted me to think well of them and their emerging country, and it is quite clear that this nation’s greatest resource is its citizens.

From the woman in the earthquake refugee camp who, despite having nothing, offered me a small, simple glass of water as a sign of hospitality. To the army of volunteers, forever smiling even when given the lowest of tasks such as sorting garbage in the cafeteria. The lasting memory for me from these games will be the Chinese people.

Their government has issues (as do all governments). It didn’t live up to what it said it would here. There is a great fear of China in the western world because people here will work for wages unlivable anywhere else and because of a natural suspicion of the Communist party.

No doubt, the challenges here are immense. If allowed, the Chinese people might be good enough to solve them.

Beijing Olympics' winners and losers
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports

Aug 24, 2008

AFP Photos

Kobe Bryant: The Real Olympic Glory

BEIJING – Once Kobe Bryant let that Shaq rap go, he wished that he had resisted responding to so much else throughout his tumultuous 20s. Shaquille O’Neal obliterated him on that June nightclub stage in New York, a TMZ moment that threatened to drag Bryant back into that Hollywood trash-tabloid place.

Here was Bryant on his 30th birthday, on the eve of playing Spain for his gold-medal moment for United States basketball, and he had such regret that it took so long in his life to let Shaq shadow box.

“The biggest mistake I made was coming up with a rebuttal,” Bryant said. “My philosophy had always been to keep quiet and not to say anything. And by me responding, that drew me into it. If I had to do it over again, I would’ve just let people talk and say what they had to say, and as time goes on, they would’ve seen what was what.

“When you’re young, (you think) ‘Enough is enough. I’m going to say something.’ And all of a sudden…”

All of a sudden, there’s no winning. There’s no way out. Perhaps this is why Bryant seems so liberated, freed from a legacy and life forever framed through the prism of Shaq and their three Los Angeles Lakers’ titles together. As Kobe reshapes his image here with American flags, Jordanesque ferocity and the warm, welcoming touch of a grateful guest, O’Neal is back in the United States facing a restraining order for allegations of stalking an Atlanta woman after several disturbing e-mails and phone threats surfaced.

The old images of the brooding, immature Kobe and the gregarious, life-of-the-championship-party Shaq have turned inside out. Somehow, Kobe’s become the grownup and Shaq the screw-up.

In the wake of the Lakers’ NBA Finals loss to the Boston Celtics, Shaq climbed on that stage and started with the lyrics that, “Kobe couldn’t do without me,” and maybe for the first time cast Bryant as a sympathetic figure. To dismiss the firestorm as deftly as Bryant did – whatever, I’ve got a gold medal to win this summer – cornered Shaq as a fading superstar filled with too much jealousy, too little motivation.

These Olympics have been the most remarkable three weeks of Kobe Bryant’s basketball life. He disdains the marketing “Redeem Team” title, calling it “kind of cheesy” because let’s face it: Those weren’t his international failures over the past eight years. Nike tried so hard to make LeBron James a co-star of these Games but failed miserably. He’s riding shotgun and doesn’t seem terribly thrilled about it. There’s no usurping Bryant in China.

Bryant has won the respect of his teammates, but he doesn’t run in the big cliques on the team. LeBron is the ringleader of the young players, and Kobe goes his own way. He’s won his teammates over with his ferocity, his insatiable need to win, but no one ever gets close to Bryant. He’s a loner, but he learned to lead. When all hell was breaking loose in the semifinal victory over Argentina, it was Bryant working with Jason Kidd to bring his teammates back from the brink of losing composure.

“We didn’t come to tussle,” Bryant said. “We came to win a gold medal.”

When his teammates went in groups to volleyball and women’s basketball games this week, Bryant was over at the U.S.-Brazil gold medal women’s soccer match with his wife and daughters. He waves his American flag, his eyes mesmerized by the dichotomy between the winners and losers, gold and silver.

“I stayed to watch them get their gold medals, just to see what that would be like,” he said.

As much as any NBA player, these Olympics have been a source of pure fascination for Bryant. For this most obsessive perfectionist, a basketball player with a full-time staff “whose whole job, whole purpose, is to just stay on top of my health,” Bryant couldn’t stop putting his own greatness into context with that of the world’s best athletes. He spent several years of his childhood living in Italy and always did have a global perspective on himself. The Olympics have been such a renaissance to his career, Bryant insists that he wants to play as a 34-year-old in 2012 in London.

“If they want me back, I’ll be back,” he said.

Bryant’s popularity is staggering in Asia and Europe, and he insists that, “People here have seen my personality more than in the States. I’ve done tours here. In the season, I’m in that Mamba mode. That switch is on. But during the summer, I’m kicking back and they get to see what a smart-ass I am. They get a chance to relate to you a lot more.

“Half the places you go to in the States, they’re rooting against you. Here, I think they’ve seen more of who I am.”

Well, there’s this idea, too. Bryant will forever have the rape charges in Eagle, Colo., on his permanent stateside record, but they don’t judge him overseas. They don’t care about that dropped case and taking sides in the Lakers’ soap operas and vitriol toward his Lakers bosses and teammates.

They just judge Kobe in the pure way that he judges himself: On the basketball court, peerless.

On his way back home, Bryant will be remembered as the anchor responsible for restoring American basketball glory. His MVP season, his return to the Finals, taught Bryant that he had to give more of himself to get the things that he ultimately wanted.

For the longest time, though, he played the part of the spoiled brat, the baby brother that Shaq had to balance between shaping and scolding, and maybe ultimately defining. Now, Shaq’s career is in sharp decline with a summer of high-comedy, low-rent rap and a stalker complaint in hot pursuit.

Across the world, Bryant goes for his gold medal on Saturday, something it turns out he could do without Shaq. Still, that’s a war Bryant never won and never will. Mostly, he understands that it isn’t even worth waging. Let it go, he tells himself. Let it go.

“As I get older, I do care what people think of me,” Bryant said. “I don’t want them to have the wrong impression. That is important to me. I’m not too big to say that. I’m not embarrassed to say that.

“I care about what people think.”

The world has watched him grow from teenage prodigy to tortured twenty-something to the weekend a world away in China when Kobe Bryant could feel the burdens peeling away like a second skin.

“I’m just happy I made it to 30,” he said. “Now the pressure’s off.”


Kobe turns a year older, a decade wiser
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
August 23, 2008

AFP Photos