ABOUT MIKE SIELSKI AND I AM KOBE

How did Kobe Bryant craft the passion, the determination, and the strength to become a legend? This remarkable series reveals intimate, never-before-heard tapes of Kobe as a teenager, exploring his thoughts, his dreams, and his goals. Philadelphia journalist Mike Sielski tells the story of Kobe Bryant's early years, weaving together these tapes and speaking with Kobe's high school coaches, his friends, his family, and the figures who knew him in his youth, to paint an enthralling documentary portrait of the making of an icon. Before he was an outsized global basketball celebrity for the Los Angeles Lakers, a 5-time NBA champion, an 18-time All-Star, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, a children's-book author, a husband, a father, and sometimes a lightning rod for controversy, Kobe Bryant was a kid from Philadelphia.



ABOUT MIKE SIELSKI



Mike Sielski is a sports journalist and author. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and raised just outside Philadelphia, Mike holds degrees from La Salle University of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has been a sports columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer since 2013 and was named the top sports columnist in America by the Sports Editors of the Associated Press. He is the author of The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality, Fading Echoes: A True Story of Rivalry and Brotherhood from the Football Field to the Fields of Honor and the co-author of How to Be Like Jackie Robinson: Life Lessons from Baseball's Greatest Hero.



Here's the trailer:



https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-i-am-kobe-88866948/

ABOUT HIS BOOK THE RISE, AVAILABLE JANUARY 11TH



Sunday, January 26, 2020.



The relative serenity of that day was shattered as breaking news erupted over the airwaves. A tragic helicopter crash near Los Angeles, claiming the lives of nine people, would upend the worlds of sports and celebrities in the saddest, most shocking way. When word first broke, most could not believe it was true. Kobe Bryant's death sent shock waves around the globe. Sometimes we take stars and headline-makers almost for granted, thinking nothing can stop or hurt them. It took that tragedy to reveal the full breadth and depth of Kobe Bryant's influence on our culture, both inside and outside the world of sports. In the days following, award-winning writer Mike Sielski was moved to learn more about the man and legend, who was clearly more than just a basketball star. The result is the book, THE RISE: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality (St. Martin's Press; On Sale January 11, 2022; $29.99), a book that will welcome readers into the growth and maturity of a young man who became as unique a star away from the limelight as he was in it.

For Mike Sielski, the book became a mission: "I tried to track down as many people who were close to him during those years as I could, and I spent weeks going through newspaper archives and first-hand source materials (video of old games, coaches' documents, etc.). I interviewed friends of his who had never been interviewed before, people who hadn't spoken about him in years. I worked closely with Gregg Downer and a confidant of Kobe's, Jeremy Treatman, who had tried to collaborate on a book with Kobe in the late 1990s. As it turned out, Jeremy still had the microcassette recordings and some transcripts of those interviews, and he gave them to me. They have informed my writing and reporting and made the narrative more detailed, more honest, and richer."



The story begins on the asphalt basketball courts of Philadelphia in the 1960s, where Kobe's father, Joe "Jellybean" Bryant went from playground star to college and NBA player, before finishing his professional career in Italy. Mike Sielski shows how Joe's young son, Kobe, growing up in Europe, was shaped into an uncommon young man as he became immersed in culture, geography, and the European way of life. When the family arrived back in Philadelphia, the young son was like a fish out of water. As young Kobe adjusted to an American life, his new home in Lower Merion, PA, adjusted to him. And what a breath of fresh air his personality was. Classmates and teachers were equally spellbound by his maturity and worldliness, so unlike the American teenagers they were used to seeing.



Soon his enormous talent on the basketball court would be made clear as well as his unique perspective on life. A natural leader, even as an impressionable teenager, Bryant would lead his high school team - hardly a basketball power - to a meteoric rise in the state rankings. When this culminated in a 1996 state high school championship, virtually single handedly won by Kobe, his legend was cemented. But as the author shows, this amazing accomplishment would become the norm for a player whose effect on a sport was about to go global. THE RISE is more than a "basketball book." It's a deep dive into the evolution of a gangly high school kid into a global icon.