Roland Lazenby, a famous sportswriter who wrote biographies about Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, and many other sports legends recently shared his thoughts in an interview with Adit Pujari of The SportsRush.
Lazenby discussed a major difference between Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, revealing the reason why Kobe never went to college. He also spoke about how going to college helped Jordan be successful, especially with the positive guidance of his parents, James and Deloris Jordan.
“The real thing that made the difference in Tex’s (Tex Winter) mind was that Michael Jordan went to college and played three years of college ball. Now what people don’t understand, he played at North Carolina, which was a system basketball program. He dunked against Maryland and Dean Smith wouldn’t even show the video of it on his coach’s show. It was a system that tightly controlled things.”
Lazenby then discussed how Kobe wanted to provide financial assistance to his parents and went pro after high school, not exploring any opportunity to pursue playing for Coach K at Duke.
“He [Tex Winter] said that Kobe didn’t go to college. Kobe had very mixed feelings about that. He wanted to go play for Mike Krzyzewski [Coach K] at Duke, but his parents, what people didn’t realize, his parents were badly in need of money.”
Another factor was Sonny Vaccaro, the man who helped Nike sign Michael Jordan. Vaccaro had been fired by Nike and told Lazenby in conversations that he made sure that he signed Kobe for Adidas when he was in high school so Nike couldn’t get another future superstar and so the NCAA couldn’t benefit through Kobe either.
“Sonny Vaccaro, who had been fired by Nike mysteriously, was with Adidas and Sonny told me and explained for my book about Kobe, Showboat, that the most clandestine thing he did was they stalked once they realized Kobe was Kobe. Sonny had a vendetta against the NCAA or college basketball and a vendetta against Nike, as he explained it to me. Sonny being of Italian heritage, the vendetta is a big thing. He wanted to steal the next great star from college basketball and from Nike. And so he accomplished that. The spring of Kobe’s senior year in high school, right after he’d finished the season and won a championship, Adidas had a contract for Kobe.”
Vaccaro’s attempts didn’t yield much long-term gain, as Kobe ultimately found his way to Nike in 2003. Since then, the Nike Kobe shoes have been among the most coveted basketball sneakers in the world. Even though Kobe didn’t get to develop his game in college like Jordan did for two seasons, he managed to learn on the fly in the NBA and become a championship-winning player by his fourth season.
Jordan blossomed as a star in the NCAA and was one of the greatest rookies the NBA had ever seen. Kobe had to adjust to the NBA but was unstoppable once he did it. There’s no conclusive way of saying that Kobe would have been better off if he went to college given the incredible levels of success he achieved anyway.
Lazenby had spoken to Fadeaway World in 2020 where he gave an illuminating interview where he delves into his career and what he learned through his extensive study of Jordan, Kobe, and Magic Johnson, amongst other things.
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