When Kobe Bryant crumpled to the ground grasping for his left ankle, DeMar DeRozan had a sinking feeling while watching his childhood idol on a television screen in Toronto.
As Bryant slowly got to his feet and tried to test his body to see if he could put any weight on his left heel, DeRozan’s mind took him to a memory he wouldn’t wish on anyone.
“I’ve seen it first hand,” DeRozan said. “My girl (a former basketball player herself) suffered an Achilles tear … twice. I was there for the first one. How painful she explained it to be, it was kind of similar. It was tough just to see somebody get injured like that.”
Golden State’s Draymond Green tweeted that Bryant asked Wariors rookie Harrison Barnes if he had kicked him in the heel on the play. It was when Barnes said he hadn’t that Bryant’s worst fears were confirmed. DeRozan cringed when told of the tweet.
“That’s how it happens,” he said. “When (my fiancée) hurt herself she was just doing resistance running. I swear I remember looking at her, I was in front of her, and she looked back when it happened. She looked back like she got kicked and two seconds later she was yelling and screaming. It was crazy. To this day she says it feels like somebody kicked her.”
DeRozan, an L.A. native who grew up watching Bryant, was somber when discussing how he felt watching Bryant’s body fail him.
“It was a sad thing,” he said. “I hate to see it. That’s one of my favourite players that I grew up watching. It’s a tough thing to see, one of the greats go down like that. I just hope it’s not his last game.”
While others will focus on the sadness of a season lost, DeRozan reflected back on the toll that the recovery from this injury can take. Thinking back to his fiancée’s injury, his voice quieted as he talked about what will be next for the 17-year veteran.
“It was tough for me to see her go through that whole process,” DeRozan said. “It was tough being right there when it first happened. It was a tough thing. I don’t wish injury on anybody, but it’s tough. All the rehab she was doing, everything she had to go through just to walk regularly.”
While there will be grueling rehabilitation ahead for Bryant, DeRozan was quick to mention how an injury like this affects so much more than an athlete’s physical state.
“That’s the hardest thing,” he said. “It tests you emotionally because it’s so hard. You’re so used to walking, running, jumping to where it’s like you’ve got to start all over. Rehabbing is not easy. It’s just not. It’s the hardest thing ever. It’s so easy to quit. It’s something that you’ve got to do if you want to get back. Sometimes it takes six months, a year, whatever it may be. That whole time is an emotional roller coaster for that person.”
Looking to Bryant’s steely resolve and incredible work ethic as an example when he has pushed himself in the gym in early mornings and late nights in his own off-seasons, DeRozan’s respect for Bryant’s devotion to the game was apparent as he spoke.
“It was … you could feel his pain,” he said. “People don’t understand. Kobe’s mindset is out of this world. When you take something that he’s dedicated his whole life to, it’s taken him 20 years, whatever it may be, to get to where he is now, for it all to come to a halt like that? That’s emotionally draining. You’re not getting younger, you’re getting older. Your window of opportunity is only so big. It sucks to see that happen to Kobe.”
DeRozan’s sentiment spoke for the league as a whole.
Whether it’s DeRozan, who grew up in Los Angeles rooting for those Kobe-Shaq Lakers, or Barnes, the rookie who not only called Bryant his favourite player but elected to wear Bryant’s shoes while at the University of North Carolina instead of lacing up Jordans like the rest of his team, or so many players, writers, and fans in between, Bryant has been a fixture in the NBA for the past 17 years.
He is the Michael Jordan to this generation.
To watch him go down in spite of the preparation, devotion and competitive fire that has separated and elevated him from the rest of the league is to be reminded of a reality that professional athletes find it easier to ignore: There is no such thing as invincibility.
Not even for the great ones.
For as long as DeRozan and Barnes have known what basketball is, Bryant has been suiting up in a Los Angeles Lakers uniform. While DeRozan hopes there will be more basketball for Bryant, for him to have an opportunity to write his final basketball-playing chapter on his own terms, he spoke quietly of how he felt, watching his fallen idol.
“You can’t take nothing for granted,” he said. It’s just crushing.”
