November 14, 1996, 4:00 a.m., Toyota Center, Los Angeles Lakers practice facility.
"Thump, thump, thump." The rhythmic sound of a basketball echoed through the empty gym as a lean figure practiced his shooting inside.
Kobe remembered that the last time he had trained at four in the morning was in his previous life.
Why train at four in the morning? Because he wanted to finish his first workout of the day while Vanessa and their children were asleep.
That way, when they woke up, they would see Kobe. That was Kobe's happiness.
Kobe would rather sacrifice his own sleep than sacrifice time with his family.
Kobe missed his family a little. He wondered whether Vanessa and their children were doing well.
They would be, right? There would be plenty of people helping them through the hard times.
"Hey, Kobe! This is for you." O'Neal arrived at the practice facility that afternoon, at the team-mandated training time, and handed Kobe a black box.
"What is this?"
"A Motorola StarTAC! I saw you were still using one of those brick phones. Take this! It's the trendiest phone around. Have you ever seen a flip phone?" O'Neal spoke animatedly. Like a child, he loved fiddling with high-tech gadgets.
"Oh, thanks, Shaq." Kobe felt a warm glow in his heart. Shaq really was a pretty good guy. In that case, I'll cross out his awful performance from the last game in my notebook.
So Motorola had already started making cell phones. Kobe switched over his card, then called Pelinka and asked him to send one each to Old Joe's family and Kobe's two sisters as well.
Fisher widened his eyes beside them and looked at Kobe pitifully, his gaze brimming with emotion.
"Damn it, Rob. Get one for Derek too." Kobe pretended to