Whenever he was asked why his whole life had been spent playing basketball, Kobe Bryant’s narrow eyes searched upwards, and his mouth trembled. The answer was simple, yet so complicated. It began with the orange ball, the smell of it, the feel of the pebbled leather grains and the perfect grooves under his hands; and its bounce, and the way it sounded different on concrete or polished hardwood. Then came the net, the shot slithering right through it with that triumphant springing whoosh, while he howled with joy. Then every movement of the game, the strategies, the dodging and feints, the squeal of sneakers on the court. Whatever had thrilled him as a child (watching his father, also a pro player, on tv, wearing his own little 76ers outfit, running and jumping along with him) still thrilled him when in 2016 he retired from the game. “Dear Basketball”, he wrote,

From the moment
I started rolling my Dad’s tube socks
And shooting imaginary
Game-winning shots...
I knew one thing was real:
A love so deep I gave you my all.

• 翻译
  每当有人问他为什么一辈子都在打篮球时，科比眯起眼睛向上看，嘴巴微颤——答案很简单，却又很复杂。它开始于一个橙色的球，它的气味，鹅卵石皮革般的颗粒以及在手上完美的凹槽；它的弹力，它在水泥上、抛光的木板上听起来的声音。当篮球到球网，正好滑进了球网，他高兴地嚎叫着发出了凯旋的呼喊。赛场上的每一个动作，战术、跑位和假动作，球场上球鞋与地面的摩擦声。在他小时候在电视上看着职业球员的父亲穿着76人队球衣，他跟随父亲一起跑动和跳跃。当初让他兴奋的感觉直到2016年退役的时候仍然让他兴奋。他在《亲爱的篮球》写道，
  从那一刻起
  我开始穿着爸爸的筒袜
  和想象中的投篮
  制胜球
  我知道有一件事是真的：
  一份深深的爱，我给了你我的一切

“My all” meant training obsessively, like a maniac. He would go to the gym and shoot for hours, all day, all night. Hundreds of times, not just taking shots, but making them, running steps and patterns, practising shots off the rebound. I ran up and down every court/After every loose ball for you. He would ponder what would make his game unstoppable and then work backwards from there, building it piece by piece, move by move, repeatedly. Then, when the actual game arrived, it was all just muscle-memory. He perfected his own works of art: the jab-step-and-pause, using unexpected footwork to pass the defender, and the fadeaway, shooting while he jumped high and backwards from the basket.

• 翻译
  “My all”指的是像疯子一般的痴迷训练。他会去健身房，投篮几个小时、一整天、一整晚，成百上千次，不仅仅是投篮，还有助跑投篮，定点投篮，抢篮板后投篮的练习。在每个球场上跑来跑去，争抢每一次求全。他会思考是什么让他的比赛变得不可阻挡，然后从那里开始倒推，反复地一点一点、一步一步地重塑。然后，当真正的比赛到来时，一切都只是肌肉记忆。他完善了自己的艺术作品：急停跳投，使用意想不到的脚步过掉防守者，以及后仰，当他跳得高且向后跳的时候投篮。

For 20 seasons, a very long time to stay with one team, he played as a shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers. With them he won five nba championship rings and was most valuable player in two finals. His 81 points at home against Toronto, in 2006, was the second-highest individual score recorded in league history. By the time he retired he had the third-highest points total, 33,643, overtaken only days ago by the game’s present leading star, LeBron James. His own stardom brought him in a salary of around $30m a year, allowing him to dress in Gucci and to keep house in a gated community in Newport Beach, California. It also brought sponsorship deals, such as the one with Nike, whom he asked to design shoes with heels and midsoles that could shave precious hundredths of seconds off his reaction time. For he didn’t care so much about money, points, or the fans’ applause; they could turn against him anyway, as they did after he was accused in 2003 of sexually assaulting a woman in Colorado, a case dropped but never cleared up. He cared about being the best, winning games. Simple and plain.

• 翻译
  20个赛季以来，他一直在洛杉矶湖人担任得分后卫。凭借球队及管理层，他赢得了五枚NBA总冠军戒指，并在两度在总决赛中成为最有价值的球员。他在2006年主场对阵多伦多的比赛中拿下81分，是联盟历史上个人得分第二高的记录。到他退役时，他的总得分为33643分，位居第三，就在几天前，他还被目前的联盟第一才勒布朗·詹姆斯(LeBron James)超越。他自己的明星身份为他带来了大约3000万美元的年薪，使他能够穿着古驰(Gucci)服装，并且居住加利福尼亚州纽波特海滩(Newport Beach)的一个封闭式社区。不仅这些，还有许多签约，比如与耐克的签约，他要求耐克设计的鞋子鞋跟还有鞋子中层可以让减少他宝贵的的反应时间。因为他不太在乎钱、别人的看法或球迷的掌声；他们怎么样都可以反对他，就像2003年他在科罗拉多州被指控性侵犯一名女性后所做的那样，案件被撤销但一直没有结案。他关心的是如何成为最好的球员，或者仅仅是赢得比赛这么简单明了。

His obsession could make him by turns hustling, mean and dejected. When he joined the Lakers, his dream team, in 1996, traded from the Charlotte Hornets, he was only 17, the youngest player in the nba. He had been picked for the pro leagues straight from his suburban high school and had lived as a boy in Italy, two things that made him odd. But he came in burning with self-belief. No babying for him; he was hard, focused, a lone artist, and much of that stayed. He called himself the Black Mamba later, an assassin-snake, ruthless in the strike. Unjust foul calls and lost play-off games—especially the finals against the Detroit Pistons and the Boston Celtics—threw him into misery and vows of revenge.

On the court, lithe and nimble, he wanted every game for himself. Team-mates thought him selfish, not passing enough and shooting far too much, missing more shots in his career than anyone in nba history. He hit back at that, since at least he stayed with one team and didn’t go off somewhere else; he wanted the glory of winning the play-offs for the purple-and-golds, not just himself. Yet he so loved the ball that it just seemed drawn towards his hands. And he went on shooting, and shooting, not least because he sometimes saved a game with a fabulous floater in the final seconds. Besides, airballs too could look and feel good, good from trajectory to follow-through, on-line, on target. Some people thought Mozart had too many notes.
As in most love affairs, he had competition. One was Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of the era, the Buddha on top of the mountain and winner of six rings, whom he once asked for advice while he was guarding him. Another was Shaquille O’Neal, a charming giant who also played for the Lakers, but infuriated him because he little-brothered him and did not train like he did. (No one trained like he did.) To prove he was the best of basketball’slovers, he would go on playing when he was hurt, shooting left-handed when his right hand was injured, staggering on when ankles, knees and back were all sore. If he decided he was playing, no manager or coach could do anything about it. I played through the sweat and hurt/…because YOU called me.

He claimed to have no memory of the last game he played, though he scored 60 points in it from 50 shots. For a while his interests had been branching into multimedia, writing, film-making and setting up a Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks. But most of these still had basketball at the core. His longest film, “Muse”, was about his career, and an animated short based on “Dear Basketball” won an Academy Award. He gave motivating talks in America and Asia in which all his life-lessons were carried over from the court. At Thousand Oaks he coached his second daughter Gianna, among many others, in how to play his way.

With a lover’s impatience, he increasingly took helicopters to get to and from games, events, his office and the academy, in which case he might take Gianna with him. Carpe diem, seize the day, was his motto, learned at school in Italy; tempus neminem manet, time waits for no man. Bad weather would hardly deter him.

• 翻译
  由于爱人的不耐心，他越来越多地乘坐直升机往返于比赛、活动、办公室和学院之间，在这种情况下，他有时会带着吉安娜一起去。Carpe diem，只争朝夕，tempus nminem manet，时不我待，这是他在意大利学校学到的座右铭，恶劣的天气没有使他望而却步。

This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline "Kobe Bryant died on January 26th"