"I brought him to the Spectrum when we were playing the Chicago Bulls, to introduce him to Michael Jordan,'' then-Sixers coach and general manager John Lucas said. "Kobe was very polite, calling Michael 'Mr. Jordan.' When we left, I said, 'Kobe, you're coming into the league, you can't be calling him Mr. Jordan.' ''
Looking back, Lucas said his wife was the one who turned him on to Bryant.
"Our daughter went to Lower Merion, and my wife went to the games,'' Lucas said from his home in Houston. "She told me about a kid named 'Kobe Bean.' She said he was better than I was in high school. I told her she was out of her mind.
"I went to the Palestra to see him play against Chester, and ran into Joe Bryant, 'Jelly Bean,' who I knew in Houston. I hadn't put the two together. He laughed and said, 'That's my son.' He played '5' [center] to start the game, then went to '4,' '3' and '2'. In the fourth quarter, he was playing the '1.' ''
Eventually, Lucas had Kobe working out with him at 6 a.m., before school, then going through after-school drills with Adams and current Celtics assistant Tom Thibodeau. And then he would play in the scrimmages.
"He was precocious at that age, but a promising prospect,'' Adams said. "It's one thing to talk about what a player might be able to do, but it was another thing to see him play against other people, to see it firsthand. When I was with Milwaukee, Dwyane Wade [who went to Marquette] used to come over during his redshirt year and work out with some of the Bucks and some others. You get a pretty good picture of a guy.''
