KOBE
Inspires Kids with New Book Series
by Melissa Fales
In the three years since NBA great Kobe Bryant retired from the game, he’s been displaying a whole new set of skills off the court. Most recently, he’s created a young adult/middle grade book series, written by Wesley King and published by Bryant’s own Granity Studios. It’s about a marginal, inner-city basketball team and their utterly unconventional coach who teaches them more than just how to play.
Training Camp, the first book in The Wizenard Series, shot to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list immediately upon its release in March. “Growing up, I didn’t read many stories that challenged my imagination, creative thinking, or problem-solving when it came to sports,” Bryant says. “I want to inspire and entertain young athletes with stories they feel represented by and can get excited about reading, while bringing imagination and joy back into youth sports.”
Bryant, a five-time NBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist, won an Academy Award in 2018 for Dear Basketball, an animated short film he wrote and narrated. Later that year, his book, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play, hit number one on the New York Times bestsellers list. Bryant is also an ambassador for the After-School All-Stars, a non-profit organization that offers after-school programs in 13 cities. “Over the years, I’ve gravitated towards working with organizations aimed at helping kids,” he says. “I love spending time with others who share the same, larger goal of inspiring and entertaining the next generation.” For Bryant, publishing The Wizenard Series is one more way to make a positive impact in children’s lives. “Ultimately, I’d like kids to take away the importance of self-acceptance, and then how the acceptance of others can follow,” he says. “A lot of self-acceptance comes from building the courage to face your fears. I’ve found that once you identify and accept what’s fearful to you, that fear starts to melt away.”
The Wizenard Series: Training Camp brings Bryant together with author Wesley King for the first time. “It was an amazing collaboration,” says Bryant. “He was able to take my outline of the characters and the plot as I envisioned it and bring it to life on the page.”
Readers will meet the West Bottom Badgers: an aptly-named inner-city team stuck in last place in their league until a new coach shows up and challenges everything they think they know about the game of basketball. The new coach, Rolabi Wizenard, uses his own special powers and supernatural gifts to teach each team member how to live up to his highest potential, both on and off the court.
According to Bryant, the inspiration for Rolabi Wizenard came straight out of one of his favorite films: Julie Andrew’s portrayal of Mary Poppins. “She comes on to the scene and you have no idea where she came from,” Bryant says. “She’s stern, but also provides guidance and won’t give you specific answers on things. So, Mary Poppins was the start of the character and then I drew upon the transformative teaching of my basketball muses in order to place the character in a basketball setting. There are a lot of my coaches, including Phil Jackson and Tex Winter, as well as the great John Wooden, represented in Rolabi.”
Author Wesley King
Not many books can claim sports/fantasy as a genre. “It is unique and I hope that’s what makes it stick,” says Bryant. “Fantasy and magic draw people in, especially kids. Sports/fantasy is a blend of two of my passions: sports and fantasy storytelling. I’m a voracious reader and huge Harry Potter fan. So, it was a natural fit for me from that perspective. And, I think kids respond to lessons they learn while being entertained. It connects back to my desire to want to bring joy back to youth sports, while teaching important life lessons.”
In fact, says Bryant, drawing a connection between sports and fantasy isn’t such a stretch. “In sports, the magic is inherently there—good and bad,” he says. “If I’m feeling great, I feel like I can’t miss! That basket looks massive! But then conversely, if I’m feeling bad, the basket looks like it’s the size of a keyhole. I can’t make anything. That’s emotional magic. So I wanted to take emotion and use that as magic in our world to teach these very complicated methods to our children in an entertaining way.”
Training Camp focuses on five Badgers players. “There’s a piece of me and my experiences within each one of them,” Bryant says. In particular, Rain’s personality most closely lines up with Bryant’s. “Rain’s weaknesses on the court are the same as mine,” he says. “There’s a vulnerability within him, an unwillingness to trust somebody else before he trusts himself. That’s something that I dealt with and struggled with. For Rain, the backstory of why he has that is different than my own, but the end issues and challenges are the same.” Bryant has infused aspects of his own life into the series’ location, too. “The physical setting of the book—The Bottom—is inspired by an area in West Philadelphia where I played a lot of basketball,” Bryant says. “I didn’t want to create a story where I’m just pulling stuff out of thin air. I wanted to base it off of experiences and things that I’ve seen and places that I’ve played.”
In each of the books in The Wizenard Series, the story is presented in separate sections that highlight one player’s individual perspective on the same situation. “To me, it was the most authentic way of crafting a book about a team,” says Bryant. “You can’t really grow as a team unless you understand or see the growth of the teammates you have around you. In the first book, what you see is a lot of inner perspective, a lot of self-awareness, and self-acceptance. Now we’ll start seeing the growth of them having the courage to voice what that inner journey was for them to others. That’s the progression: First you have inner acceptance, and then you can share your journey with others. And now you can support and rally around each other. It’s important to see those different perspectives.”
“We’re building a stable of stories that we hope will impact young athletes, no matter their gender or sport, for years to come.”
The characters in Training Camp are each grappling with their own internal conflicts as well as a challenging external situation. “With this book, we deal with psychological issues such as anxiety and depression,” Bryant says. “We also address socioeconomic issues as most of the players are from an extremely low-income area called The Bottom. Only four of the players on the team can afford a basketball. One player works two jobs; some have absent parents. For most, basketball is seen as their only way out. Every athlete holds unique fears and struggles to properly communicate with teammates, which subsequently hampers them on the court and in life.”
In the end, it’s Coach Rolabi Wizenard who brings the West Bottom Badgers together as a team. “They start to bond together, navigating Rolabi’s unorthodox ways,” says Bryant. “His challenges break them down at first, but eventually they grow together. They are able to do that as these challenges teach them confidence and compassion. They’re able to grow in a way that makes them better teammates and people. Through basketball, the teammates find a deeper connection to each other and overcome their differences as a result.”
Book Two of The Wizenard Series is due out in 2020. “This is just the beginning,” says Bryant. “We have more coming from our studio that more and more readers will hopefully identify with. This year alone, we have two novels coming out featuring female protagonists and different sports: Legacy and the Queen will be published in September and Epoca: Island of the Gods will be published in November. We’re building a stable of stories that we hope will impact young athletes, no matter their gender or sport, for years to come.”
For more information on Kobe Bryant, The Wizenard Series: Training Camp, and other books by Granity Studios, visit granitystudios.com.