There’s a story that Jayson Tatum and his mother, Brandy Cole-Barnes, have told several times. As a kid, Tatum used to say that he wanted to be Kobe Bryant, the N.B.A. legend, when he grew up. His mother would tell him that he shouldn’t want to be another person, that he should try to be the best version of himself. Once, she said that he should dream of being better than Bryant. “I was like, Can’t nobody be better than Kobe!” Tatum told Slam magazine. “It didn’t even make sense to me.” The story is sweet, in the way that childhood infatuations can be. But I’ve always found it funny, too, because it seemed so distant from Bryant’s own mindset. Bryant, who was famous for his fierce competitiveness and supreme self-confidence, never would have said that he couldn’t be better than anybody.
