From the mind of basketball legend and Academy Award-winning storyteller Kobe Bryant, comes a new tale of finding your inner magic against all odds.
With the great deluge of information-sharing on the internet in the aftermath of the Kobe Bryant Tragedy, I was beside myself trying to learn more about this phenomenal basketball star in his post-retirement life. With most tributes being sports-related and me not being athletic, I found it challenging to pour over the details of his massive existence, as I could not identify with the strategic discipline that was required to compete on his level of athleticism or philanthropy. What did pique my interest though, was his foray into the literary world to form a production company where he could create the short film “Dear Basketball,” as well as this current book, ‘Legacy and the Queen.’ This selection is a masterpiece of invaluable life lessons, that not only seems to be a literary godsend at this time, but it also shows the range of Bryant’s idealism and passion for creating a playbook whereby purpose and planning played a major role in his overall success.
Legacy is a twelve-year-old girl who lives in an orphanage that her father runs in the Republic of Nova. Abandoned by her mother at a young age, Legacy is basically the mother hen who looks after the children of the orphanage ensuring they get everything they need in spite of the fact that neither she nor her dad has much to offer. With the great responsibility she has, Legacy doesn’t get to do much for herself, however, in a town where tennis means everything, she has developed a love for the sport as well as a love for books and entertains herself by hitting balls against the backboards of the orphanage and pouring through remnants of books that have been pilfered through to find entertainment for the children. As times get more difficult, Legacy feels it is her responsibility to come up with a plan to help her dad financially as well as find a way for the children under their care to have better lives. When Legacy’s cohort Van is about to be sent out into the fields to work, Legacy is beside herself with worry due to Van’s overall weakness and stature. Van, who is a bookworm, has received information that Silla the Queen is sponsoring an annual tournament and he tries to convince Legacy that she has the skills to compete and could totally change their entire world by going to the tournament and winning.
With no options left, Legacy finally gets the courage to leave the orphanage without her father’s knowledge, but not before training Van on how to take care of the other children and her father until she returns. Once Legacy gets outside of the Provinces where she lives, she realizes there is an entire world outside of the orphanage that she knows nothing about. Furthermore, when she finally reaches the palace, she is immediately shunned and woefully unprepared for the indifference that she is confronted with on the Queen’s side of town. Although Legacy is immediately challenged with situations she has never dealt with, she also recognizes how much has been left to her imagination with regard to the types of things that surrounded the orphanage. Legacy soon learns that her best defense is her own resilience which was developed for many years prior to coming to the palace. As the proper protocols for every aspect of this new awakening are introduced to her, Legacy manages to find a way to get in through her own belief in herself and in getting back to the basics. When she befriends two of the most knowledgeable people in Silla’s process, she discovers that the competition she is up against is going out of their way in order to ensure she can never make it to the top. With a seemingly unlikely bond, the three put their heads together and use all their available resources to get Legacy where she needed to be in the competition, and in the process, they found that they had more in common than they originally thought. In the end, Legacy comes out on top, but not before discovering how this entire process was not so much about saving her village after becoming a tennis champion, but more about the whirlwind discovery of who she really was and the role in other’s lives played in the development of who she came to be.
‘Legacy and the Queen,’ created by Kobe Bryant and written by Annie Matthew, is a great read that demonstrates how will and purpose come together as a solid foundation in which to build upon. It also capitalizes on the empirical evidence of hard work and the rewards of being true to one’s self in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds. This, in and of itself, appears to be Kobe’s self-fulfilled legacy and a blueprint for the world to follow.
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