Perhaps no American hooper has enjoyed as much popularity in China as Kobe Bryant did. As LeBron James once famously remarked, “I thought I was famous until I got to China with Kobe Bryant”. Play-by-play commentator Mike Breen also felt the magnitude of the Mamba’s influence in China through a chance encounter with a cab driver.
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Breen recalled the incident a day after Bryant’s death on January 26, 2020, when he was calling a game between the New York Knicks and the Brooklyn Nets.
During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, after he fetched a cab for an interaction with Team USA athletes, the cab driver noticed that Breen was wearing an NBA pullover. The cabbie asked the commentator if he knew Kobe Bryant from the NBA.
Breen naturally said yes. But he didn’t anticipate what was about to happen next. The veteran broadcaster revealed that the driver would pull over the cab and start sobbing. Even if he didn’t meet Kobe Bryant directly, the cab driver was moved to tears because he was with someone who knew the Mamba.
“I had an NBA pullover on, a taxi driver who didn’t speak good English turned around and pointed to me, ‘NBA, NBA’. I said, ‘Yes NBA’. He said, ‘Kobe Bryant?’ I said, ‘Yes, Kobe Bryant is playing for USA’. He asked me in broken English, ‘You know Kobe Bryant?’ When I told them, Yes, I knew Kobe Bryant, he pulled the cab over and started sobbing.”
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The cab driver’s reaction naturally took Mike Breen by surprise. He had never seen someone react so emotionally just by the mere mention of an athlete. This instance proves that Kobe Bryant isn’t just a name in China, he’s an emotion.
Kobe Bryant holds massive sway in China
In 2013, Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding covered the Kobe Bryant mania in China as the then Lakers guard was just recovering from a serious Right Achilles Tendon injury. Right before the 2013-14 season, Bryant was in the nation for various promotional activities. However, his interactions with fans became a headache for his physical therapist Judy Seto, who was afraid that Mamba could rapture his Achilles again if the crowd got too handsy with him.
Seto had accompanied Bryant on several trips to Europe but she had never seen anything close to what she saw in China. She remarked how the crowd would fill up venues many hours before Bryant was due for a visit. And once he arrived, they’d surround him to catch a mere glimpse.
Seto told Bleacher Report,
“It’s different. You can feel it. When we went to Europe, they weren’t chasing him. He didn’t feel like he couldn’t go out. People would still recognize him, things like that, but in China, it’s crazy.”
The Black Mamba also reciprocated the love. Despite issues around crowd control, he once threw his shoes away among fans. He walked barefoot to greet his fans while mellowing down in the sea of overwhelming passion. The mutual love was one of the reason why the fans in China couldn’t get enough of Bryant when he visited them.
