Kobe Bryant's high school coach, Gregg Downer, remembers his 'hero'

By Melissa Rohlin
FOX Sports NBA Writer

Gregg Downer knew Kobe Bryant before that name meant anything – when he was just a skinny kid with a big dream. 

Downer first laid eyes on Bryant when he was an eighth-grader playing for his middle-school basketball team. Downer, the boys' basketball coach at Lower Merion High in the Philadelphia suburbs, had heard whispers about a very talented 13-year-old and attended a game to see if he lived up to the hype. 

Bryant, however, was benched for much of that game. The team had a rule that each player had to make a certain number of passes before shooting and Bryant had failed to comply. Downer then invited Bryant to attend one of his varsity practices to get a better look at him. 

"Five minutes into the workout, I turned to my assistant coaches and I said, 'This kid is a pro,'" Downer said of Bryant, who is going to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday. "I could tell right away. I couldn't believe what I was seeing at the age of 13."

The 6-foot-2 and 140-pound teenager was silky smooth, explosive and clever. He didn't appear to have any weaknesses in his game. 

The following year, Bryant made varsity and he and Downer set a goal: By the time he was a senior, they wanted him to be one of the top 10 players in the world in his grade. Over the next four years, Bryant did everything in his power to make that happen. 

He was the first person at practice and the last to leave. He'd insist on making 10 shots in a row from different spots on the court before going home at night, which would sometimes take him 20 minutes and other times two hours. 

Even when school started late on snow days, Bryant would show up at the gym at 6 a.m.

"He got to know the custodians and they would let him in," Downer said. "There was no kicking him out of the gym. It doesn't really matter what the conditions were. Most teenagers aren't thinking about getting into the gym at that crazy hour when you can get two extra hours of sleep. But he was."

Bryant grew bigger and stronger, sprouting to 6-foot-6 and gaining muscle tone on his lanky arms and legs. Eventually, Downer hired some former college basketball players to defend Bryant at practices so he'd be more challenged. 

Bryant was different than most kids. He was well-liked, but he wasn't interested in the typical musings that distracted teenage boys. He'd work out six to seven days a week, pouring himself into his goal of becoming an NBA player. 

Sometimes, he took himself a bit too seriously. 

During one practice his senior year, a 5-foot-7 guard named Robby Schwartz missed the final shot during a 3-on-3 drill with the score tied at 9-9, costing Bryant's team the win. Bryant was incensed and chased Schwartz into the hallway. 

"Here's this 6-6 guy who could break Robby in half if he wanted to," Downer said. "You're thinking initially this is cutesy, this is funny. But as it played out, it wasn't at all funny. He was dead serious. Like he was going to ring his neck if he caught him. Robby was tearing through the hallways of Lower Merion High school trying to get away from Kobe."

Bryant went on to lead the Aces to a state championship in 1996 and he broke Wilt Chamberlain's Southeastern Pennsylvania scoring record, finishing with 2,833 points compared to Chamberlain's 2,252.

As the buzz around Bryant's greatness grew around the nation, he became a local celebrity. 

"When it really got rolling it was like traveling with a rockstar," Downer said. "People chasing after our bus. Games selling out. People scalping tickets in the streets. Him throwing sneakers out the bus window to running 11-, 12-year-old kids."

Bryant always believed in himself. But, according to Downer, the moment when he knew he could go straight from high school into the NBA happened during the summer before his senior year when he was invited to watch the Philadelphia 76ers practice at St. Joseph's University.

Bryant was fearless and made a big impression on everyone in that gym, including himself. 

"He dunked on Shawn Bradley and he just got the better of Jerry Stackhouse," Downer said. "He's going toe-to-toe with a massive competitor named Vernon Maxwell. It didn't surprise me. It didn't surprise me that he was holding his own."

Bryant went on to declare for the NBA draft after his senior year in 1996. He was selected by the Charlotte Hornets with the 13th pick and then immediately traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in a prearranged deal. 

Over Bryant's 20-season career with the Lakers, he and Downer stayed in touch. Whenever the team came to Philadelphia, Bryant would visit Lower Merion High. And every summer, Downer would coach at Bryant's basketball camp. 

Downer would religiously watch Bryant play even though Lakers games often didn't end until around 1 a.m. on the East Coast. 

During the 2010 NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics, Downer reached out to Bryant with a suggestion in what was shaping out to be an extremely hard-fought series that went seven games. 

"I thought that he should cover [Paul] PIerce under six minutes when it was really crunch time," Downer said. "He spent a lot of that series covering [Rajon] Rondo so he could roam around and stay out of foul trouble. We just talked about certain strategic concepts, one of which was when it's crunch time, you've got to shift over to PIerce."

During a time when most players tighten their circles, turn off their phones and tune out white noise, Bryant was receptive to his high school coach's advice. In one of the most high-pressure moments of his career, he exchanged multiple emails with Downer about strategy. 

"He agreed with me," Downer said of Bryant, who won his fifth NBA championship that season. "Some of the things we talked about actually ended up happening."

They shared many meaningful moments over the years. 

When Bryant was visiting Lower Merion High in 2013 and he found out that Downer's wife was pregnant with their now 8-year-old daughter Brynn, Bryant gave him a huge hug. 

Bryant, who had two daughters of his own at that time, loved being a girl dad and was genuinely so happy that his friend was going to experience that same joy. 

In 2019, Downer brought the Aces to Southern California to visit Bryant and was floored by his generosity. 

"We went to a Laker game," Downer said. "We went to his office. We talked to him. He gave all the kids a copy of the Mamba book [The Mamba Mentality: How I Play]. He bought us a really nice lunch at one of his favorite restaurants. It was a rarity to really get to spend so much quality time with him and I think a sign of things to come once his schedule calmed down after he retired."

Most recently, Bryant had discussed bringing Downer out to his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks to help coach his 13-year-old daughter Gianna for a bit. 

But everything changed on January 26, 2020, when Bryant died in a helicopter crash alongside Gianna and seven other people as they were heading to the Mamba Sports Academy, where Bryant was going to coach Gianna in a youth basketball game. 

That morning, Downer was home with his wife and daughter when a reporter called him. He ignored the call, thinking they wanted a comment on LeBron James surpassing Bryant for third on the all-time scoring list. But his phone kept ringing and ringing. Eventually, he heard the news. 

"It was just a shock to the gut like I never felt," Downer said. "...It was some sleepless nights and a lot of tears and a lot of real soul searching and processing. How could this happen to somebody who's got the world by his fingertips? Somebody that's just 41 years old and ready to do so many great things."

Downer wasn't sure what he was going to do or how much time off he was going to need. But then he thought about what Bryant would've wanted, and he knew he had to press on.   

So he gathered all of his strength and tried to help bring together a grieving community, addressing the boys and girls teams in the Lower Merion auditorium the day after it happened. 

"The entire time I'm taking one step at a time in the hallway not knowing if I'm going to collapse," Downer recalled.

This season, the Aces honored Bryant by winning their first district championship since 1996, Bryant's senior year. 

The last 16 months have been very emotional for Downer. His daughter, Brynn, wears a No. 24 jersey on her soccer team to honor Bryant. And every time Downer goes to work, he thinks about the once-in-a-generation talent whom he met 29 years ago. 

"I work 20 feet from the gym he built and paid for," Downer said. "I'm in there five, six, seven days a week sometimes. The memories are always going to be there."

This week is going to be especially tough for Downer, knowing that Bryant is going to be posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame. 

Bryant changed his life.

And over a friendship that spanned three decades, Downer takes solace in knowing that he touched Bryant’s, too.  

"It means that I played a small part in a kid reaching his dream," he said.

Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She has previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.