10 quotes from Kobe Bryant on his birthday

Kobe Bryant never played college basketball – his skill level was so high that he was drafted right out of high school (Lower Merion High School near Philadelphia) to play with the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers. He is the first guard to ever make the leap directly to the pros. The son of former Philadelphia 76er forward Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, Kobe has played basketball since age 3. His name was inspired by a menu item, famous kobe beef, which is considered a delicacy in Japan. During 16 years in the Lakers’ purple and gold, he has led the team to five NBA titles, was the league’s Most Valuable Player during the 2007-08 season, and has won two scoring titles. The first came in 2006 when he averaged 35.4 points and once scored 81 points in game, the second most ever after Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game.

Sergio Perez/Reuters

1. His own man

Sergio Perez/Reuters

“I don't want to be the next Michael Jordan, I only want to be Kobe Bryant.”

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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