Speaker 1: Most people didn't know Kobe liked to write or what a voracious reader he was. I haven't read this book or even really looked at it since the day Kobe passed. This is something that summarizes Kobe's philosophy. It says, a dream is nothing without vision. If a dream can be achieved without work, without sacrifice, then it is meaningless. The road to your dreams is paved with hardship. And that's Kobe writing right there. There is a certain reassurance that his philosophy and all the things that he wanted to teach and share with young readers remains in this text. And the things that he left behind.

Speaker 2: My kids are athletes and they got tired of hearing me trying to teach them. Because just like every parent, the more wisdom you give to your kids, after a while it starts becoming white noise. But what they do love is they do love story. So the idea of the studio originally just started with creating stories for them about perseverance, about dedication, about dealing with pressure, dealing with failure and all these things. And putting them into these very character-driven stories that involve magic and sports.

Speaker 1: He just said, listen, I'm creating something totally different. The Wizarding Arts series was the first book he released in his new publishing line, Granny Studios.

Speaker 2: Harry Potter, Olympics, had a baby. This is what we're making.

Speaker 1: The story's full of magic. The kids are confronted with these magical challenges that are all sort of metaphors for things that we all deal with in regular life.

Speaker 2: You know, you visualize things in your head and spend hours and hours practicing. And do it over and over and over to be good at it.

Speaker 1: It's a mindset that got right back to the root of what these kids were dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 2: If you can wrap it around something that they are passionate about, be it basketball, and teach life lessons through the sport, then you have something that's more powerful. And that's what I try to do with the Wizarding Arts series.

Speaker 3: I think Kobe understood you have to deal with both what is good about humans and what is flawed about humans. I think he wanted to tell stories that were rooted in that. Because those are the ones that tell us most about ourselves. And Kobe knew that about his own life.

Speaker 1: This is a very small collection of the things that Kobe wrote outlining how the project was supposed to evolve. He was involved on a sentence-by-sentence, page-by-page basis. The series is about these five kids on the worst basketball team. They find out they're getting a new coach. And he begins to challenge the boys one-on-one and facing their fears. There is no central villain. The villains are the fears and insecurities and anxieties that we all deal with. The one character he had ready was Rain. Kobe's relationship with isolation, I think, really does come across probably in Rain's story the most. It says Rain deals with self-worth issues by trying to control as much as he can to avoid leaving himself open to being hurt ever again. This is why he'd rather shoot than pass. He's a control freak, but it comes from a deep, dark place he has always been afraid to visit and confront. When you finally get to that place, he would describe it as sort of the deep, dark room. We have to struggle and suffer to find it. I mean, that was his journey.

Speaker 2: How do each of us navigate through our own insecurities, our own moments of doubt? How do you channel the villain to unleash the hero? How do you use darkness to create greatness?

Speaker 3: I think he understood that the things he went through personally in his life shaped the way he looked at human beings.

Speaker 2: We're all human, and we all make mistakes. We all have moments of anger or frustration, and I think that's what makes us us. It's the fact that we can be both, and we just hope that the hero side of us manifests itself more frequently than the villain nature does.

Speaker 1: He told me that he would rather be remembered for storytelling than for basketball.

Speaker 2: How do you want the world to look at Kobe Bryant? You know, as a person that was able to create stories that inspired their children and families to bond together, and for their children to dream and have the initiative to wake up every morning and do all they can to help that dream become a reality.

Speaker 1: He had just started. On the day of Kobe's passing, I was actually packing my bags. I was flying out the next morning to meet up with Kobe to start working on books 3, 4, 5. He was just this indomitable character. It was tough to imagine that a force of nature could ever not be there anymore. I get, almost every day, young readers or teachers asking, when's book 3 coming out, and what happens to the team? I always just reply, like, you know, Kobe would want you to just imagine, what do you think is going to happen now? And I think he'd be happy that young readers are letting the conclusion go to where they see it. There's little proverbs that start at the beginning of each chapter. Those are probably the easiest summary of what he believed. The last one, which I know Kobe loved, You may tire on the road, it may grow dark. Rest if you must, but never give up. Walk until the darkness is a memory, and you become the sun on the next traveler's horizon. A beautiful image of what we leave behind.