When the regular season ended, Bala didn't calm down.
It got louder.
In the original timeline, this was where things quietly faded out. A losing record. No buzz. No expectations. Basketball season just… ending.
This time, the town felt different.
People talked about Lower Merion at diners, at gas stations, in grocery store lines. Parents who had never cared about high school basketball before suddenly knew the schedule. Someone had started calling it "Mamba Fever," and the name stuck.
The craziest part?
They weren't even supposed to be here.
PIAA District 1, Quad-A—the biggest classification, the deepest pool. This was Chester's territory. Always had been. Big, physical teams with grown-man strength and playoff scars already baked into them.
Lower Merion was supposed to be food.
Instead, they were the favorite.
Inside the Bala Gym, Kobe moved slowly, deliberately. No music blasting. No flashy drills. No dunk lines.
He was on the floor with resistance bands around his ankles, working through controlled movements. Hip stability. Knee alignment. Breathing. Recovery.
The boring stuff.
His body felt it now. Not pain—fatigue. The kind that sneaks up on teenagers in March. He remembered this wall too well. He'd hit it once before and paid for it later in his career.
Not this time.
"Playoffs are different," he told the team earlier that week. "This isn't about who wants it more. It's about who's fresher."
He set rules without asking for permission.
Nine p.m. curfew.
No junk food after games.
Mandatory cooldowns.
Ice and stretch before anyone touched a shower.
Some guys complained quietly. Most didn't.
By now, they trusted him.
A scout sitting in the bleachers scribbled notes, confused. He'd come expecting to watch a phenom fly around. Instead, he saw a fourteen-year-old acting like a veteran in his thirties, managing energy like it was currency.
Kobe finally stood, wiped his hands on his shorts, and looked around the gym.
"Records don't win trophies," he said, calm as ever. "Efficiency does."
Districts were coming.
And for the first time, Lower Merion wasn't just hoping to survive them.
They were preparing to run through them.
//
Districts didn't care about storylines.
You lost, you went home.
The quarterfinals were ugly from the opening tip. The other team was older, thicker, full of seniors who had been waiting years for this moment. They made it clear early what their plan was—hit Kobe every chance they got.
Forearms on cuts. Hands on hips. Little shoves after the whistle.
Four minutes in, Kobe hit the floor hard on a drive. One of their seniors stood over him, smirked.
Kobe smiled back.
He'd been hit by grown men who weighed forty pounds more than this. This was nothing.
The next possession, he brought the ball up slow. Let the defender crowd him. Let him reach.
Rip-through. Whistle.
Free throws.
Next time down, same thing. Defender leaned. Kobe stepped through, forced contact, flipped the ball up off glass.
And-one.
By the second quarter, the seniors were frustrated. Their coach was yelling. They were playing harder, faster—exactly what Kobe wanted.
He stopped forcing drives and started punishing rotations. A hesitation dribble pulled two defenders, bounce pass to the dunker spot. Swing-swing to the corner. Open three.
Lower Merion pulled away not with highlight plays, but with control.
Another win. Another team sent home.
The semifinals were different.
Bigger floor. Brighter lights. Villanova Pavilion.
It felt like a college game before the ball even went up. The crowd was thick, loud, restless. You could feel eyes everywhere. Clipboards. Stopwatches. Quiet conversations in the stands.
A scout from Michigan leaned over to one from North Carolina and whispered, "That's the freshman?"
They both watched Kobe bring the ball up.
The opposing coach went zone almost immediately—a 1-3-1, long arms, active, designed to trap guards and force turnovers. In 1993, most high school teams just tried to survive it.
Kobe saw it once and nodded.
Dead ball. He clapped his hands and pulled the team in himself.
"They're giving us the corners," he said, tapping the diagram board Coach Downer was holding. "Every time the ball hits the wing, the bottom guy steps up. That leaves space behind him."
He looked at Stackhouse. "Drift."
At Walters. "Flash middle, one dribble, kick."
At the big. "Seal, don't score."
They broke the huddle.
First possession—Kobe walked it up, waited for the trap, skipped the ball to the wing. The zone shifted exactly like he said. Stackhouse slid to the corner.
Bang.
Next trip—Kobe penetrated just enough to freeze the top defender, dropped it to Walters at the nail. One dribble. Kickout.
Bang.
The defense panicked. They extended higher.
Kobe adjusted instantly. Same look, different result. Lob pass to the big sealing his man under the rim. Easy two.
Timeout.
Didn't matter.
The run kept going. Fifteen straight points. Kobe didn't take a single shot.
He was pointing, talking, manipulating space like he was moving pieces on a board only he could see. The zone stopped being a defense and started being a liability.
By halftime, scouts weren't whispering anymore.
They were writing.
Lower Merion walked off the floor up double digits, and Kobe didn't react. He just sat, towel over his shoulders, breathing slow.
Another step.
One game left.
And now, everyone in the building knew it—this wasn't just a great freshman run.
This was something else entirely.
//
Nobody expected this stage to come so fast.
In the original timeline, District 1 titles were something Lower Merion didn't even talk about yet. That was supposed to be years away. Experience years. Strength years. Senior-heavy years.
Instead, here they were—three years early—playing for the District 1 AAAA Championship.
Across from them stood Chester.
Everyone in Pennsylvania basketball knew the name. Tradition. Physicality. A program that treated Districts like birthright. Bigger bodies. Older legs. No fear of freshmen, no matter how talented.
From the opening tip, it was a fight.
No flow. No runs. Just grinding possessions and hard contact. Every cut got bumped. Every drive met a body. Chester turned the game into exactly what it wanted—slow, ugly, exhausting.
Kobe felt every minute of it.
Not panic. Just weight.
This was the kind of game where legs went first. Where young players started thinking instead of reacting. Where mistakes decided banners.
Late fourth quarter. Tie game.
The noise in the gym was constant now, like pressure in his ears. Kobe brought the ball up, eyes scanning, already knowing Chester would force him to take the last shot.
They wanted the freshman to feel it.
Ten seconds.
Kobe waved everyone flat. Cleared a side. No tricks. No decoys.
He remembered another moment—years ahead of this one. A packed NBA arena. Playoffs. The ball leaving his hands and dying in the air. Three straight airballs. The sound of it bouncing off nothing.
He'd carried that memory his entire life.
This time, he welcomed it.
Five seconds.
He crossed over once. Hard plant. Defender leaned.
Kobe rose into a mid-range fade, balanced, smooth, practiced ten thousand times in empty gyms. The release felt clean. Familiar. Automatic.
No hesitation.
The ball dropped straight through.
No rim. No drama.
Just net.
The buzzer followed it.
For a half-second, the gym froze—then it exploded.
Lower Merion players rushed the floor, screaming, jumping, hugging. Parents cried. Fans poured out of the stands. Cameras flashed. Chester players stood still, stunned.
Kobe didn't celebrate.
He walked straight to Coach Downer.
Downer grabbed him, laughed, yelled something Kobe barely heard.
Kobe leaned in, voice calm, almost quiet.
"The state tournament starts next week," he said. "We're only halfway there."
Downer stopped smiling.
Then he nodded.
Around them, chaos reigned. But in that small space between them, the truth was clear.
Districts were conquered.
And the real test was just beginning.