The clock bled down to single digits.
Tie game.
The noise inside Northampton's gym had become a living thing—feet stomping on metal bleachers, voices overlapping into a single roar. The box-and-one was back on the floor, tighter than ever. Everyone knew who the ball was supposed to go to.
Kobe raised his hand.
"Timeout."
Coach Downer barely hesitated before granting it. By now, the hierarchy was understood.
In the huddle, Kobe didn't speak like a kid asking permission. He spoke like someone solving a problem.
"They're overplaying the first pass," he said, already sketching in the air with his finger. "Zone will shift left. They always do."
He pointed.
"Stackhouse, you screen here. Walters, drift, don't rush it. Coleman—seal, then release."
Downer watched, stunned—not by the confidence, but by the clarity. It wasn't a play meant to get a shot. It was a sequence, three reads deep, designed to bend the zone until it broke.
Too clean. Too advanced.
The horn sounded.
Inbound.
The first pass went exactly where Northampton expected.
The second pass made them shift.
The third made them panic.
The chaser left Kobe for half a heartbeat—just long enough.
The ball came back to him on the move. He drove hard into the middle, two defenders collapsing instinctively, arms flailing.
Kobe jumped.
Not to shoot.
He kicked the ball out.
Corner.
Catch.
Release.
The buzzer sounded a fraction of a second later.
The net snapped.
For a moment, there was silence—pure, stunned disbelief—before the gym exploded.
Lower Merion had won.
Undefeated.
On the floor, teammates mobbed the shooter, screaming, leaping, disbelief etched across their faces. Parents were on their feet. Scouts scribbled furiously. Someone yelled Kobe's name, but he was already jogging toward the bench, eyes calm, breathing steady.
The media rushed in before the sweat had dried.
"Why didn't you take the shot?" one reporter asked, breathless.
Kobe didn't smile.
"It wasn't the best shot," he said simply. "We got one better."
That answer would be quoted.
In the locker room, the celebration barely lasted a minute.
Kobe sat on the bench, unlacing his shoes, eyes distant.
"We gave up two backdoor cuts in the third," he said, looking up. "Radnor runs that set a lot. We can't switch late like that."
The room quieted.
No one laughed. No one complained.
They nodded.
Because by now, they understood the standard.
The streak was alive.
And the work was far from finished.
//
By late January, the question had changed.
It was no longer who is this freshman?
It was how long can this last?
The Lower Merion locker room no longer smelled like nerves. It smelled like sweat, tape, and expectation. Jerseys hung neatly, shoes lined with almost obsessive precision. Kobe insisted on it—not by yelling, but by example. Disorder was inefficiency.
The record on the whiteboard was impossible to ignore.
Still perfect.
Radnor fell first, dismantled by tempo they couldn't match. Harriton tried to slow the game down and suffocated under spacing they didn't understand. Liberty pressed full court and watched Kobe carve it apart like a clinic demonstration. Springfield lasted a half. Garnet Valley barely that. Conestoga—once a measuring stick—was reduced to spectators by the third quarter. Ridley and Haverford, already beaten once, never stood a chance the second time. Upper Darby came in angry and left quiet.
Each game ended the same way.
Lower Merion pulling starters early.
Crowds murmuring.
Opposing coaches staring at clipboards like they'd betrayed them.
And Kobe?
He barely reacted.
From the outside, it looked effortless. Inside his head, it was all calculation.
He knew exactly how many possessions he could push before fatigue set in. He knew which teammate needed a touch early to stay locked in defensively. He knew when to score, when to pass, and—most importantly—when not to do either.
The "Mamba" system wasn't flashy.
It was ruthless.
Every possession had purpose. Every cut meant something. Defensively, they moved like a single organism—help arriving early, rotations snapping into place before opponents realized they were trapped. Players who had once struggled to dribble under pressure now made the right read without hesitation.
Not because they were suddenly more talented.
Because they were thinking differently.
Kobe made them think differently.
His stat lines were bordering on absurd for a fourteen-year-old.
Twenty points without forcing a shot.
Ten assists without dominating the ball.
Eight rebounds from anticipation alone.
Four steals from knowing the pass before it was thrown.
Triple-doubles—or near enough to make reporters double-check the box score.
The Philadelphia Inquirer ran another piece, smaller than the first, but more serious.
"Lower Merion No Longer a Surprise."
USA Today mentioned them again, tucked into the national high school roundup. No hyperbole this time. Just facts.
Unbeaten.
Efficient.
Disciplined.
And at the center of it all: a freshman who didn't celebrate dunks, didn't jaw at opponents, didn't look to the crowd.
In the locker room after wins, while teammates laughed and replayed highlights, Kobe was already flipping pages in his notebook.
Opponent tendencies.
Late-game defensive lapses.
Conditioning benchmarks.
This wasn't a hot streak.
This was structure.
The 4–20 past—the losing seasons, the frustration, the wasted potential—felt like a bad dream Kobe could barely remember.
That timeline was gone.
This one was accelerating.
And the rest of the state was finally realizing they weren't watching a great team.