City News

January 26, 2020. For those who don’t know, this is the date that basketball legend Kobe Bryant tragically passed away. This news took the world by storm, affecting basketball fans worldwide and friends and family of Kobe. With his passing, Kobe left a lot behind, including his legacy, a beautiful family, and books. I happened to read one of his books, Training Camp, written by Wesley King, which details the lives of 5 basketball players on a team who live in poverty and have problems on and off the court. The lives of these players get completely changed with a coach, but more so a wizard. I highly recommend this book for any basketball fan or anyone who wants to learn about how to overcome adversity while playing on a team.

The reason I chose to read this book is because my dad recommended it and also because I have always been a Kobe fan, yet never read his work. My initial ideas on the book was that it was too long and repetitive. I thought it was repetitive because each player's point of view details the same events that occurred in the training camp, just worded differently. I also thought that the book was just going to be about a team from the “Bottom”, a place filled with poverty and filth, who overcomes adversity and wins the championship, but I was wrong. I was completely surprised when Rolabi Wizenard came into the story, the team's new coach. Rolabi is not an ordinary coach; he stands at nearly 7 feet tall, wears a black suit to every practice, and has striking green eyes which a mountain can be seen in. This coach is a wizard who comes from a place called the Kingdom Of Granity, where others like him travel the world to help teams like the Badgers find their “grana” and overcome their fears.

One character in the book I resonated with is Peño. Peño is a player on the team who is the starting point guard and also has a younger brother on the team, Lab. Peño is always looking out for his younger brother and is very patient with him, which perfectly describes me because I have a little brother as well and we have played on the same basketball team in the past. I try to be as patient with him as I can, like Peño. Another reason why I resonated with Peño is because our personalities are very similar. Peño is very sarcastic and loves to tell jokes, something I can relate to, but Peño is also very humble and constantly talks to his teammates about their problems. I try to be as humble as I can and if I see a teammate struggling with something, whether it's on or off the field/court, I try my best to help them overcome it. Basically, both Peño and I have a habit of putting others before ourselves and we have so much in common, which is

why I resonated with him the most in Training Camp.

One character I did not really enjoy reading about was Twig. I did not enjoy reading about Twig because he is very shy and I am an extrovert, so I couldn't really resonate with him when he was talking about avoiding the other players on the team and not defending himself against rude comments. I just felt like Twig was constantly complaining and it got a little repetitive and boring sometimes. Putting this aside, I did enjoy reading the parts where Twig connected with Rolabi when they were speaking in Twig's mind while all of the other players seemed to freak out or get aggravated whenever Rolabi tried to speak to them. In the end, I did sort of understand where Twig was coming from, but it was just the constant complaining and his shy personality

which made him my least favorite character in the book.

In conclusion, I loved reading Training Camp and felt that it is a book that perfectly balanced basketball and life lessons. The concept itself was very interesting and I felt that adding Rolabi Wizenard as sort of a guardian and coach of the team was a phenomenal approach to hook the reader such as myself. I would rate this book a 5/5 stars and highly recommend it to any teen who was a fan of Kobe Bryant or basketball itself who is looking for a book to read this summer to help pass the time.