Perhaps the most exuberant moment of my high school career occurred on a frigid December evening. It was two nights before my seventeenth birthday when my basketball team beat invincible high school superstar Kobe Bryant’s – and my mother’s – alma mater, powerhouse Lower Merion High School, a gem of a public school, posing as an academy, and possessing the scholastic and basketball credentials and opulence to pass for one. I have grown to despise Lower Merion for many reasons. First, my team suffered six losses to the Aces in four years, usually via demoralizing blowouts. Coincidentally, each of the three years they beat us in the regular season, they also beat us in the playoffs, on their home floor – a sparkling, raucous gym named after Kobe himself, the Los Angeles Lakers’ merciless late-game assassin and future Hall of Famer, turned local legend and $500,000 donor responsible for financing part of the project¹. Continue reading →