Kobe Bryant turned Chester-Lower Merion into a decades-long basketball rivalry: ‘The history will never fade’

John Linehan and Kobe Bryant used to talk. A lot. This would not have been unusual for other AAU teammates, but these two were fierce high school rivals.

Linehan was a scrappy point guard for the Chester Clippers. Bryant was a relentless shooting guard for the Lower Merion Aces. Both were competitive, almost to a fault, and in the days leading up to big games, they’d get chippy.

The week before the 1996 PIAA Class AAAA District 1 title game, for example, the two players talked every day on bulky landline phones, with Bryant often calling Linehan at his home in Chester.

“I just said, ‘You know, John, I haven’t won a championship yet, and you have,’” Bryant told The Inquirer in 1996.

Linehan knew what his friend was doing. The future NBA star did the same thing a few weeks later, on March 19, a day before the teams met again in the state semifinal.

“He was trying to get me to trash talk,” Linehan said. “I think he needed a little edge. I didn’t want to give him too much. I was like, ‘Man, you crazy.’”

Lower Merion wasn’t a basketball school when Bryant arrived in the fall of 1992. It paled in comparison to the local powerhouses like Simon Gratz, Coatesville, and Chester.

But Bryant changed that. Even in his freshman year, a season in which the Aces went 4-20, he brought a new standard, working out before class and introducing a level of toughness that was foreign to his teammates.

By the mid-1990s, Lower Merion was among the best high school teams in the Philadelphia area. Its players were more confident, celebrating after big shots, and talking loud on the court.

The Aces didn’t play as many games against Coatesville, a rising power led by Rip Hamilton. They couldn’t consistently measure themselves against Gratz, which didn’t participate in the PIAA playoffs until 2004.

But they could against Chester. And so, a decades-long rivalry was born.

From 1996 through the mid-2010s, Chester and Lower Merion put on some of the greatest high school basketball games in the area. They’d often sell out venues like the Palestra and Villanova’s Pavilion. Some fans would even scalp tickets.

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Their communities were almost diametrically opposed. Chester was predominantly Black; Lower Merion was predominantly white. Chester was plagued by poverty; Lower Merion was considered affluent.

Chester, with its Biddy League, had a legacy of basketball greatness, and a steady pipeline of talent. Lower Merion had nothing comparable. But these differences melted away on the court.

And while the rivalry is not what it once was, it still lives on today.

“The pride and the intensity and the history will never fade,” said Lower Merion coach Gregg Downer. “I mean, if we played them tomorrow night, that would be an intense game.”

When Downer was named head coach in 1990, he was already well aware of Chester’s tradition. He’d grown up in Media, playing youth basketball, and had heard about the stars who’d come out of the Biddy League.

It was obvious that his team would have to go through the Clippers to win any sort of accolade. But it wasn’t until Bryant’s arrival that Downer’s aspirations became a real possibility.

The shooting guard, who was the son of former 76er Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, was mature for his age. He’d demand more of older teammates, mentally and physically. Doug Young, a former Lower Merion forward, remembered seeing Bryant leaving the locker room at 7 o’clock one September morning in 1993.

He’d been at the high school gym since 5 a.m., working out by himself. To the Lower Merion basketball team, this was a “crazy” concept, so Young and his cohorts decided to join him.

They arrived the next day at 5:06 a.m. The players knocked on the door. Bryant didn’t answer.

“He wouldn’t open it,” said Young, who graduated in 1995. “You’re either there or you’re not. We were six minutes late.”

His teammates waited outside until 6:30 a.m., when the school opened. They made sure to show up before 5 a.m. from that day on.

Downer was wired the same way. The coach — and his NBA-bound pupil — would push the team in practice. Losses were particularly tough. The players would go through endless sprints and rebounding drills that sent them running to the trash can.

It wasn’t fun. But over time, the method created a newfound tenacity.

“No one walked into high school saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I want to win a state championship,’” Young said. “But [Kobe] knew what that was. He was like, ‘I don’t know any other way. If we’re not going to win a championship, what the heck are we playing for?’”

Chester was always going to be an obstacle to that goal, so Downer tried to play into the battle. He’d use analogies for the tough, hard-nosed team, comparing it to an animal stalking its prey.

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The coach began to screen movies to underscore this point. Together, in a Lower Merion classroom, Downer’s players watched Jaws and other tales of survival, like The Edge, a 1997 thriller about a plane that crashes in the Alaskan wilderness.

“This bear is stalking them, and the couple is saying, ’What are we gonna do about this bear?’” Downer said. “And one of them says, ‘The only thing we can do is kill the bear.’

“And I remember being like, ‘We can do this.’ But the only solution is to — not to be overly graphic — but to kill them.”

(The bear in this analogy was Chester.)

He added: “We tried everything humanly possible to get through to this team.”

The first few games were ugly. In 1995, Lower Merion met the Clippers in the District 1 championship, only to lose by 27 points. But they came back with a renewed focus the following year, in 1995-96, going 25-3 in the regular season to earn a district final rematch against Chester.

The Aces showed up at the arena with “27″ printed on their warmup shirts. Bryant, armed with fresh bulletin board material from Linehan, dropped 34 points against the Clippers, en route to a 60-53 Aces win.

The shooting guard scored 39 points later that month — with a broken nose — in a 77-69 state semifinal win over Chester. Lower Merion went on to collect its first state championship since 1943 with a 48-43 victory against Erie Cathedral Prep.

To Linehan, the difference Bryant made was obvious. He joked that he’d “never heard of Lower Merion” before his friend arrived. But once he did, Chester realized it would have to go to great lengths to prepare for the phenom.

Ahead of a big game against Lower Merion in the mid-1990s, the coaching staff reached out to Clippers alumnus Zain Shaw. He went on to play at West Virginia and in Europe, and possessed some of the same characteristics as Bryant — a tall frame and an athletic build, with strong ballhandling skills.

The Clippers invited Shaw to practice, where he played the role of Bryant (to the best of his ability).

“Kobe was so special, we had to bring in a pro to help us prepare,” said Linehan, who went on to star at Providence.

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But there was another impact the future Lakers star had, one that had nothing to do with his own prowess. Linehan noticed that Bryant’s Lower Merion teammates started to take on some of his qualities. All of a sudden, they were playing brash, confident basketball.

“We didn’t have reason to believe, until Kobe got there, that we belonged on the court with Chester,” Young said. “The fear was real. Teams were afraid of Chester, because they’d run you out of the building.

“The idea of Lower Merion being on the court in a meaningful game against [them] was such a crazy thought. But then, you started to believe.”

Bryant never got over the rivalry, even after he embarked on his Hall of Fame NBA career in 1996. Sometimes, he’d call the coaching staff before big games against Chester, leaving expletive-laden voicemails to use as motivation.

The Lakers shooting guard also created an incentive structure for his former team.

“You couldn’t get a pair of Nike sneakers unless you qualified for the playoffs,” Young said. “If you don’t earn it, you don’t get it.”

He became especially involved in 2005-06. After a lull in the early 2000s, Chester and Lower Merion found themselves neck-and-neck again. The Aces were led by the duo of Ryan Brooks and Garrett Williamson, and the Clippers boasted a deep roster, headlined by Darrin Govens, all of whom eventually played in the Big 5.

(Chester was so stacked that it brought a 1,000-point scorer off the bench in Noel Wilmore).

The rivals met in the state championship on March 19, 2005. Despite strong performances from Williamson and Brooks, the Clippers pulled away in the second half thanks to a dominant third quarter from Govens. Chester won, 74-61.

The two teams reconvened the following season, with their competitive spark fully reignited. They faced each other three times that year. Chester took round one, a one-point regular-season victory on Dec. 27.

Round two was in the district final on March 3. Before the game, in front of a packed crowd at the Pavilion, Chester sophomore Karon Burton walked up to the layup line.

Lower Merion’s student section caught his ear with a chant about Coach Fred Pickett’s stout stature.

“Hey Karon,” said one group.

“Hey Karon,” responded the other.

“Fred’s gonna eat you! Fred’s gonna eat you! Fred’s gonna eat you!”

The dig didn’t intimidate Burton. If anything, it fueled him. He grew up playing street ball in Chester, and always loved trash talk.

Instead of cowering, like the crowd hoped, the sophomore delivered an unforgettable outing. The game went into overtime, and was tied at 80 with only a few seconds remaining. During a timeout, assistant coach Keith Taylor pulled Burton aside.

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“He was like, ‘Hey, listen,’” Burton recalled. “They’re going to double Darrin. If you get that ball, do your thing.’”

Taylor’s words proved prescient. As Lower Merion’s defenders swarmed Govens, the Clippers inbounded the ball to Burton.

He took a pull-up jumper from beyond the arc and drilled it for an 83-80 win. The Chester fans stormed the court. Burton, who later joined Wilmore in the 1,000-point club, said he felt like a celebrity in his hometown.

“It was like watching a buzzer-beater in the NBA,” he said. “I just ran to my teammates, they picked me up. It was a crazy feeling.

“I’m a big Kobe fan, too. Kobe’s my favorite player ever. So when I came and I hit the game-winner on that team…”

Round three took place a few weeks later, in a state semifinal rematch at the Palestra on March 22. Bryant called Lower Merion’s coaches before the game.

“I don’t remember specifically what he said, but I’m sure there were a lot of [expletives] dropped,” said Young. “Like, ‘Don’t call me back if you don’t beat those [expletives].’ That was a line we heard from him a couple times.”

This one didn’t go Chester’s way. After trailing the Clippers, 47-37, at the end of the third quarter, the Aces came roaring back in the fourth, putting up 33 points to eke out a 70-65 win.

The celebration in the locker room was cathartic. Water sprayed into the air. Players sat atop each other’s shoulders and turned the showers into a slip-and-slide. Bryant called in, again, as other members of the 1996 team filtered through.

This was not how Govens wanted to end his high school career. And a few months later, when he arrived at St. Joseph’s on a basketball scholarship, he saw a familiar foe.

It was Williamson, his new Hawks teammate.

“We were sitting on the opposite side of the bench,” Govens said. “I didn’t want to sit next to him, he didn’t want to sit next to me. We’d kind of avoid each other, and just head nod.

“Even in running drills, it was a competition. He looked to the left. I looked to the right. We tried to beat each other in sprints. But then we realized, ‘All right bro, we’re teammates now.’”

Chester had always rallied around its high school basketball team. Linehan said it was akin to playing for the Sixers. The teenagers were treated like professional athletes — especially those who’d been a part of big wins.

The Clippers’ public address announcer, James Howard, called this “hero status.”

“All of a sudden, your money’s no good,” he said. “Barbers take care of you, make sure your hair looks nice before games. Free food. Little kids look up to you and ask for your autograph. That’s how it is.”

In Chester, there were plenty of heroes to draw from. There was Linehan, but also Jameer Nelson, who met a young Burton in the late 1990s. Nelson, a friend of Burton’s cousin, gave the aspiring basketball player a gift before he left for St. Joe’s: his MVP medal from the Chester summer league.

“He was one of the biggest guys in our city,” Burton said, “so it’s definitely something that I’ll always remember.”

By the early 2010s, when the rivalry was reignited for a third time, Lower Merion had built more of a basketball tradition. Aces guard Justin McFadden said he’d get stopped in Wawa before big games against the Clippers.

“It became a community thing,” he said. “People would be asking, ‘What do you guys think about Chester? Do you think we can get it done?’”

In 2012, the schools met in the state championship for the first time since 2005. Junior forward and future NBA starter Rondae Hollis-Jefferson put up a double-double to lead the Clippers to a resounding 59-33 win over the Aces. It was their second straight title and their 58th straight victory.

A year later, after going 17-0 in the Central League, the Aces met the Clippers in the state final again. Chester had won 78 straight games against in-state opponents. Snapping that streak would be daunting, but Downer had a plethora of motivational tactics at his disposal.

Just as they had in the 1990s, The Aces again spent pockets of the season watching Jaws, The Edge, as well as an addition: Al Pacino’s “Inch by Inch” speech in Any Given Sunday.

“He would have that fired up on YouTube, ready to go,” McFadden said. “Looking back, [your reaction] is a chuckle, but in the moment, it worked. We knew that this was the hill that needed to be climbed.

“And every time they played that speech, we got goose bumps. We were ready to fire.”

Chester got out to an early lead, but Lower Merion rallied behind a 22-point, 11-rebound performance from B.J. Johnson, who would later star at La Salle. The Aces snapped the streak, and won their seventh state title, with a 63-47 victory.

At the time, the Clippers were coached by Larry Yarbray. Pickett, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, was in declining health. Just before he died, in 2014, Downer decided to say goodbye.

He and his former assistant coach Jeremy Treatman drove out to Pickett’s home in Chester. They went to his bedside.

“And we talked,” Downer said. “And we held hands. It was a really touching moment for me. This is a man that carried Chester on his back. That tried to carry Lower Merion on his back. And I knew it was the last time I was going to see Fred.

“We walked out the door, and we told each other that we loved each other. And I never thought he would say that to me, or vice versa. But it was just kind of like, you know what? We’ve had some amazing battles, and there’s a lot of respect there.”

In recent years, the Chester-Lower Merion rivalry has diminished.

There was a brief period when the teams were in different classifications. Both programs have lost players to private schools that are able to recruit, and the addition of the Philadelphia Catholic League to the PIAA has made the state playoffs more competitive.

One place the Aces and Clippers could meet is in the district tournament, where they reunited in 2024. But they haven’t played each other since. And Howard says the contests don’t have the same feel.

“Both teams have lost D-I talent,” he said. “It’s not as high-flying, above the rim, as it was in the past. But still a great game. Sold out at Lower Merion, and at Chester, same thing.”

The history will always be there, though, and Burton is doing his best to keep it alive. His 8-year-old son, Karon Burton Jr., is playing in the Biddy League. His father is his coach.

Sometimes, they go on YouTube and watch old Clippers games. Junior’s favorite, of course, is the 2006 district final.

Burton believes that his son has a promising future, but isn’t sure of where he’ll go to high school just yet. He doesn’t want Karon Jr. to feel obligated to follow his father’s path.

But if it worked out that way, what a story that would be.

“I’d love to be the first father and son to have 1,000 points,” Burton said. “With the same name? That would be crazy.”