Video by: Kayla Boswell
Story by: Claire Ruch
Graphics by: Angie Shen
Photos: Courtesy of the Ludwig family
Stephen Ludwig remembers the exact moment he locked eyes with Kobe Bryant. For a kid who wore his No. 8 Lakers jersey like a second skin – through chemo and reconstructive surgeries and a bone marrow transplant – it was a wish come true.
Exhausted from battling leukemia, 9-year-old Stephen sat in a locker room filled with NBA players suited up for the 2007 All-Star Game. Bryant was the first to approach him. The 6-foot-6 shooting guard bent down to Stephen’s level and shook his hand. Then he scooped the lightweight Make-A-Wish recipient into his arms.
In no time, Bryant had Stephen on his feet dribbling. He showed him the secret to gripping a basketball and improving his release.
“C’mon, I know how to shoot,” Stephen said.
“Nah, listen to me. You’ve gotta fix your jumper,” Bryant said.
He challenged Stephen to cross up Shaquille O’Neal, who fell to the floor with a dramatic thud after the fake-out. Bryant insisted Stephen sit with him for team photos. He treated him like a normal kid.
Stephen mustered all his energy and ignored his nausea that day. He wanted to be strong for the guy who had given him strength. Hospital beds, IVs and oncologists took a back seat to free throw lines and high-top Nikes.
Now a 22-year-old senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, Stephen, whose friends call him Stevo, looks back on this scene in “slow-mo.” He wears a purple Lakers T-shirt, a 10-inch lift on his left shoe and a smile that hasn’t dulled since he took the picture with Bryant framed on his wall.
Like Bryant’s embodiment of Mamba mentality, Stephen has dedicated himself to inspiring others with the same fierceness. He knows that not every day is guaranteed. He refuses to be kept down. He tackles adversity with unmatched optimism, and he wants others to do the same.
Stephen’s coped with Maffucci syndrome, a rare bone disorder, since birth. He’s beaten leukemia, graft-versus-host disease and thyroid cancer. He’s endured more than 30 surgeries, most to fix bone breaks that left scars on his arms and legs.
But Stephen points to these scars with pride, especially since doctors assumed his medley of conditions to be debilitating. They predicted he’d never have the strength to walk without assistance, much less play sports.
There are fewer than 200 reported cases of Maffucci syndrome, characterized by benign cartilage growths called enchondromas and tangles of abnormal blood vessels known as hemangiomas. It affects the skin and bones, primarily the growth plates, which caused Stephen’s leg length discrepancy and shorter stature. He’s 5 feet, 1 inch tall. Maffucci syndrome also increases the risk of cancer.
Stephen’s mother, Stephanie, first noticed his misshaped legs and enlarged left knee when he was nine months old. His parents took him to numerous doctors, none of whom could give a clear diagnosis. One suggested amputation after seeing the severity of Stephen’s case, but his parents decided against it. They knew their son would persevere.
At age 4, Stephen traveled to Johns Hopkins Hospital for a leg-lengthening procedure. Surgeons inserted three metal rods into his left femur meant to break the bone and promote growth. It was an excruciating surgery followed by months of physical therapy that Stephen’s father, Mike, describes in one word: “torture.”
Pins attached to a stainless-steel apparatus holding the rods had to be turned six times a day for two-minute intervals. This cracked the bone and stretched Stephen’s ligaments, eventually adding three inches to his leg.
Stephen usually thrashed when his parents turned the pins, sometimes so violently that neighbors came over to help hold him down. But in the middle of a session just weeks into physical therapy, Stephen stopped flailing and relaxed.
“Stevo, you all right?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Stephen answered.
“Want me to stop?”
“Nah, I figured it out.”
“What do you mean you figured it out?”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Stephen harnessed the pain so he could block it. He tapped into what Mike calls his “extra gear” — the relentless drive that’s propelled Stephen his entire life — that ability to rise up. It’s the same drive that pushed Stephen to draw a three-point line in purple and gold chalk on his driveway, taking shot after shot.
Mamba mentality
Stephen’s love for Bryant began when he watched him play in the 2002 NBA Finals – the same year he endured the leg lengthening surgery now deemed “malpractice” and “inhumane.”
“He recognized Kobe’s drive,” Mike said, remembering how Stephen’s eyes lit up when the Lakers’ Black Mamba appeared on screen, “and it stuck with him.”
After 10 months of physical therapy and one ‘no chance he’ll play sports’ prognosis, Stephen says he practically ran out of his final checkup at Johns Hopkins without a walker.
From then on, Stephen played a slew of sports, adapting his swing or stroke or stance to fit the game. Tennis, soccer, baseball, swimming, snowboarding, golf, even ping pong. But basketball remained his obsession.
Stephen remembers playing “peewee league” in his hometown, Greensboro. The kid guarding him took one look at Stephen’s lift and murmured to his buddy about going easy on the “short guy.” But 5-year-old Stephen overheard. In the first possession, he pulled up from 20 feet and drained it.
In 2004, when doctors diagnosed Stephen with acute myeloid leukemia at age 6-turning-7, it’s no surprise he clung onto basketball and Bryant even tighter. The rare adult form of cancer left Stephen with an 11% chance of survival. He was admitted to Brenner Children’s Hospital and endured nearly 10 rounds of failed chemotherapy.
“It attacks. It strikes fast,” Stephen says, describing his first cancer. “I was barely human.”
At his sickest, Stephen’s gums bled from the leukemia. He’d spit into tissues and lob them toward the trash can, determined to keep shooting.
Mike found an IV pole and assembled a makeshift Nerf goal. He perched it at the end of Stephen’s bed and set the trash can below the hoop.
Doctors said only a bone marrow transplant could save Stephen’s life.
So, he looked to a special teammate for help – Jacob, his 4-year-old brother, who happened to be a perfect match.
The joyful kid who rode around the hospital hallways on a scooter and played video games with Stephen would save his brother’s life. Jacob was the Luigi to Stephen’s Mario.
Stephen had the transplant at Duke University Medical Center on Dec. 28, 2005, a date the Ludwigs dubbed Brothers Day and still celebrate each year.
Within six months, he was playing against Jacob on a regular goal in their driveway. IV tubing still twisted from Stephen’s body, but he put up a strong defense.
“He always used to jab me with that thing,” Jacob says through a laugh, remembering his brother’s protruding right elbow.
Dr. Paul Martin, chief of pediatric transplant and cellular therapy at Duke, has performed transplants on thousands of kids, but remembers Stephen and the Ludwigs for their ability to power through.
“Too many times,” Martin says, “I see parents wrap a cocoon around the child with leukemia and always think of them as sick, but they never labeled Stephen as the sick child.”
Stephen credits his family and Bryant’s Mamba mentality for getting him out of the hospital and onto his feet.
“I worked to keep my mental sharp and to keep my love for the people around me sharp,” he says.
After meeting Bryant in 2007, this mental strength only got sharper. Stephen says he did “whatever it took” to remain healthy and excel in sports.
He played shooting guard on his middle school basketball team, joined recreational leagues, earned a slot on the varsity tennis team at Page High School and played pickup with his friends during the summer.
Matthew Audilet, who played basketball with Stephen in high school, remembers the opponents’ jaws dropping when his teammate hit three pointers.
“It’s just really cool to see how Stevo’s overcome his physical shortcomings and been able to be successful in the sport that he loves,” Audilet says.
‘A tool to grow’
If Stephen wasn’t wearing his Lakers jersey as a kid, he was sporting Carolina blue. In 2016, he worked as a counselor for Roy Williams Carolina Basketball Camp before beginning classes for his communications major in August.
Stephen says he was nervous to “fend off” questions from young campers curious about his lift and why he looked different. But he showed off his shooting the first day and gained their respect.
Navigating Chapel Hill’s brick-laden campus on a lift poses another challenge. Mike has urged Stephen to register for a handicap permit so he can drive to class. His son refuses. Stephen says there are people who need the spots more.
“Non-victimization is one of his most powerful messages,” Mike says.
But the fear of getting sick again sometimes gnaws at Stephen. He’s dealt with illness-related PTSD all four years at college. He’ll get minor symptoms — a small rash or an itchy throat — that feel life-threatening.
“My brain, which I can’t control, will tell me, ‘Your life is ending. You need to see a doctor,’” Stephen says.
So, when the Maffucci diagnosis came to light in December, Stephen cried in the exam room as questions spiraled.
“Does this mean I’m going to have to live with more cancers?” he thought.
The specialist at Duke couldn’t guarantee a clean bill of health moving forward, but he told Stephen he hoped his childhood ailments had been the worst of it.
Then Kobe Bryant died. Stephen says he “refreshed his Twitter every millisecond.” He needed confirmation. It was news too hard to swallow.
Stephen mourned the loss of his idol but gained the energy to share his story. Bryant’s death inspired him to tell people about his own Mamba mentality.
He’d dabbled in public speaking before, first at age 13 in front of his grandfather’s Rotary Club. Mike still has the napkin Stephen scribbled his speech on. But this time he logged onto social media.
Stephen shared pictures of him meeting Bryant and posted a video on YouTube about finding strength through sports.
He says working 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at a stuffy office job isn’t his style. He wants to be a motivational speaker. He wants his Mamba mentality to rub off on others.
And Mike has seen Stephen’s knack for inspiring people since his son was a toddler:
“It’s like he was given to us as a tool to grow.”
Soon the boy who wore his purple and gold Lakers jersey in hospital bed after hospital bed will don a Carolina blue cap and gown.
Now, Stephen loves when children ask, “What’s wrong with your shoe?” Parents shudder, but he sees it as a chance to share. He’ll bend down and talk to them like Bryant did for Stephen when they first locked eyes.
