The Kentuckian who helped America cope with the news of Kobe Bryant’s death
Michael Eaves had just taken a seat at his desk in the ESPN screening room in Bristol, Conn., last Sunday afternoon when he got the feeling something was off.
Eaves, a Hopkins County native and former Lexington television sports anchor, had reported for work several hours before he and colleague Zubin Mehenti were slated to host the 6 p.m. “SportsCenter.”
From his desk, Eaves noticed a production assistant scurry into the room looking intently at her phone. “I heard her say, ‘This can’t be happening,’” Eaves said.
When the woman began to interact with co-workers, Eaves noticed the sound of their words.
It was not normal.
“And then I heard someone say ‘Kobe?’” Eaves said.
Turning to ESPN coordinating producer Jack Obringer sitting nearby, Eaves asked a surreal question:
‘Dude, is Kobe dead?’”
“We believe so,” Obringer replied.
Within 20 minutes of that moment, Eaves and Mehenti had changed into suits, gotten their makeup applied and were live on ESPN2.
They stayed on the air for roughly five-and-a-half hours of live coverage of the aftermath of the death of Los Angeles Lakers icon Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif.
For Eaves, who graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1994 with a B.A. in journalism, this was more than a professional challenge.
He knew Kobe Bryant personally.
‘Kobe and I, we were cool’
For part of the 10 years (2003-2013) Eaves spent as a reporter for Fox Sports West in Los Angeles, the White Plains, Ky., native was a sideline reporter and a pregame and postgame host for telecasts of Lakers games.
When Bryant hung 81 points on the Toronto Raptors in 2006, Eaves hosted the postgame show that followed.
Eaves covered the Lakers teams that Bryant and Pau Gasol led to the 2009 and 2010 NBA titles. “I can’t think of how many times I interviewed him,” Eaves said of Bryant. “So, so many interviews.”
Over time, Eaves said he and the NBA star developed a friendly acquaintanceship.
“Kobe and I, I would not say were were friends. That’s not a term I use loosely, anyway, but we were cool,” Eaves said. “He liked tequila, and I liked tequila. We were very friendly.”
The last time Eaves remembers speaking with Bryant was on the final Lakers “Media Day” he covered.
Eaves had just gotten married.
Byrant noticed the distinctive wedding ring Eaves wears, a family heirloom passed down from the TV anchor’s grandfather to his father to him.
“Kobe said, ‘Oh, dude, did you get married? Let me check out your ring?’” Eaves said. “So I told him the story of my ring. He was like ‘That’s awesome, man.’”
Searching for truth amid chaos
Once on air on ESPN2, Eaves, 47, said the biggest challenge in providing live coverage of the story of Bryant’s death was trying to sort the bad information from the good.
In the internet era, breaking news of international magnitude tends to create a wild west of conjecture.
At one point, it was being speculated that all four of the daughters Bryant shared with wife Vanessa were on the ill-fated helicopter.
There were also incorrect reports that Bryant’s former Lakers teammate, Rick Fox, had died in the crash.
“Our job was to process through all that and report what we knew to be true, not what somebody else was saying,” Eaves said.
Even mainstream news outlets were mistakenly reporting that five, not nine, people had died in Bryant’s helicopter crash.
“We were supposed to take a live news conference from California at 4 o’clock Eastern (Standard Time),” Eaves said. “It got pushed back to the bottom of the hour. It was during that when, I believe, the fire chief said ‘nine bodies.’
“Zubin and I looked at each other and said, ‘Nine?’ We were under the impression there were five. So as soon as we came back on, we reacted to it. I said, ‘We have new information. What we have learned is there were nine people aboard.’”
The other major challenge of hosting five-and-a-half hours of live television coverage that features interviews with multiple people on one topic is not letting them become repetitive.
“You have to make each one compelling and worth the audience’s attention,” Eaves said.
An interview with an emotional Jay Williams, the former Duke basketball star turned ESPN hoops analyst, has stuck with Eaves.
“It was very raw. It was a personal loss for him,” Eaves said. “But J.Will’s (interview) was real in that, in the immediacy, he understood the larger perspective. Nothing is guaranteed. Kobe was 41 years old. Nothing in his life suggested he would be dead at 41.”
‘I couldn’t sleep’
When Eaves and Mehenti got off the air, they were part of a short debriefing meeting with other ESPN personnel.
On the 30 minute drive from the ESPN campus to his Connecticut home, Eaves called his wife, Crystal. “My wife is from California and she was a huge Lakers fan for so long, so I knew it was tough on her,” Eaves said.
The ESPN anchor also called his mother, Elsie Eaves, in Madisonville.
“I got home, I hugged my wife,” Eaves said. “I sat down and I was like, ‘Alright, the adrenaline is gone.’ And I had a couple of glasses of some Basil Hayden’s bourbon.”
It was 3:30 a.m. before Eaves, a former sports anchor/reporter at both WKYT and WDKY in Lexington, even tried to go to bed.
“I couldn’t sleep. When I closed my eyes, I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole thing, this dude I knew being dead. His daughter being in that chopper, the other people,” Eaves said. “Finally, I did sleep. But it was not restful.”
The Super Bowl as distraction
The work Eaves and Mehenti did in their coverage of Bryant’s death has been well-received.
“They did a phenomenal job under stressful, heartbreaking circumstances,” wrote SI.com sports media critic Jimmy Traina. “The duo interviewed several people throughout the day while keeping up with the continuing, breaking news and did so masterfully, with each anchor hitting the right tone throughout the afternoon.”
Eaves’ on-air composure did not surprise a close friend in Kentucky.
“I shot him a text Monday and just said, ‘Hey, you did a great job on the tube. I know that was a hard thing to do,’” ex-UK basketball player Henry Thomas said. “Not a lot of people could handle that situation and get right on the air for five-and-a-half hours and not blink an eye.”
The first weeks of this new year had been slated to be big ones for Eaves.
Two weekends ago, Eaves was in Las Vegas helming “SportsCenter” coverage of Ultimate Fighting Championship star Conor McGregor’s victory over Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone.
On Friday and Saturday night, Eaves was scheduled to be in Miami headlining “SportsCenter” broadcasts previewing Super Bowl LIV between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.
After the events of this past Sunday, what once seemed a career highlight — covering a Super Bowl for ESPN — now feels more like a distraction.
“I haven’t thought one second about the Super Bowl until today,” Eaves said Wednesday. “I am excited to get there, mostly to take my mind off this tragedy.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2020 at 2:00 PM.
