You didn’t have to be a fan of Kobe Bryant to be an admirer
I have a confession to make. I was not a Kobe Bryant fan. Not at first, anyway. I thought he was a ball hog and a gunner. I didn’t like the way he treated his teammates. He struck me as someone who thought the game was all about him.
But as Kobe’s NBA career progressed and the more I watched him play, the more I came to appreciate his skill, his work ethic and his passion for the one thing that mattered to him the most — winning. If I was not a Kobe Bryant fan, I became an admirer.
As sad and shocking as was the death Sunday of the 41-year-old Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter in a helicopter crash in California, there is a feeling that we are being cheated out of seeing Kobe approach the second act of his life as a CEO, a writer, a producer, an entrepreneur and, most of all, a father with the same passion and intensity he showed as a basketball player.
The devastating loss of Bryant and his daughter, and that of the other victims on that helicopter, produced an outpouring of emotion and grief throughout the sports world and beyond.
Here’s a sampling of the written word:
▪ Bill Plaschke in the Los Angeles Times:
Kobe Bryant is gone.
I’m screaming right now, cursing into the sky, crying into my keyboard, and I don’t care who knows it.
Kobe Bryant is gone, and those are the hardest words I’ve ever had to write for this newspaper, and I still don’t believe them as I’m writing them. I’m still crying, and go ahead, let it out. Don’t be embarrassed, cry with me, weep and wail and shout into the streets, fill a suddenly empty Los Angeles with your pain.
No. No. No, damn it, no!
▪ Mark Whicker of the Orange County Register talked to Tiger Woods about Kobe:
At 9:45 a.m. they greeted one of the two essential American athletes of the past 25 years.
They had no clue what was about to happen to the other one.
Three guys wore orange tiger suits, with stripes and tail. One old fellow near the first green saw the man coming and yelled, “I’ve been waiting for 20 years for this.”
▪ Michael Rosenberg of Sports Illustrated on a tragedy on many levels:
Thirteen-year-old Gianna Bryant and her father are gone, and that is not quite how the Bryants’ story will be told, but it’s how we should think about it first. We all get one life, none more important than any other. Gianna did not have the chance to live hers, and the sadness is unbearable. For her mom, Vanessa, and for her sisters Natalia, Bianka and Capri, there will be a million tributes, and all will be insufficient. What do you say? What does it matter?
Their thoughts are theirs, to form over time, and to share only if they ever feel the desire. Our thoughts about the Bryant family should start with Gianna, and nobody understood that better than Kobe Bryant.
▪ Charles Pierce of Esquire on the terrible irony:
The late poet and singer Jim Carroll could really play. He came up in New York in the era of Connie Hawkins and Lew Alcindor, later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He ran as an equal with playground legends like Pee Wee Kirkland and Herman (Helicopter) Knowles. At about the same time, he got interested in writing and in heroin, but he still produced the greatest line ever written about a game. “In basketball,” wrote Carroll, “you can correct your mistakes immediately and beautifully, and in midair.”
That line seemed to hover around me when the news came in about the death of Kobe Bryant and eight other people, including his daughter, Gianna, in a helicopter crash in the hills around Los Angeles. Kobe was 41 years old. Gianna was 13. Bryant’s life was marked by a stunning ability to play the game that so entranced Carroll that, even in a heroin fog, Carroll could cling to its beauty that had sunk so deep in his bones. To watch Bryant at his peak, in his prime, is to appreciate the terrible irony that he died in a fall from the sky.
▪ Bill Reiter of CBS Sports on Bryant’s legacy as a father:
On Sunday, the news that turned from waking nightmare to harsh reality seemed too horrible to be true even after we knew that it was: Kobe had died in a helicopter crash that also took the life of his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others as they reportedly headed to a youth basketball game, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
I have a daughter, too, and I find myself haunted by what I saw that night at Staples in November: Kobe, the basketball player and Los Angeles Lakers great, made so much more by the love he had for his little girl. Kobe was still Kobe -- he slapped Dwight Howard’s head from behind, laughing as Dwight whipped around before bursting into laughter himself. But it was a few moments later, as Kobe and Gianna arrived at their floor seats, and the crowd erupted in applause, that won’t leave me: Kobe waving thank you, the love and adulation pouring down on him, and then the star glancing down at his daughter with a look only a father can understand.
▪ Kent Babb of the Washington Post on Kobe as a tireless competitor:
Known late in his career by the nickname “The Black Mamba,” Mr. Bryant was one of the smoothest and most dangerous shooters in a league previously dominated by Jordan, Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Larry Bird. When those players retired or their talents faded, Mr. Bryant took up their mantle. The 6-feet-6 shooting guard was named to the NBA’s all-star team in 18 of his 20 seasons, all with the Lakers, and he twice led the league in scoring. He scored 81 points during a game in 2006, the second-highest total in a game in league history.
He and Shaquille O’Neal led the Lakers to three consecutive championships, from 2000 to 2002, though perhaps more impressive was Mr. Bryant’s ability to push the Lakers back into the league’s championship ranks after the departures of O’Neal and coach Phil Jackson, who had guided Jordan’s Chicago Bulls to six championships during the 1990s.
This story was originally published January 26, 2020 at 10:31 PM.
