Missing Kobe Bryant
And, five years later, still searching for the right words
It is Championship Game Sunday in the NFL, which will pretty much always make my NBA-infested brain think of something else first.
Jan. 22, 2006.
That was the Sunday that Kobe Bryant somehow out-sports'd two gargantuan games of gridiron football that would decide who was playing in the Super Bowl. And he did it with a flourish that was Quintessentially Kobe ... making a wide receiver's number forever synonymous with a basketball legend.
81.
Eighty-one.
Eighty-freaking-one!
Kobe rumbled for 81 points on that Sunday against the helpless Toronto Raptors in a performance that, writing for ESPN.com way back then, had me arguing that Bryant's point total in a modern NBA game was actually more impressive that Wilt Chamberlain's famed 100-point game in 1962.
How I wish this was the stuff we were debating today.
Kobe 81 is what I wanted to think of first on what should theoretically be a special Sunday at Stein Line HQ, before the early evening focus here shifts to our beloved Buffalo Bills in Kansas City, trying once again to reach the Super Bowl against Patrick Mahomes and the mighty Chiefs for the first time since the Bills unforgettably lost four straight Super Bowls from 1991 through 1994.
Not possible, though.
This particular Sunday marks five years to the Sunday that we lost Kobe and his daughter Gianna and everyone else aboard that ill-fated helicopter heading from Orange County to Camarillo Airport.
It is honestly hard to think about much else today.
The horrific news about Kobe's helicopter likely ranks as the I'll Never Forget Exactly Where I Was When I Heard moment of the 21st century for many of us.
I was a Lakers beat writer for The Los Angeles Daily News when Kobe became a Laker in the summer of 1996 and I suspect you've already heard me tell the story that, at 17, he was the first NBA player I was regularly assigned to cover who was a full 10 years younger than me. I only traveled with him as a day-to-day beat writer for his rookie season, so there have certainly been several reporters who had more frequent up-close access than me in the years to follow, but I think one of the main reasons that so many basketball scribes from my generation felt a connection with Kobe is because he probably had more interest in our craft — writing, reporting, opining — than any NBA superstar ever. He actually liked to talk about process and goals with the writers he knew best. When you click on Bryant's Twitter bio today, you are reminded that, at 41, he was billing himself as CEO, writer and producer for his own Granity Studios ... with nary a reference to the career that made him such an enduring icon in worldwide sport to this day.
He had moved so seamlessly into our world and was frankly out-scribing all the writers who chronicled his exploits, too. Not that I should have ever been surprised — not even when Kobe won an Oscar for his animated short film Dear Basketball — since he famously believed that he could do anything if he just stayed in the gym/lab/office to practice long enough.
Nearly a month after the tragic crash in February 2020, while still writing for The New York Times, I was asked to put together a more personal piece than usual for the NYT, reflecting on my very fortunate vantage point for chronicling Kobe's two decades as a Laker. I had been on press row at what was then called Staples Center for that Mavericks-at-Lakers game in late December 2019 which led to some of the most memorable pictures we've ever seen of Philadelphia Eagles Fan Kobe beside Gianna, sitting courtside together to watch Luka Dončić duel with LeBron James. Here is an excerpt from that piece:
On the fateful Sunday, I had just filled in as coach for my son Aaron's Dallas Texans club soccer team. TMZ's initial report about Bryant's death was published shortly after I got home with Aaron and my wife/team manager, Rachel.
Like many, I didn't believe the report. Part of me still can't. I naturally prefer to keep flashing back to images of Bryant and Gianna from that joyful evening of Dec. 29.
He looks like Gianna Bryant's best friend in all of them. As the father of a 13-year-old myself, I can think of no loftier aim.
I imagine that a lot of us share similar sentiments on this difficult day for Kobe Bryant and basketball fans everywhere. A huge part of me still can't believe that report.
It's really no easier to believe five years later.
No matter how many articles I write about losing Kobe and missing Kobe, five years on, I never lose that feeling of not really knowing what to say.
I don't miss rapists.
I thought the recent CNN bio-production was a great introduction to the basketball life of Kobe Bryant. Still fascinating how many lives he touch and of course, very human.. Maybe that is the reason. Good coverage on your part.