Sometimes, there are no words. Sometimes, even the memories aren’t true sustenance, not yet, not for a while. You turn on a television and learn Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter are dead, and it doesn’t just seem impossible, it feels unfathomable.
A father of four, the most recent born in June. A beautiful wife. Fame and fortune beyond measure, with an almost certain date with immortality once the next Hall of Fame votes are revealed.
Dead at 41.
Dead in a helicopter crash in California, along with as many as seven other passengers when a fire broke out in the chopper. The details come trickling in and they matter, but they do not help: Kobe Bryant, one of the best basketball players any of us will ever see, is gone. In a flash. At 41. How do you explain that? How do you understand that?
Eventually, it will be important to recall just what it was like watching him play basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers, first as No. 8, later as No. 24. It will be essential to remember the fierce competitor he was, sometimes to a point well beyond the comfort level of his teammates, a demanding genius with a basketball who invariably took the most important shot of every game he ever played in and, more often than not, made it.
It will be important to remember how he developed into a five-time champion in Los Angeles, first as a duo with Shaquille O’Neal, later with a different cast of characters. He was a link in the great Lakers championship chain that began with Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain, grew into popular culture with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and now lies in the able hands of LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
Kobe was courtside at Staples Center often this season, watching what has become of his old team, inevitably in the company of his family. He was like a famous alumni walking back onto campus every time, iconic in status and eternal in his impact. You don’t get much bigger in our world than one-name status in Hollywood — Kobe had that from the time he was 20 years old.
He was a pioneer. Before he and Kevin Garnett opted to declare for the NBA draft out of high school, that was a mostly untested pathway. Moses Malone had done that. Darryl Dawkins had done that. Mostly, skipping college wasn’t an option. Garnett, in 1995, proved it was a viable option. And a year later, Bryant reaffirmed it and opened the door for the next decade. He nearly landed as a Net on draft night, his agents outfoxed John Calipari, he was taken by the Hornets and traded to the Lakers.
And that was where it began. His was by no means a perfect life. There were run-ins with coaches, arguments with teammates. In 2003, he was accused of sexual assault by a woman who worked at a hotel in Edwards, Colo. Bryant would adamantly deny the charge, though he did confess to a consensual sexual relationship, most notably in a news conference with his wife, Vanessa, at his side. The case was later settled, with Bryant issuing an apology “for my behavior that night and for the consequences she has suffered in the past year.”
Bryant emerged with his life and his career — and, ultimately, his nine-figure endorsement deals — intact. He would spend the rest of his career allowing the basketball to do most of his talking, and in that context, he was nothing short of extraordinary. On Feb. 2, 2009, he dropped 61 points on the Knicks, which was at the time an all-time record at Madison Square Garden. Three years earlier, against Toronto, he went for 81 — the second-highest total ever, behind only Chamberlain’s 100-point outburst against the Knicks in 1962.
By the last time he played at the Garden on Nov. 8, 2015, he’d become part wise old hand, part living legend. Holding court that night, he reflected on his career and his place inside NBA history.
“I want people to look back on my playing days and say, ‘He was a winner. He was a guy who respected the game. He was a guy whose teammates liked playing with him because all he cared about was winning.’ ”
That was exactly as it happened. His was going to be a long, prosperous retirement filled with cheers, filled with adulation. That should’ve been the way it went for the next 40 years. Words are difficult to summon that can make any semblance of sense out of that.
