HIS FINAL ASSIST
Shaq's son: Kobe reached out to me just before crash
The son of Kobe Bryant’s longtime Lakers teammate Shaquille O’Neal was among the last people to hear from Bryant before the hardwood legend’s death in a helicopter crash, it was revealed on Monday.
Shareef O’Neal, 20, tweeted a screengrab of a text conversation between himself and Bryant, 41, from Sunday morning.
“You good fam?” Bryant asked Shareef, who announced last week that he would be transferring out of UCLA, where he plays college hoops.
“Yeah!” O’Neal wrote back.
“Just getting this work in trying to figure out my next move. How you been?”
Bryant’s text was sent at 8:19 a.m.
By the time O’Neal’s response was sent at 10:58 a.m., Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven others had already perished when their helicopter crashed in the hills of Southern California amid foggy conditions.
O’Neal followed up with a series of tweets paying tribute to Bryant.
“You’ve really been there for me all 20 years of my life,” he wrote in one message. “[B]een there for me since I was born.
“[L]ove you.”
Shareef was born in 2000, the same year that his hulking center dad and Bryant led the Lake Show to the first of three consecutive NBA titles.
That stretch — Bryant would go on to win two more rings after Shaq was traded from the Lakers — represented a high point in a charmed life on the court.
But, in what is believed to be his final sit-down interview before his death, Bryant was focused on his second act since retiring from the NBA following the 2015-2016 season.
“You got to do what you love to do,” Bryant told USA Today in the interview, published three days before his death.
“You’re going to go through a state of depression. You’re going to have an identity crisis,” he said, recounting warnings about retired life he’d received from other players in the twilight of his basketball career.
“These are all things that were said to me because people were genuinely concerned.”
But with his own playing days in the rearview mirror, there were few things Bryant loved more than instilling his passion for the game in the next generation — starting with Gianna, a k a GiGi, the second of his four daughters.
“I love inspiring kids or providing them with tools that are going to help them,” said Bryant, noting that he spent most of GiGi’s youth basketball team practices imparting fundamentals of the game to the young athletes.
Father and daughter were on their way to a tournament at Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif. — in which she would play and he would coach — when their helicopter crashed.
“Coaching youth sports is so important to take very seriously because you’re helping the emotional [development] of young kids,” Bryant told the paper. “It’s understanding not to be overcritical and understanding that [there] are going to be mistakes.”