Image shows Kobe had moved on to new dream
The Arizona Republic
When news broke that Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna, 13, were among nine people killed in a helicopter crash in the Los Angeles area, the first image that popped in my mind wasn’t his silky jump shot or celebrating one of his five titles with the Lakers.
The image in my head was from just a few days before Christmas, when an ESPN broadcast showed Kobe and Gianna (Gigi) courtside at a Nets game in Brooklyn. Kobe appeared to be explaining something in the game to Gigi, and she was smiling like there was no place she would rather be.
Bryant had a lot of sweet moments in 20 years with the Lakers, but that one, to me, was the sweetest. Kobe was only 41, and as he showed us in recent years, he was much more than just a great basketball player.
In 2016, he won an Oscar for an animated short film (“Dear Basketball”) based on a poem he wrote. The film, Bryant said at the time, was “about the emotional journey of having a dream, believing it’ll come true; it comes true, then the realization that you have to wake up from that dream and move on to another.”
Bryant had moved on to another dream. In doing so, he became far more likable to nonLakers fans than when he played. When he played, Bryant was a villain to many NBA fans, mostly because he was so good. He was part of five championship teams and twice named Finals MVP.
He won two scoring titles and was the NBA’s most valuable player once.
No player was tougher. In 2013, he shot, and made, two free throws after rupturing his
ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
Achilles against the Warriors.
When my son, then a teenager, insisted on buying a pair of Bryant’s signature shoes from Nike – his “Kobes” – I teased him constantly that all he was going to do was jack up shots.
But Bryant’s game demanded respect. He averaged 25 points per game in his career, but he was so much more than a scorer. Twelve times he was named to the NBA’s all-defensive team.
Kobe was a one-name guy, partly because it’s a unique name, and partly was so talented.
He called his style “The Mamba Mentality” and published a book with that title two years ago.
It seems wrong, in a way, to talk about statistics, rivalries and playoff series. A transcendent player is gone, along with the smiling daughter who sat next to him at the game last month.
The image of them together is more than just sweet now. It’s crushingly sad. because he