NBA great also was the kind of father who’s worth emulating
Saturday, while watching my girls, each a precious blessing, play basketball, I thought about how special teaching them the game is going to be.
What they don’t know about the sport, compared to what they will know once I work with them, is going to bring us so much closer together.
I laughed out loud imagining the day, years from now, when we will make fun of how little they — my double-dribbling 11-year-old, my airball-shooting 10-year-old — knew about the game and how Daddy made a difference.
Sunday morning, while scrolling through my Twitter timeline, I saw a video clip of Kobe Bryant sitting courtside with one of his four daughters. He was explain
ing some aspect of the game he loved, and she seemed so happy to be counseled by her dad.
It hit me in an odd way: This is my dream.
I have a list of close friends, fathers to daughters, whom I admire and want to emulate. They are so much better than I am at this father thing.
Sunday morning, I said
to myself, “I want to be like Kobe.”
Bryant died Sunday in a helicopter crash. He was 41.
All of the spin moves, dunks and jumpers that make up the highlight reel of his sports life are not what I will remember most. I will always be touched by that fatherdaughter moment.
The day I met Bryant, he was so young, so smooth. A kid.
After an interview, we chatted for a few minutes,
the kind of talk I’ve had with hundreds of athletes. Those talks are almost always meaningful to me. I never expect them to matter much to the athletes, much less a 20-year-old budding superstar.
Usually, it takes a host of such interactions to form a simple bond of recognition.
But a few weeks later, I saw Bryant again. This time it was at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., as the Lakers were preparing to
play the Rockets in a playoff series.
He spotted me and yelled at me across the floor. He wanted to reload the conversation from the Westside Tennis Club.
The topic wasn’t important, and I don’t remember exactly what it was, except he disagreed with my position and wanted to continue the debate. He wanted to win. That is what we all saw from him throughout his career: a fierce desire to win.
What I saw Sunday in the clip of him with his daughter wasn’t about winning, but it showed how much of a winner he is. How much of a winner he was.
Kobe Bryant was a tremendous basketball player, a spectacular athlete. It is so heartbreaking that his life as a father has been cut short.
That is where his winning would most matter.