Lower Merion coach: ‘I realized I had lost my hero’
LOWER MERION » From a storage locker, of all places, Kobe Bryant’s high school warmup spoke to Gregg Downer, the still shaken coach of Lower Merion High, who on Tuesday shared stories about the late basketball superstar..
So, Downer wore it for comfort at a news conference, just a few days removed from the tragic weekend death of Bryant and his oldest daughter, Gigi, and seven others in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif.
The jacket had been stashed away for 24 years. Yeah, that was Bryant’s number when his illustrious NBA career ended 24 years ago.
“Coincidental - very,” Downer replied when the numerology was brought to his attention.
“That’s an eerie thought.”
In some psychic sort of way, it was Bryant connecting yet again with the high school he helped put on the map. They got together “two or three times” over the last 18 months, by Downer’s calculations, including a book signing at Hamilton Elementary in Philly last March.
Downer was on a panel with Bryant reading and taking questions from children about “The Wizenard Series: Training Camp.” The book is full of life lessons that transcend the basketball court, per critics.
“That probably is the last time I talked to him,” said Downer, who expressed his condolences to Bryant’s wife and three surviving daughters and seconds later, became choked with emotion as he’s been unable to speak to Bryant’s father Joe, or mother
Pam.
It was a difficult day for Downer, whose Aces (13-4, 9-3) played at Upper Darby Tuesday evening. School authorities hoped the news conference would quell further questions about Bryant.
Don’t count on that. The grieving over Bryant’s death at age 41 barely has begun not just for the Lower Merion community and the Delaware Valley but throughout the country, and internationally.
Each day Downer and students arrive for school, the monument outside Bryant Gymnasium grows larger.
The legacy Bryant constructed at Lower Merion, where he sparked the Aces to the 1996 PIAA Class 4A state championship, is every bit as special as the milestones he reached in a 20-year NBA career.
“After he died, I was having a hard time processing a lot of this as many people are,” Downer said. “But my heart hurt so bad and my insides hurt so bad that I realized I had lost my hero. I was so proud to have coached him, so proud every time I saw him. I never saw a human being seek excellence like him. I full believe that a lot of little kids lost their hero and a grown man, Gregg Downer, lost his, also.”
Bryant is fourth on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, having dropped 33,643 points on his colleagues, an average of 25 points per game.
Bryant’s passing has been such a jolt in the Philadelphia area it’s hard to imagine how he was booed after winning MVP in the 2002 NBA All Star game at the First Union Center. Certainly, his Hollywood connection gave some fans pause.
Downer always will wonder what might have been had the Sixers in 1996 found a way to draft Bryant, who jumped to the NBA straight from high school. That was the year the Sixers took Allen Iverson, a Hall of Famer just like Bryant, off the board with the first overall pick.
“There’s always debate about is he a hard-nosed Philly kid or is he not a hardnosed Philly kid,” Downer said of Bryant. “My question would be, who would you rather go in a foxhole with than Kobe Bryant? He’s an intense competitor. He did have suburban Philly roots here at Lower Merion High School.
He played in the Sonny Hill League. If Philadelphia is blue collar, if it’s toughness, if it’s ‘Who do you want to go to war with?’, it’s him. And in an era of load management this guy earned every penny of his paycheck. He never took a second off.”
Like him or not, Bryant averaged almost 80 games a season, including the playoffs, excluding one injury marred season in his 20-year career.
Like him or not, he played a leading role in five NBA titles with the Lakers.
The groundwork was laid at Lower Merion under Downer. He and Doug Young, an assistant coach who played on the 1996 state title team, barely touched the surface of their memories with Bryant.
The tragedy has heightened their awareness of living in the moment with family and friends. Deep down inside, Downer hopes the remainder of the basketball season will be therapeutic for himself and the Aces.
Downer hopes that Bryant’s Lower Merion warmup will end up in the basketball hall of fame. For now, the old ball coach who displayed a pretty good game in his playing days at Penncrest under then coach Ed Dale needs it more than Springfield, Mass.
“I wasn’t sure I could get through yesterday, keep my emotions together and talk to the team,” Downer said. “I found some strength and the ability to do that. And I think it’s coming from him. It means the world to be in a jacket like this. If there’s some sort of small connection between he and I with this legendary warmup that he wore, No. 33, it gives me power and I feel great.”
Twenty-four years after Bryant celebrated a championship with the Aces, his spirit in so many ways still burns brightly.