Emotional roller-coaster week with Lakers
Last week began with a Lakers helicopter story that wasn’t true and ended with a Lakers helicopter story that I wish weren’t true.
I spent the past week with the Lakers, starting Jan. 20 in Boston, as LeBron James moved closer to passing Kobe Bryant for third place on the NBA’s career scoring list.
The Lakers had a 7:30 p.m. game in Boston, and earlier in the day, LeBron’s son, Bronny, had a high school basketball game in Springfield, Massachusetts, 90 miles away.
A rumor circulated that James planned to take a helicopter from Boston to Springfield and back for the game. Seemed plausible. James has the kind of resources to make it happen, and Boston TV reporters ran with it.
Turns out James made the trip to Springfield, but by car.
On Sunday, I had walked in my door, just returning home from covering on Saturday night the Lakers-Sixers game in which James passed Bryant on the scoring list, when I got the news that Bryant might have died in a helicopter crash.
One falsehood and one truth bookended a week filled with life’s most emotional components.
A few quotes from last week keep coming back to me, all connected in some way to the fleeting existence of life, the importance of living in the moment and figuring out what matters. I can’t shake them, the visuals and audio playing over and over in my mind now following the death of Bryant.
I remembered the quotes singularly on their own merit during the week, as I traveled from Boston to New York to Philadelphia and then home to D.C. Collectively, they are even more poignant, loose ends stitched together in the fabric of life and death.
Following the Lakers’ victory against Boston on Monday, James was asked several questions about his son, who unfortunately had something thrown at him by a young fan during his game. James had to break his normal gameday routine to attend the game.
“I break every routine in my life for
my family,” James said. “If the gods are with me, they’re going to make sure I get back safe. My routine was broke today, but I can care less about it if I’m seeing my family – my wife, my daughter, my kids. It’s unique opportunity for me to see my son live that close to where I’m at. This right here is all secondary when it comes to my family. Nothing else matters.”
The next day, I took a train from Boston to New York for former NBA commissioner David Stern’s memorial at Radio City Music Hall. The speakers were wonderful, sharing their memories of Stern and the impact he had on their lives and the lives of others.
But I was struck by the short remembrance delivered by jazz musician Wynton Marsalis who knew Stern through Jazz at Lincoln Center.
It was a soaring, spiritual and esoteric elegy.
“And though we are brought here this morning by the icy beckoning of death, life is all around us, beginning and ending all rolled into one moment of tragic recognition and joyous reaffirmation – a circle that completes the cycle,” Marsalis said.
He continued: “And a cycle is a cycle like the changing of the seasons or the
passing hours of the day or the journey from birth to babyhood to adulthood to the swift finality of the grave. It is a road we must all travel.”
And in a way that made me feel as if the eulogy were given by a New Orleans preacher, Marsalis also said, “We come and we go, and we come and we go.”
Lakers owner Jeanie Buss attended the memorial, along with Lakers general manager and Bryant’s good friend, Rob Pelinka, and former Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak, who acquired Bryant from Charlotte at the 1996 draft.
No one expects the unfathomable to happen, so we go on with our lives. On to the next place, the next city.
James that day attended a bike giveaway at the Harlem YMCA, then posted photos of the LeBron 17 sneakers with a “Space Jam” theme that will be available to the public the week of the All-Star Game.
James is perpetually busy, and I once asked him how he kept track of all of the things he had to do. I found the audio from that interview, which took place in Boston during the 2018 playoffs.
I also asked James about living in the moment. Here’s what he said:
“You tell yourself what’s most important. How can you benefit on a day-today basis the most, and I realized that living in the moment was perfect for me. Not taking for granted, not dwelling on the past. Not trying to shortcut the future and hurry up and get there. Living in the moment because every day is not promised. You have the opportunity to live the best life that you can on that day.”
Then, I covered the Lakers-Knicks game Wednesday where a reporter asked James a bizarre question about his someday playing for the Knicks if they drafted Bronny. James brought the conversation back to reality.
“My son is in ninth grade, man,” James said. “We’re trying to worry about what project he’s got to turn in tomorrow. That’s what we worried about right now. That’s what’s most important – school, home and being the best big brother he can be.”
Before the game, I visited with former Cavaliers coach David Blatt, who is now working for the Knicks. The conversation was off the record, but Blatt’s primary progressive multiple sclerosis diagnosis and my 41⁄2 battle with metastatic colon cancer came up. I recalled Stephen Colbert’s interview with Anderson Cooper where Colbert said existence is a gift and with existence comes suffering. We talked about that.
The Lakers-Nets game the following night was uneventful, and then on Saturday James passed Bryant. Following the game, James spoke with genuine fondness and appreciation of Bryant. Obviously it wasn’t, but it sounded a bit like a eulogy.
“The story is just too much,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense. Just to make a long story short, now I’m here in a Lakers’ uniform in Philadelphia where he’s from, where the first time I ever met him. It’s surreal. But the universe just puts things in your life, I guess, when you’re living the right way, or just giving everything to whatever you’re doing. Things happened organically, and it’s not supposed to make sense but it just happens.”
Eerie.
We know the lessons. Don’t take the day for granted. Tell the ones you love that you love them. But we didn’t need any of this to happen to know that. We shouldn’t need a tragedy to be the reminder.
We come and we go, and we come and we go.