I just can’t control myself writing again about Kobe Bryant, whose passing after a helicopter crash on Sunday brought the world to its knees in utter shock.
Gone too soon as he was only 41.
Snuffed was his innate character to be a man for others.
My “All Write” column at SunStar talked about the death of Bryant, tragically together with Gianna, his 13-year-old daughter, and seven others that included a couple and their child. A baseball coach was also in that chopper bursting into a ball of fire after it slammed a hillside in Calabasas, Los Angeles, CA, in foggy conditions, at approximately 10 in the morning. All nine aboard perished.
Before the tragedy, Bryant’s “other world” is almost a-bloom after he retired on April 13, 2016, firing 60 points in his farewell NBA (National Basketball Association) game. No surprise there; his career-best is 81 points.
What’s that “other world” again?
His family.
Finally reconciling in 2013 with his wife, Vanessa, after their divorce triggered by Bryant’s darkest moment when he was accused of a sexual assault in a Colorado hotel (the case was dismissed) in 2003, Kobe became a devoted family man—embellishing this with a foundation to assist the homeless, among other charity works, he and Vanessa had put up.
After emerging from this career-threatening rape scare that tarnished his reputation (he apologized publicly), Bryant, whose cache of accomplishments include five NBA crowns, two Olympic titles, two NBA Finals MVPs, one league MVP and 18 All-Star stints, leaned on the counsel of a Catholic priest to build his new world: “God will not give you something that you cannot handle. So let go and move on.”
From then on, he’d rather be with his wife and children (Capri, the youngest of his four daughters, was born in June 2019) every single minute than being with his buddies.
Because Bryant loved to fly, he took helicopters around LA just to spend more time with family. In a 2018 podcast, he said: “Even if I only got to spend 20 minutes in the car with my kids after school, ‘I want that.’”
A devout Roman Catholic, Bryant was seen hearing Mass that fateful day before he joined the eight others in the ill-fated flight bound for Bryant’s gym named Mamba, Kobe’s basketball nickname as a Los Angeles Laker for 20 years—starting at the tender age of 17. Gianna was to play a game with her basketball team being coached by Bryant.
Jack Nicholson, the eminent Oscar winner and an ardent LA fan who would postpone Hollywood location shootings just to watch a Laker game, recalled the first time he met Bryant.
In an interview with CBSLA’s Jim Hill, Nicholson said: “My reaction is the same as almost all of LA. Where we think everything’s solid, there’s a big hole in the wall. I was used to seeing and talking to Kobe that…it kills you. It’s just a terrible event.”
Continued Nicholson: “I teased him the first time we met. It was at the Garden in New York and I offered him a basketball and asked him if he wanted me to autograph it for him. He looked at me like I was crazy…I sat right behind his jump shot on the left hand side. I can see him going up and I can tell the first instant if it’s going in…I remember the totality of how great a player he was…. We’ll think of him all the time and we’ll miss him.”
There will never be another Kobe Bryant.
THAT’S IT Just hours before Bryant’s tragic death, he even took the time to tweet LeBron James after James had passed him for third place in the NBA’s list of all-time scoring leaders in a game in Philadelphia, Kobe’s birthplace: “Continuing to move the game forward @King James. Much respect my brother.” Humility at its best.