On an otherwise unremarkable Sunday in 2006, I hopped in my dad’s car and we headed toward downtown Los Angeles. We had tickets to watch the Lakers, my favorite team and the more expensive ticket in town. Usually, we settled for seeing the Clippers in person.
I don’t recall exactly how we got these tickets, but it may have had to do with the way the team was playing: the post-Shaquille O’Neal era featured a mostly underwhelming roster.
Except, of course, for Kobe Bryant.
Bryant was in his tenth season, the midpoint of his career. Already a legend, he’d won three consecutive titles a few years earlier. But this was the season where he decided to simply carry his team: He’d average 35.4 points per game to lead the league and set a career-high.
I knew I was going to see something unique with Bryant shouldering so much. I had no idea that I’d witness one of the greatest individual performances in sports history — or that my life would be so substantially shaped by what happened that day.
****
Nothing about the first half would have hinted at what was coming. It had all the makings of a relatively innocuous game. The Lakers trailed by as many as 18 points. Bryant had 26 in the first half, which was impressive, but the Toronto Raptors fully maintained their advantage.
Until Bryant took over the game. That’s a phrase you hear a lot — “took over.” But I doubt there’s ever been a better example of it actually happening than on that day. Kobe actually missed his first two shots of the half, but then rattled off three consecutive 3-pointers as the Lakers slowly climbed.
Bryant pushed the Lakers ahead for the first time late in the third quarter, when he tipped a pass, chased it down, then went in for a thunderous dunk. I was on my feet for the majority of the fourth quarter. How did Kobe sink that with so many defenders guarding him? How did he hit that again?
Brant would go on to score 81 points, on 28-of-46 shooting (7 for 13 from 3). He got to the free-throw line 20 times, hit 18. He did whatever he wanted, giving us the most impressive offensive performance since Wilt Chamberlain recorded 100 points in 1962.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeXZY4eVLlo
Even a casual sports fan could understand how significant Kobe’s achievement was. For me, at age 12, it was transformative: Watching Bryant at his best, the product of years of practice and determination, made me fall in love with the game in a way that has shaped my life.
But I’m not alone in that. If you were a Lakers fan during this era, you probably have a Kobe story — or dozens — like this. Sharing them is what brings us together, and what elevated Bryant.
I had never seen someone command a room the way that Bryant did on that day. It felt like watching a symphony, except the role of the conductor and every member of the orchestra were all somehow assigned to one person. He was doing everything! In retrospect, it was a seemingly impossible task, but Bryant was still hitting every note.
As the spotlight shined on him, the legendary scorer just became more and more dominant. It didn’t make any sense. It defied logic. It was magic. You could feel the electricity of history being recorded in front of your eyes. I was hooked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7P7OqCpqo
I needed to follow that passion for basketball that the game had lit inside of me. That was confirmed time and time again: by my high school graduation, I’d watched Bryant lead this team to five NBA championships.
The title-runs with Shaq in the early 2000s are all cherished moments in my development as a sports fan. The latter two are crystal clear and feel like they happened just yesterday.
Those victories were always capped off by parades, celebrations that brought people together from all walks of life. These moments, which encapsulated all of the diversity the city has to offer, made me proud to be from Los Angeles.
I brought that pride in my hometown, which Bryant represented, with me to college in Oregon. I hold it now, every day, living across the country in New York.
When I think about growing up in Los Angeles, I remember how much of an ever-present figure he was in the city. He was a one-of-a-kind presence on the court but, like Michael Jordan, he found a way to transcend basketball.
If you were in Southern California at any point after Bryant’s rookie season in 1996, you remember that Kobe was everywhere.
His image was on billboards. His face was on bootleg shirts sold outside of gas stations. His name was everywhere, too, as “Bryant” was on the back of jerseys that fans rocked and “Kobe” was shouted whenever someone threw crumpled up paper across the room into a trash can. He was on every television screen, and even if he wasn’t, he was the subject of so many conversations.
He was far from perfect, as we learned from the sexual assault accusation, but he was a force that so often brought us together.
Then, suddenly and shockingly, he was just gone.
****
Being in that arena 15 years ago was one of the most surreal moments of my life: I knew I was watching something that people would talk about for as long as they talk about basketball, but it felt somehow not real.
I had the same feeling last year when I heard that Kobe had been killed in a helicopter crash. So many of the people who loved Kobe most were left literally at a loss for words.
Marc Gasol said he has not publicly discussed Kobe's death and he still can't.
— Lakers Nation (@LakersNation) January 24, 2021
Shortly after, three-time NBA champion Draymond Green told journalists he didn’t want to talk about losing Bryant. During a press conference earlier this week, Lakers big man Marc Gasol told a reporter a similar thing, explaining that he also was not comfortable talking about what happened.
I immediately recognized and was even sunken by the feeling. I still don’t have the right words to talk about that day, which also took the lives of eight others, including Kobe’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna.
Every time it crosses my mind, the lump in my throat gets so big that it rushes to my brain, fully takes over, and I have trouble thinking clearly.
For me, being short on words is never easy. How strange it is to lose the person who inspired you to become a writer, then not have the words when it comes time to memorialize them.
So I have tried to remember Kobe in the times he brought people together. The times he made us feel a part of something. You could see that just as clearly in the championship parades as you did in the immediate aftermath of his passing, which haunted people in Los Angeles, sure, but also hit fans worldwide.
Whatever it was you did, football, basketball, soccer, acting, whatever. Kobe inspired you to be better…
— 🏁 Jamal Crawford (@JCrossover) January 26, 2020
When we lost him, perhaps the only remote form of solace that we had was the collective mourning shared by so many, an immense network of folks struggling with his loss. Grief is such a powerful thing and days on the calendar like today, the anniversary of his death, will be hard for a lot of people for many years to come.
Bryant is the reason why I pursued a career in basketball. I know that also applies to a ton of people around the world, too, including many professional athletes who were inspired by Kobe as well.
For me, it blossomed from something casual into so much more on that routine Sunday. In the aftermath of the game, Kobe admitted that he wasn’t even sure how he’d done it. “To sit here and say I grasp what happened, that would be lying,” he said. How tragic is it that we won’t hear him reflect on it 10 years, to use the benefit of hindsight to maybe finally unlock why it came together at that time and in that place?
What we’re left with, instead, is what we felt in that moment. It pushed me to chase a life spent near basketball, and for that I am eternally grateful.
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