Kobe Bryant and the Lasting Legacy of Our Legend

Against my better judgment as a fan of the Boston Celtics, I owned two Kobe Bryant t-shirts. One, a black one with a yellow decal of the Lakers legend, commemorated his final game. His hand is raised in the air as he waves goodbye to the Staples Center for the last time as a player; the only thing the decal doesn’t capture is his smile. The second shows Bryant, his arms stretched out as though he was having his enormous wingspan measured, and a lofty shadow — in the form of his uber recognizable logo — trailing behind him. Once in high school, I wore the latter to basketball practice. "A Kobe shirt?!" my coach asked, incredulously. "You're a Celtics fan!?" I didn't have much of a defense. All I could muster was, "yeah... but it's Kobe."

I randomly opened Twitter while waiting in line for a tub of chicken salad at Stop & Shop on Sunday afternoon and immediately forgot what I was there for, wishing I had never unlocked my phone. As though such an action would erase the breaking news that Kobe Bean Bryant — the untouchable, omnipresent, legendary, inescapably inspiring — had died in a helicopter crash in the hills of Calabasas that morning.

I believed that locking my phone would give the world time to tweet "no, it can't be true" enough times to make it so; that the reports of TMZ being hacked would suddenly become true. We never became so lucky, as it would soon be confirmed that at the age of 41, along with eight others including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, Kobe was gone.

Even on the drive home, I wondered about the validity of the reports. I still had this disbelief in the back of my mind, one that I now understand is natural, but at the time felt entirely refusing. I talked out loud as if that would change something, too. All I could muster was "... but it's Kobe."

A precious few people could have such an effect on the world, whether a legend in sport or not. Accolades wise, Kobe Bryant was — and still is — a surefire lock to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this year, a speech that surely would have been intelligent and cocky, yet humbly honored in equal measure. 

He's a five-time NBA champion, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and an All-Star in 18 straight selections, an obvious record. He's a two-time league MVP, a two-time Finals MVP. He scored 81 points in a game in 2006 and capped off his career with a pronouncedly fitting 60-point performance. He was as evading and legendary on the court as he was off it, never ever feeling touchable, but always feeling tangible. 

Whether you're 15 or 50, you watched Kobe define the modern era of the NBA. He was timeless; he is still timeless and will continue to be, immortal in the eyes of the world, not just the sports world. When he played, time stopped. And time stops again today.

His legacy will not live on uncomplicated, as it's only natural for a man as complicated as he was to have his bouts with the ever-complicated. His death means reckoning and discussing his 2003 rape case; the charges were eventually dropped, and he and the victim, to whom he apologized very publicly, reached a settlement out of court. 

He was a teammate with whom many did not and could not see eye to eye. He famously made Sasha Vujacic cry after elbowing him in the face in practice. To remember, even to consider such things in response to his death feels both necessary and improper. The negative sides of a legacy, in part, make the man; oddly, the man can most certainly transcend the legacy. You can respond how you wish. Grief can do that.

Beyond the stats and controversies is a great deal more that Kobe Bryant was meant to give the basketball world, and the world at large. We have highlights and clips and memories still, but it feels cruel and unjust that he wasn't given more time to give us more, to do more. He had just begun efforts ancillary to basketball. 

He founded Granity Studios, a multimedia content company focusing on creating new ways to tell stories, prominently centered around sports. He won an Oscar for his documentary short, Dear Basketball. He won an Emmy, too. He began publishing children's books and podcasts. He began contributing to ESPN+ with a show called "Detail," which involved unconventional narration and expert analysis simply because Kobe was anything but pedestrian in his extracurriculars. He opened a sports academy, and didn't stop at just one; he and his daughter and the helicopter's other passengers were on their way to one. They were going to play the game they loved.

He loved coaching his daughter, Gigi, a life taken far too soon and a talent in which Kobe revealed. In a 2018 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, he mentioned that fans often ask if he would be having a son, you know, to carry on his basketball legacy. "She's like, 'oi: I got this... don't need no boy for that, I got this." And she did. She trained, he coached. They analyzed the game, including in a, now, heartbreaking video of the two of them on an NBA sideline chopping it up. She makes a point, and he responds, "exactly." How proud he looked, watching his daughter unpack the game he spent 20 professional years excelling in. There's a lot of heartbreak surrounding the tragedy of yesterday, but perhaps the most gutting facet of it all is that his daughter will never get the chance to parse the game, nor play it as she was supposed to. 

And he'll never be able to watch.

He leaves behind a groundbreaking effect on the modern generation of sports, in all aspects. On players — he's the reason Jayson Tatum plays; he was a mentor to the likes of Trae Young, Kyrie Irving, Stephen Curry, and an icon to everyone from LeBron James to Spencer Dinwiddie. 

On fans — you yell "Kobe!" when you toss a ball of paper into the garbage can for a reason; Celtics fans own his t-shirts "because it's Kobe." On the league — every team took a 24 or eight-second violation to begin their games yesterday — and on other leagues — unlike any other pro player, he embraced the WNBA, putting it on a pedestal that even the most outspoken fans wouldn't think to do; he recently said that plenty of WNBA superstars could succeed in the NBA right now. 

And, again, on sports — "Kobe" chants rang throughout Camping World Stadium in Orlando as the NFC and AFC Pro Bowlers "battled" for supremacy; Neymar solemnly celebrated his second goal against Lille by putting up two fingers on one hand and four on the other.

To say "was" about Kobe Bean Bryant still feels unfair. He was never supposed to be referred to in the past tense. Not even his career, which concluded long ago, feels like a "was." Seeing him sitting on NBA sidelines in 2019 — whether Brooklyn or Los Angeles, in the stadium and city he helped to build — felt right. 

Even if he, the man and the Laker, wasn't tangible, his impact feels tangible. Every fade away is because of Kobe; every falling out of bounds jumper is because of Kobe; every game-winning fist pump is because of Kobe. Everything in the NBA of today, more or less, is because of Kobe.

We'll never forget yesterday, and as real as it is, we'll never fully believe it. The immortals never die, and even when they do, it doesn't feel as though they're supposed to die nor truly died. And Kobe won't. It's impossible. But there's still a feeling of emptiness, with feelings of confusion, anger, loss, and dismay creeping in. How can Kobe be gone? We were just talking about LeBron breaking his record on Saturday night. Within 24 hours, we're talking about his legacy as a whole because of sadder, more cataclysmic reasons. We often say gone but not forgotten as a knee jerk response to death. But what do we say when the immortal dies? I suppose we can't say much of anything. 

We just wonder aloud why the world is the way it is. Somehow, through our disbelief, we muster, "it can't be... it's Kobe.”

Source: beast120815 via Creative Commons