Travis Smith

Former Sports Editor

When I heard the news that Los Angeles Laker legend Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash with eight other people, including his 13-year-old daughter I immediately assumed it was a hoax. Kobe couldn’t die. He was a super-hero to me, immortal and invincible. Kobe’s former teammate Lamar Odom said after hearing the news “I just knew if he was involved in a helicopter crash, he would have been the one to survive. Somehow he would have jumped out and landed on his feet,” but the reality soon sank in that Kobe couldn’t beat mortality and was dead at 41 years old.

I told myself I wasn’t going to mourn the death of someone I had never met. He was just a basketball player. But as a die-hard Laker fan, I watched almost every game of Kobe’s twenty-year career and I woke up every day a little happier because of Kobe. The happiness was real and so is the pain. The reason he is so special to so many people is they watched him grow up and grew up with him. They saw him grow from a cocky 17-year old to a proud devoted father. For twenty years there were countless times when I said to myself “It’s okay. We got Kobe” and now we don’t.

Kobe joined the Lakers in 1996 with unlimited potential and off-putting swagger. Before even playing in an NBA game, Kobe told everyone that he was going to retire as one of the all-time greats. Many viewed this declaration as blind arrogance, but it didn’t take long for those who played with and against him to realize that he was also right.

Despite winning three championships early in his career he wasn’t satisfied. He was one of the best players in the league but he wasn’t a captain on his own despite his obvious talent. He struggled with gaining the respect of his peers and with people saying he wasn’t good enough – that he couldn’t win without Shaquille O’Neal. He was determined to gain their respect through basketball. His plan was to outwork everyone and become the greatest basketball player ever and then he’d finally gain their respect. Kobe demanded the same level of hard work and dedication to the game that he had out of everyone. If they didn’t rise to his standard, they weren’t welcome in his circle. He shunned his teammates who he felt were inferior to him and tried to shoot his way to the top. He became isolated in his quest for greatness.

After several years of individual success with no team success Kobe soon realized he couldn’t win alone. He realized that true greatness happens by elevating those around you. In the latter part of his career he was able to be the teammate and leader he needed to be and led his team to two more NBA championships as team captain. He was finally respected and loved by his teammates and his peers. Dwyane Wade, a former NBA player said, “All of us were trying to do our very best to make him proud of us, to make him respect us.”

Kobe continued to share his knowledge after he retired with current NBA players and most importantly with his daughter Gianna who tragically died in the crash with Kobe. He opened the Mamba Academy, a basketball camp, to teach the next generation of girls the fundamentals of basketball. He was on his way to coach his daughter’s basketball game when the helicopter crashed. He died a dedicated father, a mentor, a global ambassador to the game of basketball and a motivation for everyone to continuously try to improve their lives by adopting his “Mamba Mentality.”

Kobe described this mentality as “a constant quest to be the best version of yourself… to try to be better today than you were yesterday.”

Jay Williams, a former NBA player said, “He just made you want to be better in every aspect of your life.” Motivated by Kobe’s death Kendrick Perkins, another former NBA player, apologized to an old teammate, who he had gotten into a twitter beef with a few weeks ago and told him he loved him, and he was sorry. An elementary school teacher in Atlanta had his students write their biggest fears on a piece of paper, ball them up and throw them in the trash and yell “KOBE”. Gilbert Arenas, another former player said he’d stop wasting time on social media and become a basketball coach per Kobe’s request. Millions of fathers have shared pictures online of them with their daughter with the hashtag #girlsdad in honor of the adoring relationship Kobe shared with his four daughters.

Kobe will be posthumously elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame this August. When he died an NBA writer at ESPN lamented that Kobe will never get to write his Hall of Fame speech and Richard Jefferson, another former player and ESPN employee just said, “Kobe wrote that speech when he was nine years old.”

He just won’t be able to give it.