Kobe Bryant died yesterday, January 26, 2020 at the age of forty-one. He died in a helicopter crash along with his daughter Gianna Maria. They were reportedly flying to a travel basketball game with another player and one of her parents.

When celebrity deaths happen suddenly, they can feel seismic, and the reverberations of their loss spread around the world. Kobe was a stranger to most of us, but like Michael Jackson or David Bowie or Mary Oliver before him, he inhabited a world many of us lived in, to the degree that we felt we knew him. Chances are even if you didn’t grow up watching or playing basketball, you still ball up an old receipt and yell “Kobe!” as you toss it toward the trash bin. His loss is felt.

I watched Kobe Bryant incessantly growing up. VHS tapes of NBA highlights, live games on Saturdays or Sundays, and then eventually YouTube clips of his eighty-one-point game. He never claimed the spot as my favorite basketball player, but I still looked up to him. And in all honesty, I did so in part because he jumped straight from high school to the NBA, and middle school Brad was certain I would follow in the same path. So I watched his every move for tips and worked to emulate the mechanics of his jump shot. I wore an old pair of my dad’s Adidas KB8s while I shot around in the driveway, trying again and again to release the ball as far above my head as Kobe. I practiced his fadeaways, his crossovers, his midrange game. I dreamt of draft night.

Kobe Bryant was more than a basketball player; that much has never been in doubt. His life was complicated—very complicated—and his legacy will always carry Colorado in 2003. I do not know what sort of person he was, and I’m really not that interested, right now anyway, in making a guess. I do know he leaves behind his wife Vanessa and three daughters, including a little one born in June 2019. That is devastating.

The musical Hamilton is in town, and Gwyn and I are going to see it on January 30. We’ve seen it once before in Chicago, but for this performance I needed to brush up on the soundtrack, so I’ve been listening to it intermittently over the past few days. There’s a line in the Aaron Burr soliloquy “Wait for It” that I’m returning to over and again in the wake of Kobe’s death: 

“Death doesn’t discriminate / Between the sinners / And the saints / It takes and it takes and it takes / And we keep living anyway”

We keep living anyway. Next time I find myself alone on a basketball court, I’ll dribble to the elbow and pull up for a jumper, the ball released high, like Kobe. I’ll spin on the baseline and fade away, and then, if the shot goes in (maybe even if it doesn’t), I’ll turn toward half court with a pumped fist. I’ll throw up a three pointer with the clock winding down and say softly under my breath: “Kobe!” I’ll remember what it was like to dream. 

2 Comments

  1. Kyric Koning

    I think it’s nice how you humanize and personalize a death that many of us, even if we know tragic, can’t really feel. Celebrities are a kind of other whose level we don’t think we’ll reach, and yet they are essentially the same as us. It is a good reminder and a beautiful piece.

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related posts

Basketball
by Bart Tocci, October 9, 2013
A Third Way
by Brad Zwiers, May 27, 2020
Bringing Vince Carter to Church
by Brad Zwiers, September 27, 2013
Bringing Vince Carter to Church pt. 2
by Brad Zwiers, December 27, 2019
Watching Airplanes Alone
by Mitchell Barbee, October 23, 2023

post calvin direct

Get new posts from Brad Zwiers delivered straight to your inbox.

the post calvin