Kobe Bryant’s death leaves world asking what North Carolina has since 1996: What if?
The history of North Carolina basketball and Kobe Bryant is filled with near-misses.
Kobe would have gone to Duke — if only he had gone to college. He could have been a Charlotte Hornet for 20 years instead of one week — if only Vlade Divac had made good on his threat to retire rather than accept a trade to Charlotte.
But on one unforgettable day in 2006, Charlotte got a look at vintage Kobe from up close. Dec. 29, 2006. It remains my most indelible memory of Kobe — he scored 58 points, took 45 shots, fouled out and ultimately lost in triple-overtime to Charlotte, 133-124.
It was far from the greatest game Kobe ever played, and in fact was a largely unimportant contest for a guy who won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers.
But it was one of the greatest sporting events I’ve ever seen in person. (It lasted three hours and 20 minutes! George Foreman showed up!) More than 13 years later, it’s a night I remember for all the right reasons.
Sunday, on the other hand, will be remembered for all the wrong ones.
If you’re any sort of sports fan, the minute you heard about Kobe this weekend will become one of those awful moments that gets embedded in amber inside your brain.
It was a pretty Sunday afternoon in the Carolinas. Then the news started to leak out that Kobe, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash in California.
The news stormed into the translucent bubble of happiness that so many of us get to spend so much of our lives inside, only noticing we’re inside that bubble at all when something punctures it.
Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in my mother-in-law’s living room with several family members, sort of watching a college basketball game on TV, idly wondering if it was about time to go home and walk the dog.
My 13-year-old nephew looked up from his phone.
“Wait, this can’t be right — Kobe Bryant’s not dead, is he?” he asked.
“No way,” I said, startled. “If he were, this channel would be breaking into the telecast.”
Of course, that channel soon was.
Every channel was.
Kobe was only 41 years old when he died, but he was a one-name icon worldwide. And his daughter … and the others on that helicopter ... it’s mind-numbing.
Gianna and Kobe
I got in the car not long after that news and REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” was blaring on the radio. I don’t know if it was a tribute to Kobe, or just a coincidence. But it stung, and I pressed a button and silenced the car.
The song was right, though. A world without Kobe Bryant in it seems unknowable, and impossible.
I don’t pretend to have known Kobe well. I covered him in person during the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. I saw him play maybe a dozen other times over his 20-year NBA career, interviewing him multiple times but only in group settings.
On the court, he was intelligently ferocious. Answering questions, he was ferociously intelligent.
And, of course, he was a parent — along with his wife Vanessa — of four daughters.
My own daughter is close to Gianna’s age. I can’t imagine the final moments of that helicopter crash.
But I do know — in the instinctive way that all parents know — that Kobe would have died to save his daughter if he had been offered that trade.
That’s the deal you unofficially make with God when you become a parent: If it comes down to it, take me. Not the kids.
And so Gianna’s death adds a separate layer of tragedy to a horrible day; in some ways the most heartbreaking layer of all.
Kobe’s last game in Charlotte
The last time Kobe played in Charlotte was Dec. 28, 2015. He was 37, in the midst of his 20th and final NBA season, and every place he visited for the last time brought out the fine china in appreciation.
In Charlotte, a tribute video from Hornets owner Michael Jordan was unveiled before the game. Jordan has often referred to Kobe as a “little brother,” and he did so again then.
“I’m pretty sure you’re just like me,” Jordan also said during the video. For MJ, there is no higher praise than that.
Kobe’s play wasn’t special that night. He shot 5-for-20, scored 20 points and the Lakers lost. The Lakers lost 65 games that season. They were pre-LeBron terrible, and Kobe was no longer great, either. But he loved basketball, and he was one of the sport’s best ambassadors.
Kobe liked playing the villain, too. Always had. It got him fired up. So all the bouquets thrown at him that season were odd to him.
Said Kobe that night to some of us reporters: “It feels awkward, to be honest with you, to get this praise. ... I’m glad they didn’t do this many, many years ago. It’s like Kryptonite — it took away all my energy and all my strength, because I relied a lot on being the villain.”
The one word I remember most Kobe saying that night, though, came when someone asked him how he would describe his playing style.
“Mean,” he said.
Kupchak: ‘There will never be another’
Kobe had a trademark snarl, for sure. He played basketball like it was a form of combat.
But he was also a lovable figure, despite it all. Because he was so gifted, and yet he tried so damn hard.
“Kobe was a once-in-a-generation player who will forever be remembered for his competitive nature and his will to win,” said Hornets general manager Mitch Kupchak, who served in the Lakers’ front office for Kobe’s entire career. “They threw away the mold when Kobe Bryant was born. There will never be another like him.”
No, there won’t, and it seems like everyone understands that. Kobe was unique. He could do about anything — win five NBA titles, win an Oscar, write a script, inspire millions. He was his own constellation in the sports universe for decades — a hunter, like Orion. That part won’t change, at least. Kobe’s star will always shine.
But now the world is left wondering, because this was a bizarre tragedy and so many things could have gone differently. He soared for decades, and it is a catastrophic twist of fate that he died in a fall from the sky.
And now the world is asking the same two-word question that Charlotte Hornets fans have asked since 1996:
What if?
This story was originally published January 27, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
