He should have been there.
We knew, from the moment of Kobe Bryant’s mic drop – “Mamba out” – after he hung 60 points on the Utah Jazz on the final night of his career, that he would someday be honored with a statue.
That was April 13, 2016. No one could possibly have known that Bryant, who had engineered an impressive second act in retirement, wouldn’t be around to bask in that glory when he was at last immortalized in bronze.
But it’s not too much of a second guess to wish that this would have taken place much, much sooner – indeed, to say it should have taken place much, much sooner, when he was here to appreciate it.
Thursday’s statue unveiling, fittingly scheduled on 2/8/24, came a little more than four years after the helicopter accident that shocked not only Southern California but all of the basketball world and took from us Kobe, his daughter Gianna – who wore No. 2 on the basketball court – and the other passengers who were on that helicopter headed for a girls basketball event.
Their names are just as important, and their friends and families have grieved just as much over the last four years: Passengers Alyssa Altobelli, John Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, Payton Chester, Sarah Chester, Christina Mauser and copter pilot Ara Zobayan. May they, too, always be remembered.
Kobe was the most public of figures, and he grew up before our eyes. From his beginnings as a Laker – his fierce desire to get on the court when his coach, Del Harris, wanted to be more cautious with his playing time; the airballs at the end of a deciding playoff game in Utah (with his willingness to take them and the ability to learn from them); his sometimes harmonious, sometimes fractious relationship with Shaquille O’Neal; the three titles with Shaq and two more with Pau Gasol – to the final years of his career as a veteran on a team in transition, we saw the triumphs and, yes, the flaws.
Those airballs, in overtime of a 98-93 Game 5 loss to the Jazz to…
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