Remembering Kobe Bryant

Everybody around the NBA seems to have their own link to Kobe Bryant, a story or feeling that either directly or tangentially connects them to him.

This has always been a matter of fact.

Kobe was never just a player; he was a religion and a myth, an idol and an archnemesis, a mentor and a hindrance, a reality and an idea, all at the same time.

His legacy, both on and off the court, is such that it can be whatever you want it to be.

And yet, following the death of Kobe, his daughter Gianna (pictured above) and seven others in a January 26 helicopter crash, it’s clear acceptance of his impact never doubled as a measure for comprehension.

The outpouring of responses to this tragedy, for both the Bryants and everyone else affected, is unlike anything the league has ever experienced.

Sudden loss has a way of amplifying clarity, but Kobe’s notoriety implied a certain awareness.

We knew how much he influenced everyone who came into contact with him, watched him play or followed him off the court.

It turns out we didn’t. Not really.

The enormity of his memory casts new light on the extent of his imprint.

“Looking at my young players and seeing how emotional they are — they didn’t even know him,” Los Angeles Clippers head coach Doc Rivers said.

“It just tells you how far his reach was.”

Little about Kobe’s legacy is genuinely consensus.

That he was charged with raping a 19-year-old woman in 2003 — the charge was later dropped after the woman elected not to testify, and a civil lawsuit between the two parties was settled out of court — is part of his story.

His impact on the game, though, is less complicated.

This year’s All-Stars, young and old, all felt his loss because they all felt his presence.

And below are some snippets, anecdotes and stories that the men that will star in tomorrow morning’s Team Lebron v Team Giannis All-Star game shared or have with the late NBA icon and legend.

Damian Lillard

A groin injury is keeping Lillard out of the superstar showcase, but that doesn’t make Dame any less of an All-Star.

And like most of his Chicago-bound peers, he has at least one Kobe Bryant experience that stands out.

In this case, it was a “welcome to the NBA” moment.

“The very first game against the Lakers, Kobe was making all these crazy shots,” said Liilard.

“We double-teamed him, triple-teamed him sometimes. We tried to make sure every shot that he took was tough. And in my head, I was like, ‘He’s eventually going to start missing. The shot’s going to stop falling eventually.’

“But I guess that’s just a college thing where eventually shots just stop falling, because he kept making them.

“Fadeaway over two people, fadeaway from three, pull-up jumper with two hands in his face — he was just making it.

“And it was just one of those times where I was like, ‘When a guy in the league gets hot, I guess this is just how it is. There’s nothing you can do about it.’”

Giannis Antetokounmpo

Antetokounmpo’s work ethic has been compared to Kobe Bryant’s own delirious drive, but their ties run deeper than this shared commitment to grinding.

Much, much, much deeper.

“[The] first NBA game I watched was a Kobe game against the Celtics — he was big, and you could feel it,” Antetokounmpo said.

“I grew up with Kobe — he’s one of the reasons I started playing basketball — and he’s one of the reasons I’m here today,” he said

Antetokounmpo forged a more tangible connection with his idol once he entered the league.

Bryant issued him a Mamba Challenge in 2017 with a three-letter mandate: MVP. Antetokounmpo was so serious about completing his mission that he set up a workout with Kobe during the summer of 2018 — for which he showed up three-and-a-half hours early.

That was 30 minutes late in Kobe time.

Other stars were lampooned for getting in runs with Kobe. Jayson Tatum’s mentions still haven’t fully recovered. Antetokounmpo proved immune to the jokes, in large part because he seized hold of the 2018-19 MVP discussion and never looked back.

With that task complete, Kobe doled out another: Championship.

The Milwaukee Bucks are now on pace to win more than 70 games, and Antetokounmpo is the runaway favorite to secure a second straight MVP.

Another Mamba Challenge may be on the verge of completion.

Jimmy Butler

Jimmy Butler was specifically asked about his Kobe Bryant story.

He went the first-on-court encounter route while speaking with reporters.

“Everybody does have a Kobe story, right? I don’t know. I just think…The first time when I played against him, in Chicago, probably rookie year, second year.

“Just knowing that I’m on the court with one of the greatest people to ever play the game, it hit me a different way.

“That’s everything to me: knowing that I’m in the same league with somebody that has done this at an extremely high level for so long. I think that’s special,” he said

It should come as no surprise Butler felt a certain way about occupying the same space as Kobe.

He had to sense a kinship.

Their competitive drive shares a certain edginess, the kind that compels them to roast their own teammates if they’re not working up to their standards.

Anthony Davis

A Kobe-Davis moment from the London Olympics ranks up high.

Kobe wasn’t renowned for mentoring kids — or should we say, his competition — at the time, but he made an exception for the teenager who followed him around at the Olympics.

“I think he was there when me and Serena [Williams] had a nice conversation about work ethic and competition and how she processes competitiveness and rivals and all that,” Kobe told the Los Angeles Times’.

“Sort of comparing notes. He was just sitting there watching.”

That is such a surreal mental image: Kobe and Serena shooting the breeze, chitchatting about life, with an impressionable 19-year-old looking on, either there by invite or just to eavesdrop.

Joel Embiid

Embiid’s more direct Kobe moment came during the former’s last game in Philadelphia.

He relayed it in a story for The Players’ Tribune

“The most surreal moment was when Kobe was retiring, and he played his last game in Philly.

“After the game, they set up a little room for us to talk for a minute. He walked in, and I shook his hand and I told him, ‘Man, I know you probably hear this a lot, but I literally started playing basketball because of you seven years ago.

‘Whenever I’d be shooting the ball at the park, I’d be yelling out, ‘KOBEEEEEE!’”

“He laughed and we talked for a minute, and then before he left he said the most Kobe thing. To most people, it wouldn’t mean anything. But to me, it was surreal. It was like I was in a video game or something.

“He said, in the most Kobe way, ‘OK, young fella. Keep working. Keep working.’”

LeBron James

LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are inextricably linked.

All-time greats always find themselves in the same rarefied air, but they have deeper history.

LeBron grabbed the face-of-the-league torch from Kobe, they built a relationship as the NBA’s buddy-buddy era began its crescendo and, now, they’re both Los Angeles Lakers.

That LeBron just recently passed him on the all-time scoring list, much to Kobe’s delight is yet another throughline.

Of all the options from which to choose, their 2002 encounter at All-Star Weekend in Philadelphia feels most appropriate.

It was one of their first meetings, and it ended with LeBron wearing shoes a size too small.

“I believe I was playing [a high school game] in New Jersey, and the All-Star Game, if I’m not mistaken, and you all can correct me, was in Philly.

“That Saturday, me and Maverick [Carter] drove to the Intercontinental [hotel] in downtown Philadelphia, and he gave me a pair of his shoes, which I ended up wearing that following night.

“It was the red, white and blue Kobes. I was a [size] 15, and he was a 14, and I wore them anyways.

“I sat and just talked to him for a little bit.

He gave me the shoes, and I rocked them in the game, and it was the same night we played Oak Hill against ‘Melo [Anthony]. Then, I saw what he was able to do the next night winning MVP here in Philly that following night.”

Anyone inclined to single out the speech LeBron gave in honor of Kobe on January 31 is well within their rights. His words were raw, moving and, somehow, exactly what everyone watching needed to hear.

Kawhi Leonard

Remember when Kyrie Irving FaceTimed Kobe Bryant after the Cleveland Cavaliers won the 2016 title?

Well, Kawhi Leonard did the Kawhi version of that after the Toronto Raptors took home the championship last season.

“I’m a guy that talked to Kobe last year, before the season, and right after we won in the locker room,” Leonard said .

“Me and [then-Raptors assistant] Phil Handy worked out with him before we got to Toronto, and he was probably the first or second guy we talked to other than our teammates and family after we won in the locker room.

“That motivation [Kobe gave him]. I thought about him every game. He was a source of drive for me last year trying to get that championship.”

Chris Paul

Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant were tight.

If anyone was wondering how close, they received their answer in CP3’s Instagram tribute, which affectionately noted that Gianna and his son, Chris, already had their marriage prearranged by their parents..

Their careers were almost intertwined when the Los Angeles Lakers and then-New Orleans Hornets agreed to a deal in 2011 that landed CP3 in Hollywood.

Except, at the the time, the league was acting as owner of the Hornets.

And soon after news of the blockbuster broke, then-commissioner David Stern vetoed the trade for the ever-infamous basketball reasons.

This, of course, didn’t sit well with the two superstars. They were taking a quasi-victory lap. Kobe, in fact, was already counting championships.

“You know me. My dream isn’t to win games,” Kobe told ESPN’s Baxter Holmes.

“It’s like, ‘How many of these titles are we going to win [together]?’

Because if we don’t win, we’re a failure.”

“It was crazy,” Paul added. “It was exciting. We talked about potentially being teammates and all that stuff like that. “

“Then, in the blink of an eye, gone.”

This non-trade remains one of the NBA’s great what-ifs. Kobe, who didn’t make it back to the Finals after the Lakers’ 2010 title, never seemed to fully get over                                                                                              it.

“Things would’ve been very, very, very different around here,” he told Holmes, “with two of the most competitive people the league has ever seen.”

Russell Westbrook

Russell Westbrook recalled his first meeting with Kobe Bryant in an Instagram tribute, which played out exactly as you’d expect.

“I met Kobe when I was 16 at UCLA playing against him in a pickup game,” Westbrook wrote. “He played like it was the NBA Finals.”

This is so Kobe. And so Westbrook.

Truth be told, this may have actually been the encounter that birthed the relentless version of Russ we’ve watched for the past 12 years.

“From that point on, I decided that I wanted to emulate his Mamba mentality,” Westbrook continue. “At the time, there was no name for it, but I recognized in him what I always felt in myself. He became a friend, a brother, a mentor, a teacher, he defended me, he believed in me, and he taught me how to weather the storm.”-Bleacherreport