Kobe Bryant: The Things We Never Had Time to Say

It was a day. A long, drawn-out, numb day. A day spent scrolling and reading, a day spent silently tapping the "like" icon, as if by that mute acknowledgement, something was actually being communicated. But mostly, it was a day of vague and scattered thoughts, of melancholy and a strange disconnect—even while wholly connected to the moment.

People I know and respect were posting and reposting, old articles from years past, new pieces conceived in the moment, a time in space where a grieving community comes together. I considered reposting something I wrote during the lead-up to Kobe Bryant’s final season, something that was whimsy and absurd invention and sincerity as well. But I hesitated, partly because of the image, a gyrocopter gliding through the air. Regardless, for all the things I wrote about the guy over the years, this was the one I liked the best—the clickety-clack of the keys under my fingers felt right at the time. Now, staring at a new word doc, my keystrokes feel all wrong.

I take a break from it all and go for a walk, along some Austin residential streets a block or two removed from the urban bustle. A young couple is strolling slowly ahead of me and my pace takes me past. The guy is saying to his edgy, raven-haired girlfriend: “I feel like going and adopting a dog today, and naming him Kobe.” A simple sentiment, yet infinitely relatable.

Here in Austin, on a street with three visible people on it, one is talking about Kobe and one listens to another talk about Kobe, as a stranger walks past with his eyes on the ground, also listening. It's here, there and everywhere. Because Bryant wasn’t only Los Angeles even if he was essential Los Angeles. There was and is a global admiration that has always gone beyond what anyone can say in the moment; whatever anyone’s favorite memory or game or take on a game is. And, a personality and a style of play that engendered controversy and more than a few scorching analytics debates devoted to the unseemly notion of taking contested mid-range, ball-hogging, jab-stepping, fadeaway jumpers when everyone knew, or claimed they knew, that easy 2’s and spaced-out 3’s were where the game is at now, man.

I was all-in with Kobe, from the moment he arrived in L.A. as an untamable teenage rookie through to his final limping chapter, topped of by that 60-point swan song finish. There were years spent, many of them, driving back from work with Chick’s "left-to-right on your radio dial," getting home in time for the second half on TV, or the trips to Staples, or at a club or a bar, talking to friends about the Lakers and Kobe, at a time when that was what the city needed it, when purple and gold pennants on car antennas were part of a unifying message that was embraced, even in unsaid ways. Kobe was the face of it, a high-flying and completely combustible Robin to Shaq’s Superman. And, he seized a mantle he already believed was his, once the Big Fella actually did leave the building. Remember how the headstrong Bryant fought with and resented Phil Jackson and the idea of system basketball in the early years, and how he came to accept and actually embrace the Zen Master’s teachings once Jackson returned for a second stand? There was the tough and ugly time in Denver and the hurt and repercussions rumbling across the Western Conference’s fractured tectonic plates and beyond—a messy era engendering anger and mistrust and bandages ripped off as soon as they were applied. And if the first portion of a 20-year career was filled with dazzling smiles and improbable dunks, the second chapter was marked by a grim assassin’s look, pounding away at opponents until his own tendons and bones would break, as if by torturing himself as well as others, there could be some redemption that only Mamba himself could fathom. Still, he continued his relentless Sisyphean challenge, pushing the heavy boulder uphill, partnering with Pau Gasol and gathering two more rings to add to the three others he already possessed. By the time Jackson left for good, Kobe was showing pleasure in the game again, except for a body that was betraying him in increasingly obvious ways.

Three more head coaches would follow, as would a ruptured Achilles and a fractured knee, just to mention a couple of the mind bending litany of medical mishaps. There would be no more titles, just an extended Lakers' march toward the basement of the league’s standings. But there were still moments to enjoy, and Bryant himself seemed more at ease with the world—if that’s possible for perhaps the most driven athlete of his time. If asked to pick a favorite memory from the last days of Kobe’s career, it would certainly be that 60-point storybook finish. Because how could it not be? It began in halting, painful fashion with shots clanking off the rim and it morphed into something spectacular and impossible and textbook Kobe; a cacophony of ridiculously hard shots and ragged breath and the very definition of leaving it all on the court. But that was just the capper of a two-decade run. Through all of it, the good, the bad and the infinitely complex, there was the undeniable truth of beautiful basketball, served up in outrageously large portions.

The tragedy of Sunday is not only the passing of a sports icon, it is the unfathomable loss of a father and his daughter and seven other precious lives, taken without warning in a fiery crash in California fog. It’s the bereavement of a widow and three other daughters, including an infant too young to know what was lost in the moment—that pain will unfold over years to come. It is unthinkable but still we think about it, these are the things we know and the things we can never know, the things we say and will never say.

A long, drawn-out day turned into another and a league and fans continued to try and process an unfathomable reality. Bryant was fond of talking about process, a word that seemed like a touchstone for a complex personality. How do you break something down into logical bites, when not a single part makes any sense at all? He lived in the incandescent moments, the deafening noise and the wash of light, the impossible and improbable, the kicked-out leg and jutting jaw, moments we wished would last forever. Kobe famously said that he never saw the end of the tunnel. We never got to see the ending we wanted.

There were things that we never had time to say. So long, down the line. You called us, but we never had time to say. Goodbye.